Medallia Sense360 Releases New Analysis of How the Pandemic Shaped the Future of the Retail Industry

Consumers continue to embrace digital platforms, even as pandemic restrictions begin to lift.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., August 11, 2021 – Medallia, Inc. (NYSE: MDLA), the global leader in customer and employee experience, today announced the release of – The Future of Retail Consumer Behavior – a free report examining the changes in retail consumer behaviour over the last year.

“Retail consumer behavior changed drastically over the course of the past year, but as consumers and businesses begin to define a new normal, we wanted to understand what behavior changes will be permanent and what trends may already be fading,” says Andrew Custage, Head of Analytics for Sense360 By Medallia.

To track and understand consumer behaviour, Sense360 By Medallia combined data from three sources: foot traffic data from smartphone geolocation of more than 2 million opted-in consumers, spend data from more than 6 million consumers, and psychographic survey data. Combining multiple datasets yields a more holistic view of the customer journey, and a more accurate way to answer strategic insights questions for retailers.

Drawing on this industry leading pool of data, the The Future of Retail Consumer Behavior report examines:

  1. Consumer spending trends and surveys from 15 months of daily research
  2. How consumer behavior has changed – and which habits are here to stay
  3. How different retail sectors have been affected, and specific strategies for retaining customer loyalty in the grocery, sporting goods, and beauty sectors.

Highlights include:

  • Overall: Despite recent concerns over the delta variant, overall fear levels toward COVID-19 have subsided compared to a year ago. However, surveys show that there will likely always be a group of people whose fears are here to stay. Consequently, their behaviors and shopper journey have shifted – in some cases, likely permanently. The shift to online shopping continues, despite the pandemic having slowed down.
  • Grocery: One of the biggest pandemic-induced habits is the channel shift to grocery delivery and curbside pickup. Although it’s now safe to shop in-store, consumers have embraced off-premise behavior and many of them won’t go back.
  • Sporting Goods: This retail category shows not all pandemic habits are here to stay. An uptick in demand for sporting goods during early lockdown periods is tapering off as consumers look to move beyond at-home exercise. The current market is seeing a split with Mass retailers plus Amazon competing on price, and specialty retailers competing on product selection and quality. Specialty retailers will need to find more ways to reach and retain the customer to compete with Amazon’s growth.
  • Beauty: The beauty retail space has become an even more competitive, zero-sum game. The pandemic tightened the purse strings of consumers, and although their spending on beauty is recovering compared to last year, they aren’t planning to increase purchases much more. They also plan to try different products and different brands while simultaneously shifting their spend to Mass and Department stores. Beauty specialty retailers and DTC brands are in an increasingly difficult battle for consumer loyalty.

“Perhaps the clearest insight from the report is that while consumer behavior was initially forced to change by the pandemic, certain habits continue to stick even as restrictions loosen – creating a sustained adoption of digital platforms,” continued Custage. “ In order to understand the volatile world we now live in, it’s critical for retailers to use holistic research to understand their customers and the competitive landscape.”

To download the full report, visit https://info.sense360.com/insights-report-the-future-of-retail-consumer-behavior. 

Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

About Medallia 

Medallia (NYSE: MDLA) is the pioneer and market leader in customer, employee, citizen and patient experience. The company’s award-winning SaaS platform, Medallia Experience Cloud, is becoming the experience system of record that makes all other applications customer and employee aware. The platform captures billions of experience signals across interactions including all voice, video, digital, IoT, social media and corporate messaging tools. Medallia uses proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to automatically reveal predictive insights that drive powerful business actions and outcomes. Medallia customers reduce churn, turn detractors into promoters and buyers, create in-the-moment cross-sell and up-sell opportunities and drive revenue-impacting business decisions, providing clear and potent returns on investment. For more information visit www.medallia.com.

© 2021 Medallia, Inc. All rights reserved. Medallia®, the Medallia logo, and the names and marks associated with Medallia’s products are trademarks of Medallia. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

PR Contact:

Austin DeArman
[email protected]
+1 (202) 341-9181

IR Contact:

Carolyn Bass
[email protected]

Author Information

As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.

Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.

Latest Insights:
Cloudflare Becomes a Certificate Authority to Tackle Post-Quantum Signatures
October 2, 2026
Article
Article

Cloudflare Becomes a Certificate Authority to Tackle Post-Quantum Signatures

Fernando Montenegro, VP at Futurum, analyzes Cloudflare's plan to become a public certificate authority issuing post-quantum Merkle Tree Certificates, a credible move on the harder, signature side of the web's migration....
Synopsys Investor Day 2026 Turns EDA Into a Royalty and AI Model Revenue Share Business
October 2, 2026
Article
Article

Synopsys Investor Day 2026 Turns EDA Into a Royalty and AI Model Revenue Share Business

Brendan Burke, Research Director at Futurum, shares insights on the Synopsys Investor Day 2026, where a $1 billion Amazon royalty deal and GPT-Synopsys with OpenAI reprice EDA around customer volumes and outcomes....
Zendesk's New CFO Is Built for the Billion-Dollar AI Bet
October 2, 2026
Article
Article

Zendesk's New CFO Is Built for the Billion-Dollar AI Bet

Zendesk appoints Rachita Sundar as CFO to drive financial discipline behind its AI-first strategy, leveraging her proven success scaling AI transitions to translate agentic CX ambitions into measurable growth....
IFS Bets on Saudi Arabia's Industrial AI Opportunity
October 2, 2026
Article
Article

IFS Bets on Saudi Arabia's Industrial AI Opportunity

Keith Kirkpatrick, Vice President, Research, at Futurum, IFS's partnership with Riyadh-based Echelon positions industrial AI to capture surging enterprise demand in Saudi Arabia's $1.1 trillion economy....
Latest Research:
Cyber Resilience Is Now the Mandate: A CXO Checklist
October 2, 2026

Cyber Resilience Is Now the Mandate: A CXO Checklist

In its latest thought leadership brief, Cyber Resilience Is Now the Mandate: A CXO Checklist, completed in partnership with Everpure, Futurum Research lays out ten questions every leadership team should...
When AI Is Everywhere, Data Becomes the Differentiator
September 30, 2026

When AI Is Everywhere, Data Becomes the Differentiator

In our latest Thought Leadership Brief, When AI Is Everywhere, Data Becomes the Differentiator, completed in partnership with Oracle, Futurum Research examines why industry-specific AI requires industry-specific data and how...
Where AI Delivers Real ROI: AI-First Integration and Orchestration
September 24, 2026

Where AI Delivers Real ROI: AI-First Integration and Orchestration

In our latest thought leadership report, Where AI Delivers Real ROI: How AI-First Integration and Orchestration Transform Workflows, completed in partnership with IBM, Futurum Research examines why AI delivers the...

Book a Demo

Welcome

The vision behind everything in Futurum’s Custom Research practice is this: research should show you what is happening, what comes next, and what to do about it. It should be personal to each audience, easy for people to grasp, and structured so LLMs can reason over it accurately. And it should be fast and turnkey; you want answers now, not another project to carry for quarters.

Whether you are defining business, channel, or go-to-market strategy; evaluating vendors or justifying ROI; or commissioning research to fill an emerging market need, we have your back, with a program that answers your questions with the objectivity and credibility to drive real decisions.

To do it, we bring unmatched data to bear: Futurum research, surveys, and market projections; validated market feeds; ETR’s 15 years of insight from 10,000 technology decision-makers; G2’s buyer and user data; and what our analysts hear every day. Add leading primary collection, from AI-moderated voice interviews to surveys and analyst-led interviews, all turnkey, and every project comes out credible, nuanced, and actionable.

And we don’t just drop the results in your lap. For internal work, we provide analyst-led sessions, interactive dashboards, and a range of formats. For market-facing work, Futurum delivers turnkey activation and amplification that actually gets seen, by people and by LLMs, through our media and share of voice. This is research that moves decisions and markets.

We will meet you wherever you are, from a fast-turn brief to a multi-year program, and shape the work to your goals, timeline, and budget. The right program for your moment.

If any of this is useful, I would love to talk.

Benjamin Brown, VP Custom Research, Futurum Research

Benjamin Brown

VP, Custom Research · The Futurum Group

Newsletter Sign-up Form

Get important insights straight to your inbox, receive first looks at eBooks, exclusive event invitations, custom content, and more. We promise not to spam you or sell your name to anyone. You can always unsubscribe at any time.

All fields are required






Thank you, we received your request, a member of our team will be in contact with you.