Shelf Space Becomes Screen Time: Can Retail Still Command Emotional Bonds in a Digital-First World?

There was once a retail industry defined by physical footprint: the right store in the right location, an evocative window display, the aisle, the cart, the bag. Today, it is just as defined by the mid-feed ad, the tap, the click, and the data brokers and algorithms that can now predict what you will buy next. Consumers expect seamless omnichannel experiences that span online browsing, in-store stock-checking, and app-based ordering. The tension between what retail once was and the new reality it inhabits is real. As commerce migrates from physical aisles to digital screens, can retail brands still forge meaningful emotional bonds, or will convenience and scale suffocate intimacy?

Big-box giants such as Walmart, Target, Costco, and Home Depot were seemingly built to win wallets, not hearts. By focusing on pricing and location tactics and how those intersected with purchasing behaviors, they captured the mindshare of retail consumers. Yet during COVID-19, they achieved the impossible: making the soulless superstore feel indispensable. Forced into digital acceleration, they optimized logistics, strengthened supply chains, and turned apps into lifelines. By 2023, Walmart’s e-commerce sales had risen to over 13% of total revenue, up from 6% in 2018.¹ For a business long defined by fluorescent lighting and endless parking lots, that marks a digital revolution. 

Our 2025 Brand Intimacy Study reveals that the category is balanced across the six archetypes (markers that identify the nature of brand–consumer relationships), though the archetype of fulfillment—exceeding expectations with superior service and quality—dominates. This is expected since consumers turn to retail for reliability more than for inspiration. Whole Foods ranks the highest in the industry for three of the six Brand Intimacy archetypes: fulfillment (46), enhancement (56), and ritual (60). The brand demonstrates how it builds deep emotional connections through its focus on optimizing the shopping experience, delivering convenience, and enabling everyday reliability. 

Still, some surprises emerge. eBay, once the scrappy pioneer of online auctions, has surged to become the top performer in the category, outranking Amazon. This is unexpected given Amazon’s dominance, and eBay’s rise signals something more profound: consumers may now trust peer-to-peer markets and small-scale sellers in ways they no longer trust institutional retailers. In an age of product commodification, where almost everything sold online has multiple copycat variations of differing quality, this may show that authenticity, smaller-scale one-off purchases, buying within geographic proximity, and knowing the seller are keys to fostering greater intimacy in retail experiences. 

Food retailers defy expectations, too. Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s consistently overperform relative to their size, and it is about more than just groceries. It is also about the archetypes of ritual (becoming a part of everyday life) and identity (reflecting admired values and beliefs). Trader Joe’s has pioneered and refined a retail model that creates devotion for frozen dumplings, irresistible snacks, mini totes, and quirky packaging. Trader Joe’s also tops sharing (the first stage of Brand Intimacy) and ties with Target in bonding (the second stage), proving that consumer preference for its quirky products and routines has evolved from transactions into genuine emotional bonds. Whole Foods, once mocked as “Whole Paycheck,” continues to signify a commitment to wellness and quality, while its corporate ownership has brought significant advances to its in-store and digital shopping experiences.

Across the board, retail brands exceed the average Brand Intimacy score by 15%, underscoring how strong their emotional bonds are with people who depend on them for essentials. And let’s not overlook diversification. Walmart and Costco aren’t just selling cereal and socks. They’re offering insurance, travel, prescriptions, tires, cruises, and gold, creating retail ecosystems that feel less like shopping trips and more like life platforms that cater to a variety of needs. 

But let’s be careful when romanticizing the fluorescent-lit aisle. Beyond the archetype of fulfillment, differentiation between retailers starts to fade. Strip away logos and price tags, and brands blur together. Loyalty programs, once heralded as their secret weapon, are stagnating. According to McKinsey, most consumers do not derive enough value from their retail loyalty memberships. That’s not loyalty; that’s fatigue.  

Innovation is urgently needed in how retailers personalize and incentivize. Data-driven personalization has become a key differentiator. Brands such as Walmart and Target are leveraging AI and predictive analytics to tailor promotions, product recommendations, and app experiences to individual shoppers. By anticipating needs and delivering relevant offers, these retailers turn routine transactions into personalized interactions. That, in turn, creates efficiency, relevance, and deep emotional connections that extend beyond the store aisle. Similarly, store brands are also seeing continued success, outpacing competitors by leveraging economies of scale, appealing to consumers’ love of value and consistency, and pushing them toward greater loyalty and emotional reliance. 

And then there are the rising costs of doing business in a protectionist era. Tariffs loom as existential threats. We saw this when Amazon began openly displaying added tariff costs on certain imports. Consumers balked, and the president weighed in with outrage. If Amazon does not want to take the heat, other retailers will surely see significant changes as they are forced to pass costs on to families already stretched thin. 

Even head-to-head rivalries like Walmart vs. Target feel like shadowboxing. The differences are subtle. They score equally in the fulfillment and ritual archetypes, and their performance in other archetypes is tightly clustered. Target demonstrates slightly better performance in the second and third stages of Brand Intimacy, but its overall lower resonance leads it to trail behind Walmart. In a battle where nobody dares to be different, intimacy can suffocate.

The path forward may not be more shelves or slicker apps, but the ritual archetype. Retailers who tap into this are working to embed their brands into consumers’ routines and have a chance to rise above transactional sameness. Trader Joe’s has ritual in spades. Costco’s free samples and Sunday runs? Ritualized. The challenge for the rest of retail is not to mimic, but to craft moments that matter in consumers’ daily rhythms, create exceptional stories and experiences around those retail moments, and leverage the emotional bonds that keep people coming back. 

The financial reality, however, tells a harsher story. Compare the stock performance of Amazon with Walmart, Target, and Costco. Amazon’s curve is a skyscraper; the rest are foothills. This disparity isn’t just about margins—it’s also about belief. Investors believe in Amazon’s ability to dominate the digital-first world. They’re skeptical that brick-and-mortar giants, no matter how well they diversify, can escape gravity. That investor skepticism is itself a form of intimacy—or rather, what occurs in its absence: indifference. 

Which brings us to the core question: Are legacy retailers doing enough to draw people back to stores? Digital convenience is irresistible, but humans crave more than efficiency. They crave community, sensory experience, and rituals. Retailers who reimagine their stores not as warehouses of goods but as theaters of connection—where shopping becomes meaningful—will find themselves forging deeper bonds. 

For example, Michaels’s surprising high ranking over Sephora highlights the power of hobbyist passion and ritual, while Sephora’s lower-than-expected placement shows that even culturally dominant brands can underperform in building the emotional bonds that let them command consumer loyalty, set higher prices, and reach higher valuations. 

As shelf space gives way to screen time, where discovery, differentiation, and the creation of strong consumer bonds all face new challenges, brands need to pursue that emotional reinvention to build resilient relationships with their audiences. 

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¹ Digital Commerce 360. (2023, February 21). Walmart e-commerce sales grow 17% in Q4. Retrieved from https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2023/02/21/walmart-ecommerce-sales-grow-17-in-q4/

² McKinsey & Company. (2022, October 4). Members only: Delivering greater value through loyalty and pricing. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/members-only-delivering-greater-value-through-loyalty-and-pricing