Where Brand Loyalty Actually Gets Built

Nearly 50 percent of consumer purchases are driven by habit, according to behavioral research conducted at Duke University. That finding underscores a simple reality: Repeat behavior is one of the strongest predictors of future decisions. The more often a consumer makes the same choice, the more likely it is to become automatic. And those choices are often made in the places consumers visit most frequently.

Millions of everyday shopping trips happen in independent and regional retailers such as convenience stores, neighborhood grocers, liquor stores, and specialty chains. These environments rarely show up in retail media headlines, but they play an outsize role in how consumers actually buy. Despite the headlines about the success of online retailers, eMarketer reports that over 80 percent of retail purchases still happen in physical stores. And many of those decisions are made in the moment.

Value Is Defined by Convenience, Not Just Price

A growing share of consumers across income brackets now prioritize value in those everyday purchases. But value is not just about price. It is shaped by convenience, product availability, and familiarity with the places people trust.

That matters because value-driven shopping tends to concentrate in proximity commerce. These are the environments where consumers shop frequently, often out of routine rather than deliberation. U.S. shoppers make roughly two grocery trips per week on average, and more than half of those trips are quick, fill-in visits.

Loyalty Is Reinforced Through Repetition, Not One-Time Conversion

For many categories, that is where brand preference is reinforced most consistently. High-frequency transactions create feedback loops. The more often a consumer encounters and purchases a product, the more familiar it becomes. Over time, that familiarity reduces friction, increases confidence and reinforces the likelihood of repeat purchase.

This is how loyalty is actually built. Not through a single moment of conversion, but through repeated exposure and consistent availability across everyday shopping trips. In these environments, brands are not competing for attention once. They are competing for position within a routine.

Up to 82 percent of purchase decisions are made in-store, where most retail purchases still happen. The moment of influence and the moment of purchase are often the same. This is where habits and routines are developed. 

The importance of building loyalty cannot be overstated. Research from Bain & Company has shown that increasing customer retention by just 5 percent can increase profits by 25 percent to 95 percent. And research from Cognizant found that roughly 18 percent of shoppers account for more than 40 percent of CPG sales. In other words, a relatively small group of repeat buyers drives a disproportionate share of growth.

Measurement Has Lagged Behavior

Historically, these environments have been difficult to measure at scale, but new technology is uncovering capabilities and insights previously unknown.

When independent and regional retailers become connected and measurable, this “retail majority” begins to function less like a collection of fragmented stores and more like a unified media environment. Those repeat interactions can be understood in aggregate, measured against outcomes, and optimized over time.

When Measurement Connects to Behavior, Loyalty Becomes Measurable

For brands, that creates a new level of clarity.

It becomes possible to see not just whether a campaign reached a consumer, but whether it influenced real purchasing behavior across repeated visits and multiple locations. Media is no longer a proxy for performance. It becomes directly tied to it.

This is where loyalty and measurement begin to converge. When you can connect media exposure to habitual purchasing behavior, you are no longer just driving conversion. You are shaping preference over time.

What Brands Should Do Now

Brands are beginning to recognize the retail majority as a strategic layer of the media ecosystem, not just a collection of local activations. That shift changes how performance is measured. Frameworks need to account for everyday retail environments, not only the largest platforms where data is easiest to access.

It also requires a different view of influence. In high-frequency purchase categories, outcomes are often driven by reinforcement—repeated exposure in familiar environments—rather than incremental reach alone.

Underlying all of this is the importance of signal quality. Beyond inventory, the real advantage in retail media comes from transaction data and the feedback loops that allow campaigns to learn and improve over time.

In that context, the opportunity is less about expanding reach and more about strengthening presence in the places where buying decisions actually happen.

Michael Blanche is the cofounder and co-CEO of Surfside, provider of an operating system for retailers. At Surfside, Blanche leads the development of the infrastructure and operating system that aggregates independent and regional retailers, unifies their commerce data, and enables retail media to be planned, activated, and measured against real outcomes across online and in-store environments. Prior to founding Surfside, Blanche was chief technology officer at SITO, where he was responsible for leading engineering, product, and innovation.