79% of consumers say poor retail personalization is not a rare occurrence
While 83 per cent of American shoppers say they want retailers to personalize the experiences they deliver, 57 per cent say they currently counter generic attempts at serving them, according to research published by Amperity.
Based in Seattle, where it provides a customer data cloud product, Amperity surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. consumers to produce its 2026 State of Personalization in Retail report,
When retailers get personalized offers or recommendations right, 74 per cent of consumers said they are more likely to purchase, the report said. There is a similar propensity to buy when offers are adjusted as shoppers browse online, according to 69 per cent.
Targeted messaging was particularly appealing to younger demographics. Amperity found not a single person within the Gen Z or Millennial category would be less likely to purchase based on personalized communication.
Overall, about six in 10 consumers, or 63 per cent, said their favorite retailers remember their preferences and purchase history across multiple channels. These include a website, mobile app and within a physical store location.
The research also looked at how personalization was delivered via artificial intelligence (AI) or a retail employee. While 39 per cent want to deal with humans on their own, 12 per cent want purely AI-assisted personalization.
Amperity stressed the need to think of personalization as a present tense activity.
“Many (shoppers) want that personalized experience right away — starting with their first purchase — and in realtime, not days later,” the report’s authors wrote. “Without a deep, unified history, personalization is superficial — fast, but lacking the context needed to be truly relevant and drive meaningful business outcomes.”
360 Magazine Insight
Personalization can sometimes seem like a nebulous concept, with little sense of how it should directly be applied within a customer experience (CX). Amperity’s report is helpful in identifying a touchpoint that is worth prioritizing.
E-mail was cited as the top channel where consumers want personalization, cited by more than 71 per cent of those surveyed. Websites came much farther down the list at 35 per cent, and text messages – which would seem ideal for real-time offers — trailed at just over 29 per cent.
At a common sense, level, however, e-mail makes a lot of sense. It’s a medium that encourages close attention, even immersion, compared with the distracting nature of texts or social media posts. E-mail gives enough real estate to make the personalized nature of an offer crystal-clear, while still allowing for a mixture of text, imagery and even links to video.
There’s also something about the way an e-mail is delivered to a private inbox that may feel more special than using other channels. Plus, personalizing via e-mail feels like a process that could be developed and fine-tuned consistently vs. trying to send offers via DM or even in store.
This seems less “real time” than the Amperity report stresses, but may reflect the reality of what consumers are looking for from personalization in order to become more familiar with it and trust when brands use it.
