Retail Right Now – April 2025: What’s Hot, What’s Changing, and What You Can’t Ignore
Retail isn’t in a reset—it’s in a real-time remix. Between shifting tariffs, consumer sentiment plummeting to the lowest level since 1952, an election-year economy, exploding retail media budgets, and an AI race to efficiency and value, retail brands are facing pressure from every direction.
What’s clear? The playbook from even a year ago doesn’t hold.
This is the moment to re-center around what actually drives growth today: using the data you have to place the customer at the center of everything you do with relevance, speed, and smarter monetization of every interaction.
In this article, we’ll address key topics impacting the retail industry right now.
Turbulence of Tariffs Is Back
Global trade tensions are heating up and consumer sentiment has weighed in. U.S.–China relations remain strained, and it’s adding uncertainty to sourcing and pricing strategies.
Retailers are scrutinizing their processes from materials to manufacturing to shipping and diversifying aggressively—with more leaning into nearshoring and localized supply chains. But margin pressure is very real.
Brands must be ready to pivot quickly with pricing strategies as tariff rules shift, or lose customers over the long run.
With the drop in consumer sentiment, individuals are really feeling the pinch, especially on fast fashion and the toy category.
Tariffs on Chinese imports, specifically, have caused toy prices to surge. Industry leaders predict that up to 80% of toys could be twice as expensive by the 2025 holiday season. Popular items like Care Bears and Tonka Trucks are affected, with some companies halting orders due to increased costs.
Here’s an example: Tonka Mighty Dump Truck
- Original Price (pre-tariff): $29.99
- New Tariff (up to 100–150% on some Chinese toy imports): ~100% increase
- Price After Tariff: $59.99+
While the 2025 holiday season may be nine months from now, parents are looking to necessity only spending to help ease the impending burden. It’s too early to make solid predictions here, but we do anticipate a bit of category shifting happening if the tariffs persist.
Retail Media Networks: The Budget Binge Is On
Retail Media Networks (RMNs) are officially core to the modern retailer’s P&L. Ad budgets are shifting rapidly from social platforms to retail environments where purchase intent is stronger.
Retailers like Walmart, Target, and Kroger are building real businesses here—but the gold rush has a catch. Relevance and frequency must be tightly managed, or shoppers will tune out fast.
While RMNs may account for 1–5% of total revenue today, they can drive 10–20%+ of profit, thanks to high margins and incremental ad revenue.
The long-term goal: Make media a profit center, not just a marketing tool
RMNs are reshaping retail. They bring in billions in high-margin revenue, turn data into dollars, and give retailers more control over the customer journey—and the media dollars that fuel it.
Standing up an RMN is easy to start, but hard to scale, especially if you do not have your data house intact. Getting the tech live is step one. Building a real business with revenue, results, and relevance takes serious investment in data, talent, and operational maturity.
While there are challenges, RMNs are non-negotiable for retailers. Doing an endemic RMN (on your own website) is probably the best bet right now because you can collect more co-op revenue from vendors to offset your marketing spend.
AI Isn’t a Feature—It’s Fuel
The retailers winning in 2025 are using artificial intelligence to do more than write headlines and subject lines. From real-time personalization and churn prediction to dynamic pricing, dynamic offers and optimized inventory, AI is powering decisions at every level.
But there’s a wide gap between those operationalizing it—and those stuck in AI theater, talking transformation without traction.
There is still an opportunity to be an early adopter of AI. Start by identifying specific use cases for your business and implement and iterate from there.
Consumer Confidence Is on a Rollercoaster
We already mentioned consumer confidence is waning. With this comes an era of unpredictable shoppers.
- Luxury category buyers remain resilient.
- Value-driven retail is under pressure.
- Gen Z is shopping with intent but also saving more than any other generation.
Retailers must be ready for shifts in basket size, channel preference, and loyalty behavior—often in the same customer.
Intelligence at the core of your tech is critical to understand and unpack the next touchpoint. We know 27% of consumers buy from a brand and walk away never to be seen again. That is quite a leaky bucket. Stay steadfast on your nurture campaigns with relevancy and get that number to move south.
Loyalty Is Shifting from Points to Privilege
Traditional points-based programs are losing steam. Instead, consumers are gravitating toward loyalty that feels exclusive and rewarding: Access, meaningful rewards, and recognition is the name of the game. This could be providing early access to sales and high demand inventory, member-only drops, concierge-style service, etc.
Loyalty is becoming less about accumulation and more about access.
Retailers with advanced analytics or AI-driven insights can uncover whether points-based rewards are even driving value. Customer data acts as the fingerprint—revealing what works, what doesn’t, and where loyalty strategies need to evolve. So perhaps a No Points Necessary loyalty program is an alternative way to go.
Related content: A Silent Shift in Traditional Brand Loyalty is Transforming Retail
Identity and Intent Are the Real Differentiators
Identity is truly at the center of retail. The ability to recognize a customer across devices, countries, and visits—and to understand their intent in the moment—is what separates fast movers from slow responders.
Identity powers personalized experiences, precise media targeting, and smarter growth strategies. Buying enrichment data and bolting into a customer data platform is a thing of past. Data needs to be highly integrated into your core platform for the strongest identity matching as well as incremental ROI.
Zeta’s Data and Identity solutions combines data from anywhere in your tech stack into one unified platform and extends that data with billions of signals from one of the industry’s largest proprietary databases. This precise, comprehensive view of customer behavior enables individualized campaigns and smarter decisions that drive better results across all touchpoints.
Final Thoughts
Retail’s future isn’t a five-year plan—it’s being built in real time. The brands that will win the rest of 2025 aren’t the biggest or the loudest—they’re the ones who can read the signals, be agile-acting fast, and make every customer moment count.
Whether you are white-knuckling the remainder of the year or controlling the chaos from one day to another, for sure, strap in as we are in for a ride!
