Inside Savant Manchester 2025: How Retailers Are Resetting Growth for Profitability and Trust

At Savant Manchester 2025, retailers and marketers echoed a single tension: how to grow when every lever has a cost. eCommerce leaders talked about profit erosion, broken attribution, and the quiet burnout of loyalty in an AI-first world. What emerged was a picture of a retail sector learning to think less about more, and more about enough.

The fragile balance between growth and profit

Around 54 percent of UK retail revenue last year came through discounting, and discounted items sold for roughly £14 more than full-price lines. It works, but not without a price. Heavy discounting has become a reflex, not a strategy, and several retailers admitted that their margins were quietly dissolving in the process.

The smarter play is precision. Some businesses have begun targeting offers only at low-intent visitors, testing different thresholds and finding that a 10 percent incentive often outperforms 15 percent once margin loss is factored in. Excluding high-intent customers from blanket promotions saved roughly eight percent of promo spend. The shift is subtle but significant. Profitability now depends on how well a retailer understands intent before discounting, not after.

The science of multichannel emotion

If the early morning sessions focused on numbers, the afternoon turned to people. The phrase that stuck with many in the room was simple: mobile wins convenience, stores win emotion. That distinction has become the center of modern retail strategy.

Data from the floor suggested that 54 percent of consumers expect to return to stores for sensory reassurance – the feel, the texture, the human nod before the sale. Physical retail has become less about transaction and more about confidence. One test of an online-to-store flow recorded an 80 percent conversion rate once customers could complete most of the journey online and only collect in person.

At the same time, data science is quietly shaping these touchpoints. App ecosystems are beginning to remember customer goals, predict their next actions, and connect wellness or lifestyle data with product recommendations. One retailer shared that nearly half of its customers are repeat buyers because of this hybrid model – digital memory combined with human reassurance.

Fixing the data that drives the business

One of the most discussed themes was the state of marketing data. Eight in ten retailers still rely on client-side, third-party tracking, leaving their analytics exposed to ad blockers and shortened cookie lifespans. Safari’s seven-day limit for first-party cookies means many returning buyers are logged as new ones. One retailer discovered that 30 percent of its supposed “new” customers were in fact returning visitors.

The move toward server-side tracking has become more than a technical fix. For many, it is the only way to reclaim truth in reporting. When first-party data is collected directly, accuracy rises and website performance improves. One migration boosted data reliability from 80 to 97 percent, with the added benefit of faster load times and tighter GDPR compliance. The change also allowed retailers to enrich their performance data with profit margins, giving them a far clearer picture of campaign effectiveness.

A newer idea gaining traction is the modeling of synthetic users – anonymized data patterns that stand in for the 20 to 30 percent of visitors who decline tracking consent. By building behavioral models from consenting users, marketing platforms can continue to optimize without losing the signal entirely. It is a controversial approach, but one that hints at the next stage of privacy-aware targeting.

Loyalty under AI’s shadow

As the event drew to a close, attention turned to loyalty. The consensus was that artificial intelligence can help brands understand behavior but cannot replicate emotional connection. Data can prompt, remind, and suggest, but the bond between brand and customer still depends on recognition and empathy.

Many loyalty programs are moving away from transactional incentives toward experiential ones – tailored education, early access, community recognition. Yet the challenge is measurement. When algorithms predict purchases, success is harder to quantify. Attendees agreed that loyalty will survive in an AI-first world only if it keeps its human core. Automation can support the relationship, but it cannot carry it.

A new realism for retail

This year’s Savant Manchester revealed a sector less dazzled by innovation and more focused on discipline. Retailers are cutting noise from their data, reducing friction from the journey, and finding value in the space between automation and emotion.

Every conversation circled back to trust – in data, in technology, in customers. Accuracy has replaced scale as the new competitive edge. The brands that win from here will be those that know exactly what they see when they look at a number.