AI-enabled is not AI-driven. What would our company look like if we redesigned it around AI rather than simply adding AI to it? That question leads to a fundamentally different conception of the enterprise —and for retailers and consumer brands, it may represent the most consequential change in operating model since the rise of ecommerce. Click here to view the Executive Briefing.
Retail media is now a scale game, not a land grab. US retail media is a ~$71B market growing ~18% a year, but nearly 90% of 2026 growth accrues to two players. For most retailers the right move is to partner, not build. Click here to view the Executive Briefing.
For decades luxury ran on a simple formula — craftsmanship, scarcity, prestige, and rising prices. After years of record expansion, growth in personal luxury goods has slowed sharply. The affluent still spend — but demand experiences, authenticity, personalization, and purpose in exchange for premium prices. Click here to view the Executive Briefing.
Brands are following consumer money from objects toward experiences. Hospitality, community and personalization now replace product display as the reason to visit — and finance expects the spend to be accountable. Click here to view the Executive Briefing.
The 50+ consumer is the largest under-contested opportunity in consumer markets. Boomers hold roughly half of U.S. household wealth and Americans 50+ drive about 56% of consumer spending — yet the 50+ market draws an estimated 10% of marketing budgets. The misread is not just budget; it is a set of assumptions the data contradicts. Click here to view the Executive Briefing.
AI agents are becoming a new layer between the consumer and checkout. Whoever runs that layer gains leverage over discovery, ranking and the customer relationship. The shift is early and uneven — but the rules are being set now, in courtrooms and in platform terms of service. Amazon is blocking some agents (e.g. Meta’s Muse). What are the larger industry implications for retailers, brands, and investors? Click here to view the Executive Briefing.
THE GREAT RETAIL REAL ESTATE BIFURCATION v2The mall isn't dying. Its economic model is. The mall's decline began decades before Amazon and COVID — in overbuilding and the collapse of the department-store anchor. Digital commerce then stripped away its advantage in assortment and convenience. What remains is not uniform decline but a sharply polarized market. Click here to view the Executive Briefing.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the emerging discipline of making a brand, product or company more likely to be **discovered, mentioned, recommended and cited by generative AI systems** such as ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. It is the analogue of search-engine optimization (SEO) for an environment in which the consumer no longer receives ten blue links and decides what to click. Instead, the AI system researches, synthesizes, compares and increasingly recommends products on the consumer's behalf. The distinction matters enormously for retail and consumer businesses. A shopper asking “What is the best moisturizer for sensitive skin under $50?” may receive a shortlist of five brands without ever visiting Google. The AI's answer has effectively become the first shelf, first salesperson and, increasingly, the first step toward transaction. Click here to view the Executive Briefing.
Marketing has entered a new era. A shift from descriptive analytics to predictive, prescriptive, and autonomous marketing intelligence. Click here to view the Executive Briefing.
For a decade, retailers and consumer brands treated AI as a productivity layer— better forecasts, smarter recommendations, automated service, faster analytics. That era is ending. A new class of agentic and autonomous systems is changing not only how work is executed, but how strategy itself is formulated, governed, and continuously adapted. In leading organizations, AI is becoming a structural component of the operating model — closer to a management system than a software application. Click here to view the Executive Briefing.