蘑菇AV

Go further: Read our analysis of Macy鈥檚 and other major retailers鈥� Q3 results in our Retail & Ecommerce Earnings Q3 2024 report. This article is part of 蘑菇AV鈥檚 client-only subscription Briefings鈥攄aily newsletters authored by industry analysts who are experts in marketing, advertising, media, and tech trends.

Gen Alphas are already adopting social media trends typically associated with teens, such as a recent interest in skincare. Don鈥檛 discount YouTube Shorts. If TikTok is banned, YouTube Shorts has an edge over Instagram among Gen Alpha: 39% of children ages 2 to 12 recently consumed content on YouTube Shorts compared with 28% on Instagram. What does this mean for advertisers?

Even with their loyalty program, which has a huge number of members and allows customers to collect points no matter where they buy the beauty products, and of course they sell everywhere. I had picked TikTok shop because I thought of e.l.f. Beauty, but I also associate e.l.f. so much with TikTok because they were one of the first brands to really take to the platform and capitalize on it.

Healthcare and pharma companies are embracing D2C business models to get their medications, treatments, and services to more consumers without industry middlemen restricting access. Concurrently, patients are becoming more price-conscious healthcare shoppers, propelling more D2C activity next year.

In November, creator shopping platform LTK integrated with TikTok, allowing users to shop looks from LTK creators on the app like they do on Instagram. The company also has direct relationships with retailers, like Target. Creator entrepreneurs are also disrupting the retail landscape.

Creators and influencers are most effective at driving sales of discretionary goods and services, like fashion, beauty, travel, and consumer tech, per our March 2024 US Social Commerce survey. The primary way US consumers would change their shopping behavior due to the tariffs would be by prioritizing essential goods, per January 2025 data from First Insight.

Record holiday sales helped retailers, but purchasing patterns across income groups diverged starkly. Middle- and lower-income consumers grew more selective, carefully weighing where and when to spend amid economic uncertainty. Meanwhile, higher-income shoppers continued to spend freely.

Value was the name of the game in 2024 as retailers scrambled to keep consumers shopping. But that wasn鈥檛 the only thing on retailers鈥� minds this year.

And then the third part is their international UK-based health and beauty retailer, Boots, which is huge in the country, the biggest one by far. So they've got those three pieces that they could play with/break up. Rajiv Leventhal:. I think they're going to hold on to the US pharmacy business.

By the end of 2024, Sephora will operate over 1,000 shop-in-shop locations at Kohl鈥檚 stores across the US. But if Sephora wants to launch a free-standing small-format store, a college campus would be a great place to start. 85% of Gen Z teens prefer to shop for beauty products in-store, according to Piper Sandler鈥檚 spring 2024 Taking Stock with Teens survey.

Our take: Macy鈥檚 struggles鈥攚ith both declining sales and activist investors鈥攔eflect the broader challenges in the department store sector, which is losing traction with shoppers who prefer either the convenience of ecommerce or the value offered by off-price and big-box retailers.

In 2024, retail mcommerce sales will increase 12.7% YoY compared with 8.7% for overall ecommerce. But retail mobile ad spending will increase by a slightly lower rate of 11.6%.

Dove was one of the first to lean into this sentiment this year鈥攊n April, the brand pledged to never use AI in place of real people in advertising and introduced its Real Beauty Prompt Playbook, which argued that AI often only reinforces societal biases by relying on data sets that are 鈥渋ntentionally curated or broadly scraped from the internet.鈥�.

Amazon strengthened its grip on ecommerce in 2024: The retailer warded off growing competition from Temu and Walmart by improving delivery speeds, offering deals, and enhancing Prime benefits.

Toiletries and cosmetics include diapers, skincare such as cleansers and moisturizers, contraceptives, cosmetics and makeup, deodorant, toothpaste, razors, and haircare. Alcoholic beverages include hard seltzers, liquor, beer, wine, champagne, and cocktails/malt beverages.