This week on the podcast, Brent is joined by fellow Walton College colleagues, Andy Murray, Molly Rapert, and Rod Thomas, to discuss their newly released white paper on retail media networks. The conversation dives into their research on retail media networks over the past few years, especially highlighting what exactly constitutes a retail media network, and emphasizing its omni-channel presence, utilization of first-party data, and closed-loop reporting. They continue on in the episode with a conversation around the transformative power of these networks in providing targeted marketing efforts and detailed insights into consumer behavior. They also stress the growing understanding and significance of retail media networks in the business landscape. Tune in to this episode for an enlightening exploration of this intersection between retail and media, and the unprecedented opportunities it presents for advertisers and marketers alike.

Podcast brought to you by the Sam M. Walton

College of Business at the University of Arkansas. I'm your

host, Brent Williams. Together, we'll explore the dynamic

landscape of business, and uncover the strategies, insights

and stories that drive business today. Today, I have with me

three of my Walton College colleagues. I have Dr. Rod

Thomas, who is Associate Professor of Supply Chain

Management. I have Dr. Molly Rapert, who is Associate

Professor of Marketing. And I have Mr. Andy Murray, who is the

Executive Director and Founder of the Customer Centric

Leadership Initiative at the Walton College amongst some

other things, but well, welcome to the Be Epic Podcast.

Thank you, Brent, we're happy to be here.

We're excited.

Well, today, we're highlighting a piece of

what I would call industry focused research around retail

media networks that, that the four of us have been working on

for over a year now. We've published a white paper last

September that we called Realizing the Promise of Retail

Media Networks. We have another one recently published. And, and

then we've got some on some academic work that's underway.

So I want to get to kind of that whole process of industry

focused research, but maybe let's just start with the

research itself. For many listening might not know what we

mean by a retail media network. So we probably should start

there. Andy, I'm gonna start with you. Tell the audience here

while I introduced you as the Executive Director of the

Customer Centric Leadership Initiative, you've had quite an

industry career. And, you know, have sort of a lot of your

career bridged this gap, a little bit between practice in

in academics. But so maybe I'll start with you. Tell me what a

retail media network actually is?

Well, if I can only define it with such, you know,

clarity that everybody could understand. It'd be amazing. But

you know, that's an interesting question. I was at the

beginnings of the shopper marketing world and one of the

first questions was, what is it? And it took forever to define

it, which I think is one of the challenges we have with retail

media networks, I think you when you look at that question, you

almost have to define it from the set of common core elements,

and then let it build out from there. Because the edges are a

bit murky in terms of where's that line and how you define it.

When we did the research, we probably got 30 different

responses to you know, what is a retail media network. But I do

think there's some common elements that we find that's

really important, that guided this research. We were looking

primarily at omni channel, it was looking at these advertise

as an advertising platform that had first party data, closed

loop reporting, where it really at the two core elements in its

ability to measure and be able to get that kind of clarity of

what's really happening in the in the transactional space of

advertising.

We're really talking about a advertising

platform, if you will, that the retailer is, you know, providing

for itself and for its partners. And I think that's a fair

statement.

Yeah. When Andy said first party data, what do we

mean by that? First party data refers to our shopping history,

right? Traditional media with a lot of advertisement, we look

globally, did we get a sales lift or not? With retail media,

you have the ability to be very focused. They can track not only

what you saw and were exposed to but what you actually bought.

And that what you actually bought, that's the closed loop

piece that he was talking about. So it is a micro targeted, or

gives you the ability to be very micro targeted with your

marketing efforts. You know, exactly if Molly was exposed to

an ad last night, whether or not she bought. If Andy was exposed

to an ad, whether or not he bought. And that level of

feedback gives you the ability to target consumers more

effectively. And it also lets you kind of constantly

experiment with the ad you're giving everybody. So to me, it's

the ultimate marketing tool, but I'm not the marketing expert,

Molly jump in.

Well I was gonna jump to Molly there. You know,

Molly, you are the marketing expert, you and Andy. And you've

not only that you've really engaged industry throughout your

whole career in your classroom, which I think is something that

you've done so so well. But as you've gone through this process

of the research on retail media networks, I just wonder, what

are a couple of things that stood out to you?

I'll say with respect to the definition, what

was really interesting to me from the viewpoint of having

talked to industry experts a year ago and then now this past

year was how the specificity changed. I felt like last year

in our conversations, people just refer to retail media

networks, but no one was defining it in the same way as

Andy said 30 disparate definitions, most of which had

descriptors like the wild wild west attached to it. And now I

feel like there has been some convergence of what it is, and

they've moved past that into, okay, exactly, what do we expect

from it? And it's happened with a great deal of velocity.

Yeah. Well, you know, maybe I should ask this,

why is this such a big deal?

Well, it's really a fundamental shift in the way,

advertisers can go to market and connect with customers. And it's

new, I mean, Amazon, when they published in 2019, a $32 billion

take in ad spend, which hadn't really been pulled out on the

P&L and reported that way, a lot of jaws dropped collectively in

CMO land around the world of retailers saying that's a big

one, something's happening. And so if you look at what makes it

a big deal, part of it is the money that's been moving into

the space of the velocity it's been moving, could be well over

100 billion globally, in 2026. So that's a lot of money moving

into this space. And when you get that kind of money moving,

something's happened, right? I mean, and to pay attention of

what is that thing that's happening is really the question

we've been asked to kind of look at or been tasked to look at,

and then excited to try to explore of just what is

happening that's allowing this to, to emerge so quickly.

And I'll add to that, that, if we look at the

broader context of what's happened over the course of our

collective careers, it's considered the third wave. And I

think Andrew Lispsman with insider intelligence really put

it well, when he said that first wave took 14 years to get from 1

billion to $30 billion when we're looking at search, and we

go to the second wave of social, that took 11 years to go from 1

billion to 30 billion. They've made this move in five years to

get to that. So the traction, the velocity, the way it's

entrenched, along with everything else, Andy said, is

really what's keeping it on our horizon.

The other reason I'll say it's a big deal, it

gives you that rare triple win for consumers, if retail media

is operating properly, I'm not getting ads for women's coats,

right? I'm not getting ads for things that are not appropriate

for my age or my tastes, it is a customized solution for me, it

doesn't waste my time. For suppliers, for the brands, it

gives them an opportunity to market their goods and products

and services in a way that is so targeted and so bogus, it should

increase their sales volume. For the retailers, it's an

incremental revenue stream. And the key is it's not always a big

dollars like Andy said, it is higher margin, much higher, the

margins on retail media are much higher than product sales. And

that's why you're seeing retailers so aggressively

pursuing this right at spotting a lot of the omni channel, omni

channel's expensive from a supply chain perspective, home

delivery is really expensive from a supply chain perspective,

retail media offsets the lower margins with that supplemental

margin.

And I think the other thing that's important why

we wanted to study this is that this is not getting born like a

TikTok or a Meta, where, you know, it's a media organization

dealing with a new channel that's emerging, even those are

huge channels. This is this is being born inside of an existing

commercial relationship, that just up ends everything in terms

of now the retailer is also a seller, you know, and the client

and who's the client who's the buyer roles have shifted, and

you put that kind of organizational change into a

pretty established ecosystem with the way things work, it can

cause quite a bit of disruption inside the organizational

frameworks.

We organize our research around the promise and,

you know, gaps to the promise and ways to move forward. And I

want to get there in just a moment. But but maybe, maybe

we'll back out for just a second and just talk about this

research process and maybe why we did this right, you know, so

this is absolutely an emerging phenomenon. And we decided as a

group that this needed an academic look, but it also

needed it pretty quickly. Right? You know, we didn't feel like we

had a lot of time to get the thought out into market and you

think about the Walton College, when I think about our vision,

you know, I really just break it down into two core components.

One is transforming lives, we tend to think about that, of

course, as our students every day, when they're on our campus

and, and throughout the other aspects of their lives with the

but, thought leadership is also a core component of who we are.

And this was a real opportunity it seemed to provide thought

leadership in an area that was emerging. And we did that

through qualitative research methods. And Rod you are, you

know, the expert on our team, at least in these methods. So talk

a little bit about how we went about this research.

We went into our laboratory, a chemist goes into

a lab and starts mixing chemicals. Our lab is industry

professionals, and their corporate settings and what

they're doing. And it's really, it's, it's awesome to be

involved with a brand new industry, cutting edge industry.

And we're on the forefront of that, where we got to talk to

dozens of industry leading experts, and get their insights

on this. So qualitative research in general, is we go talk to

people not structured, right, we will have an interview guide and

some standard questions, but we want to take it wherever it

wants to go. Where, whatever they need to talk about. And

then we come back, we go through, we call it coding. But

essentially, we look for patterns. We look for common

themes and what they're telling us. And we try to identify

those, and then try to look at how those things link together.

And overall, what we're trying to do is describe it, a new

phenomenon would be the academic term for it. But for industry,

let's get our arms around what the heck are we talking about

retail media, right? Just defining that is difficult,

describing what's involved with that, and that we went to the

next stage of okay, how are we gonna get better. And we're

pinging all kinds of people from different backgrounds. It wasn't

just suppliers. It wasn't just retailers, it wasn't just third

party providers. It was all those things in those different

perspectives, from big companies, small companies,

whatnot. And when you talk to enough people, you start to get

redundancy. And that's kind of where we said, okay, we got

enough to publish. Let's get those insights out there for

everybody to learn from. But a big part of what we're doing

upfront, is describing it, defining it and differentiating

it. How can how can these retail media networks be most

successful? How can they differentiate themselves from

the competition, because although there's over 600 of

these right now, they're not all going to survive, right? We're

hearing more and more from our suppliers, there's gonna be

we're gonna count on our hands, how many of these are really

gonna thrive five years from now.

I think from an academic side of this, that was

a new process for me, Brent. And I probably struggle the most

coming from industry, because I'm like, well, I got all these

specific questions I'd love to ask and Rod and Molly,

especially last year, the first time through, we're like, no,

that's not how we do it. We can't go that route. Yeah, but I

really want to know about this, or that. And it's like, you

can't do that, you know, that's not the academic approach and

letting this breathe and letting the insights unfold from, from

some very macro questions that had no leading biases in them.

It was just completely, you know, macro, I thought were that

we're not going to get much out of this. Let's get to the

specifics. And I was totally wrong, I mean, it really was

fresh to see that. And I see a lot of industry research

published. But the value of this coming from an academic model

approach really makes it a bit different. And it was something

that I had to learn how to adapt to. And now I totally appreciate

Yeah, I mean, it was so much fun to have you. And

the value.

I might call you a quasi academic now on the team, and so

Molly, from your standpoint, you know, you've worked on many

academic research teams you've worked with, with, with industry

professionals, your whole career, but we got a chance to

kind of blend that on this team.

Right. And I think that that is, to be honest, the

beauty of Walton, it's what attracted me here in the first

place. And I think that this is a great example of it, but it's

certainly not the only example. I think it pervades everything

we do from having the Customer Centric Leadership Initiative,

to business integrity centers to, I have an advisory board for

my class that picks the articles that my students read. I run the

retail advisory board, that is industry executives from around

the world. I think this is who Walton is, it's this is a

natural extension of that. And so then to be put in a setting,

that is part of our daily responsibility of doing

research, but carrying that same philosophy into that setting.

It's my favorite research hands down, where we're looking at

exactly what is happening in industry, putting our frameworks

and our understanding with that. And I don't think it gets any

better than that in academia. But I also don't think it gets

better than how Walton is positioned to bring these

entities together in the proximity that we can.

You know, Molly, I completely agree, I tend to

say that this industry engagement that the Walton

College has the ability to do and is fortunate enough to have

is our superpower of maybe for a lack of better way of saying it.

And, you know, in this community, and in this state, I

feel like it's, it's not only that industry is here, it's that

they want to engage. And so they want to engage with students,

our students want to engage with them, our faculty want to engage

with them, industry wants to engage in thought leadership.

It's just a really unique thing about the Walton College of

Business, Northwest Arkansas and Arkansas more broadly.

I think it's more unique than maybe the audience

would even realize, because it's so common sense. I mean, why

wouldn't you have academics working with people in industry,

but the reality is, it doesn't happen, and certainly doesn't

happen to the extent that it happens at this table and in our

I think it was I told you so, Andy.

I'd like to also add, I think the diversity of

college.

I think so too but then you said, you know, retail

the research team was really important and didn't probably

media is a supply chain problem. And I had never thought of it

manifest itself until this round we had where, you know, what's

the supply chain logistics guy going to be added to a very

complicated retail media, technical thing. But then as we

got into it, and started asking questions, one of the executives

we interviewed said, they only hire into retail media network

roles, supply chain logistics grads. And that's the point, I

thought Rod was gonna, like, just come out of his chair in excitement,

that way before. But you know, Rod saw it right away. And I

think you've been saying it's a supply chain problem for the

last couple of years. But I don't think that would have come

up without that academic diversity that tried to bring

this team together to explore this problem.

We got to tell the audience a little story here

about trust, I think. This is under the cover, look at their

research team. Andy or Rod. Let me start with Andy.

Yeah.

What did you learn about trust?

Well, this is such an interesting story. I can't

believe you're asking me this. But the first round through as

we're doing the coding, we started talking through themes.

And and I can't remember if it was Molly or Stephanie, or I

don't think it was Rod, it might of been Rod, said, you know,

what we're dealing with here is a theme around trust. And I like

trust, I don't hear that word in the professional circles I run

in and these other things that sounds soft, that sounds

ambiguous. And, you know, we can't put that in the research.

And I couldn't have been more wrong as I started, explore

that. And we had some pretty heated conversations around

trust. And it does it really manifest as a construct. And

over time, as we kept working through it, and then I got my

hands on Stephen Covey's book, The Speed of Trust, and it broke

down all the things that we were talking about in just different

language. And so it was quite an epiphany, and what did we have

some vigorous conversation on that. And I'll be in first say I

was wrong.

Well, I will say, that's probably the only

And my memory is, I think, I honestly don't

place that you were potentially wrong during this. But it was

remember if it was Stephanie or myself that just flippantly said

really just such a fun part of this story that we picked at

each other at throughout it, but no, but it was this, you know,

this blend of someone really rooted in practice with with,

with researchers that are really rooted in academics that like

being able to work through those issues really made this word

much more meaningful.

it, but it was Rod that went and pulled the trust literature, I

remember this and started bringing out the dimensionality

of it and showing up with an academic article on it or

saying, I really think you need to think about this. And then

next thing I know, I'm seeing Andy on LinkedIn talking about a

trust tax. This is the beauty of it.

I'm filing copyright infringement. The power of

qualitative research is it is interpretive. And we do need to

have those conversations we need to make sure those themes that

we're talking about are really there and need to go back to

some of them later on. We were asking some of our people we

were interviewing are the trust issues, absolutely it came up,

right? We didn't beg the question. You didn't start out

with, we're going to make this about trust. So going back to

when you were talking about academic research, we're

supposed to be unbiased, we're supposed to be neutral. We are

scientists, we don't go into it with an agenda, like a business

person, or even a journalist would. And that's powerful. And

the trust vetting came up, nobody explicitly set it up

front. But that's okay. Right, they were to show that they're

talking all around it. There was a lot of mistrust up front,

because it was unknown. People didn't know what retail media

was. A lot of these suppliers were just like, where's this

going to end? How much is it going to cost me? How is this

going to impact my business? They were fearful. And then

there was this element of is my investment gonna pay off and all

that so there was the credibility dimension of trust,

there's also this benevolence, dimension of trust of, are they

just using this as another way to tax me or generate money. So

they were talking all around it. And we finally got them on

board. And people started explicitly saying, as well, and

then we could dive into it very directly. But it was fun. It

took me back to my industry roots as well. And Andy, and I

look at each other hard time. So it was a great context to do

that.

And I think I got stuck on the benevolence side of

trust, and not really understanding lack of

capability, as everything was new is a trust issue, because

you don't you can't trust it, this decision is going to work.

Right. And I'd never really looked at it that way. So thank

you, Rob, for disabusing me.

Rod, let me ask you this question. Oftentimes,

research gets said it's either industry focused, kind of white

paper research, or it's academic. It's truly possible

for research to to be disseminated both ways and so

how do you do it?

It's not easy. It's difficult to do. But I think

we've done it here. Because it is such a new industry. Because

it's such a new phenomenon. We can go to the academic

literature and go, hey, industry's doing this, we need

to get out in front of this, let's define it, describe it,

talk about the theoretical implications where we understand

what's going on, we can predict what's going on. And on the

industry people love it to be because we're giving those

participants in our interviews a voice, we're able to say things

in a neutral manner, that they probably couldn't say to their

retail partners. Or we can say in a neutral way where everybody

knows it's coming from an unbiased place. If I'm a

supplier, if I make a comment to my buyer, there's usually an

agenda behind that, right. And vice versa, there's usually

something behind that we're unbiased, we're neutral, we are

all about providing trustworthy information we'll bring trust

back in. And so I think you can do both, it is difficult. But

we've shown we have white papers out there now, you and I did a

supply chain variant in more of a practitioner oriented journal.

And now we're working with one of the leading academic journals

on describing, defining, and differentiating this. So to me,

this is the holy grail. But it's difficult.

Yeah. Well, I'll come back to now the work

itself. As I said, we we sort of started with the promise and as

we've gone through a couple of iterations, so and I should

remind, you know, those listening, you know, we did a

round of interviews over a year ago. More recently, we've done a

second round of interviews, and really looking at what to had

changed, you know, but but I'm gonna ask you all to help me

blend those things together, you know. So, Molly, I'm gonna start

with you. Just we've talked a little bit, we almost kind of

got into the promise of retail media networks, but not quite.

So as you've listened over the last, let's call it 18 months

working on this, what as you think about? What is the

promise? And how is it evolved?

So I loved working on this part, I think we

actually each ended up getting to work on our favorite part.

But this was it for me. To look at the possibilities that exist

as companies are investing in this more and more, and it's

becoming a stronger part of the ecosystem. So we really looked

at it from a triadic point of view, what's the promise for the

consumers, for the brands and for the retailers, so I'm going

to hang it in that framework to have some consistency with our

first white paper. So I think there's an colloquial phrase

that comes from Thailand it says same same but different. And

that is just what kept resonating with me after every

interview, we had this second round, there were things that I

would write down and say well that was the same, that was the

same, but boy, that's changed that's different over the last

year. So I'll give you an example coming out of consumers,

a consumer remained at the forefront, the consumer, the

promise for the consumer was that they would receive this

personalized, relevant, timely message that helped them as they

were in their journey that remained the same. But what was

completely different was the specificity of the promise with

round two. And you know, it, we did not do quantitative

research. So we haven't really explored what caused that

specificity to emerge, I would guess it's that companies are

investing so much money, that that means in turn, they're

expecting more out of the promise but whatever the cause

that specificity did emerge there so that it no longer

became about Rodney, getting a personalized, relevant message.

But the promise that was articulated to us in 2023, was

they expected Rod to get an email prompting him based on

what is relevant to him first thing in the morning, and that

email, and that messaging, whether it's social media or

other platforms would constantly adjust throughout the day,

iterate based on data that's close loop and going back to

adjust what he's receiving. And that it's not only taking place,

this was a big difference not only taking place in the digital

space, but tying into the physical store. A great quote

from a an individual he said I want our amends to influence

physical merchandising as wel so that my shopper is reached no

matter where they are, what they're doing in store online,

in between, and actually referred to it as a tightly

integrated, curated set, a seamless fabric of Rod's life,

that was a different narrative than what we heard last year,

which was personalized, relevant, timely. So the same,

but different.

Much more nuanced.

Much more nuanced.

Much more informed, much more sophisticated. The

suppliers went from a year and a half ago of the fear of the

unknown to, okay, we're getting our arms around this now, we're

going to drive this, this is what we want, this is what we

need, this is what we expect. And if you're going to be a

media network, we're gonna treat you like a media network. And we

expect things that we would get from traditional media, right?

ROI, an understanding of what our investment represents, what

services are you going to provide? One of the most unique

things that came out of our research is the buyer supplier

relationship inverts here. Typically, the retailer is

buying something from a supplier. With retail media,

it's just the opposite. The suppliers are buying media

services from the retailer. And those relational dynamics

flipping like that the power dependence relationship

fundamentally changes. And that presents some challenges, right?

You go from one meeting where you're kind of in the driver's

seat and saying, I want this to go down the hallway, somebody

said, and now it's my turn. Right.

You know, Andy, I felt like you have your head

really around how we see this, you know, you said same, same

but different, right? I'm gonna kind of go to the different

because because there are some points where I think we also we

heard, you know, a year ago, 18 months ago, people were really

just kind of getting their head around this, what is this

phenomenon? You know, how are we going to approach this? We feel

like in some areas, the gaps have closed over the last year

or so. In some areas they haven't. What are some places

where you really see some substantial change?

Yeah, Brent I think there's three things that are

different from last year that are a bit of closing the gap

that we heard and the first is around conversations. The second

is around clarity. And the third is around competence. And if you

look at the point of conversation we heard quite a

bit of we're having different conversations today than we had

a year ago between the suppliers and the retailers. And I think

that's important conversations around the importance of

incrementality or measurement and those conversations are more

transparent, which those conversations as wasn't

necessarily happening back a year ago. We weren't hearing

about those conversations. On clarity we saw a lot more

strategic clarity emerge over the last year. And what I mean

by that is the clarity around everyone that we talked to had

some form of an assessment process to be able to assess

capabilities. They all had a segmentation that allow them to

understand how they're going to interact with the different

retail media networks and that clarity was really important.

And they also had a better understanding of which brand

objectives are going to work better with retail media

networks, and then other brand objectives. And that's a lot of

strategic clarity. And there was probably a bit more clarity

around their macro game plan, I think a year ago was we don't

know what we don't know. Now, it felt like there was a lot more

clarity about what their roadmap needs to look like in terms of

the challenges to overcome or whatever the next conversation

really needs to be. On clarity, there was also an operational

clarity, more understanding around what tactics work better

than other tactics, what work processes need to get

reinvented. And a lot of the companies have been really

working on that. And then the last one is on confidence, I

think we saw a lot of confidence in the language and in the, in

the approach that we didn't see before, in the competence coming

usually from upskilling, that every organization has done a

quite a bit of upskilling over the last year. And that has

resulted in a competence in terms of how they approach the

the retailer supplier relationship, or how they

approach the changes they need at the organization. So

confidence was really markedly different. But it wasn't

systemic, it had a lot to do with who was who took what

individual role, and took it upon themselves to provide that

leadership. And a big company might have very different

outcomes. If the, if the key actors working together weren't

really on the same page and didn't didn't really align, then

then the outcomes when the individuals themselves just

leaned in and you can you could feel the leadership coming from

them, their outcomes could be completely different. So it

wasn't systemic, it was very individual. Is that what you

guys thought?

And I would add in, it, it was very difficult to

separate our areas, because the promise was the same but had

changed. And then trying to identify whether that change was

truly in the promise or in the reality and that which is what

Andy just discussed. But I think they really went hand in hand

that as these changes were made in the reality, as people became

more aware, especially of bifurcation between early

entrance and later entrance, I think the narrative of the

promise changed, as well. And we are hearing almost two tracks

laid down the track that we heard last year, very general

conceptual in nature, and then the track this year, which was

especially for the early entrance into it much more

specific, much more strategic. So the promise became almost an

elevated set of expectations that they needed to happen in

order to be satisfied. And like, one of the quotes and I'm sorry,

I know, I love leaning into the words of others, but one person

said, The only value proposition that retail media networks have

is measurement. So within a week, I should be able to run a

number of tests and be so far ahead of where I would have been

a month or a few months ago. And that is the implied promise. And

they're saying that were last year, they would say the promise

is measurement closely purporting.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. You know,

this is what this level of specificity really is what makes

this phenomenon really, really exciting. You know, Rod,

something that don't we should have talked about a little bit

earlier is a sample, you know, how do you put a sample

together? Because, you know, we talk to a pretty wide variety of

people intentionally that had lots of experience. And so, you

know, there's many different brands represented and different

retailers, different regions of the world. And so this was

pretty a pretty broad look, that we're taking right?

Yep. Yeah. It's not Sam's quantitative sampling,

where your sample sizes thousands or millions of people.

But even with qualitative research, you want to get a

broad representation. We want different levels of an

organization, we want different members of the retail ecosystem.

And it's important to have that because we didn't want this to

be just about one retailer. We're just about one CPG

company. We want it to be generalizable enough that it'll,

it'll impact or those insights could potentially impact

everybody. Right? And qualitative research is not

going to be as generalizable as when you're crunching big

datasets with econometric models. But I think our sample

because we did have different regions of the world and

different players really did give some insight that could

help a wide range of people. So qualitative sampling, you start

out with, the first criteria is it has to be somebody willing

and able to talk about what you're interested in talking

about. So we couldn't have people that weren't playing in

this area. So they had to be experts, or at least have work

experiences in there. And from there, you kind of try to

provisionally test what some of the themes are. So we might

start out with a handful of people from contacts that Andy

knew, let's be honest, that's what it was, it was contacts

Andy knew. From there, though, we started to see things and we

said, huh, I wonder if this is just a US base, then what's with

all these people in Europe or Asia? Hmm, I wonder if this is

just a supplier thing, let's go talk to some providers or some

retailers. And we were truly trying to push the boundaries of

what we were seeing. So with qualitative research, some of

the sampling you do is a provisional test of what you're

starting to find and themes from the data.

Well, and, kind of going now I guess back to the

final stage of the paper itself, the way forward? What are some

key thoughts? Not only did we describe, which we did a lot, we

did a big focus on describing. But there's also some insights

about the way forward.

was a big area. Right? And to Molly's point in

the past, we just said we need better measures. Now it's very

clear. No, no, no, we need log level data. We need to know what

time Mary Sue logged on, how long they looked at the ad, what

ad they saw, did they purchase online that evening? Or did they

come back into the store the next day? It's a much more micro

targeted measure, under measurement as a part of that,

too, was make it verifiable, right, because back to the trust

issue, right? Don't just tell us with summary recording retail

media is great. No, no, no, let's, let's see what's going in

behind this reporting. It was the raw data was what we were

hearing from a lot of the bigger suppliers, alignment continues

to be a big issue, both both sides of the relationship. So

for a retailer, it was hey, if we're going to, if we're going

to invest in retail media, let's make sure our merchants, our

store ops, and our retail media is all on board. So we can get

synergies of the phenomenon saw on retail media, and then

reinforce that and still work. Reinforce that with something

the merchants are doing. For the suppliers. You know, there's

this big distinction between upper funnel and lower funnel

levels. Retail media is agnostic to that. They don't care whether

you're driving sales of existing customers or acquiring new

customers, retail media helps. So those people need to blend

those roles and be a little more aligned. The integration piece

came up in terms of information and systems, retail media data,

one of our big recommendations should be available to

everybody, right? Internally and externally, there are a lot of

key stakeholders that can benefit from having access to

that information. So one of our recommendations is give them

access to it. Even internally, it shouldn't be just a retail

media manager type of information piece, the merchants

needed it, store ops needed it, supply chain folks need it. So

let's make that more widely accessible. On the last piece

Andy touched on is the human capital. There's a different

skill set here. It is a new industry. It is, it does combine

cross functional areas. So there's a need for training on

just kind of what retail media is and what the capabilities can

be. As well as very specific pieces of art, very specific

types of capabilities. Now, there's probably a need for more

data scientists, or the marketing that there's probably

a need for people that understand the whole spectrum of

the funnel of marketing. So there's clearly a human capital

investment in certain types of skill sets and cross training

that's there. So those are really our four key points

moving forward, recommendations to make retail media networks

better.

Well, this human capital discussion gives me an

opportunity to pivot us back to the college and in the

classroom. So we talked about our vision of being a thought

leader. And then we also said, you know, a huge part of our

vision as a college is transforming lives. And so Molly

and Andy actually here, because you you actually partner. Here's

another beautiful part of this work. This makes it way back

into the classroom. How does it do that?

It absolutely does and in a variety of ways. First

and foremost for me to have somebody like Andy who's willing

to invest his time, come into my classroom. Other people who were

involved in my class who will be willing to speak on this

subject. So the students are hearing about it before, they're

I mean, there's definitely not a textbook written, can't even

hardly find academic articles written on it yet. And so we

have to hear from individuals who are boots on the ground

doing this. I think also, this has given us ways to learn about

what is being discussed at conferences, I don't think you

can go to a conference right now in our field, where they're not

talking about measurement, talking about retail media

networks. Andy's great about bringing so much of that

information back to us and posting on LinkedIn. But we also

have collaborations with the IAB. And I'd like to think that

a lot of that push of the IAB comes out of our recommendations

from last year where we said, these individuals are clamoring

for measurement. So when all of those relationships become

almost institutionalized people that we can now call and talk

to, we can bring that back into the classroom, and, and give our

students a leg up on something that is not being discussed at

other institutions, where we have marketing majors, but we're

talking about it, I know I'm talking about it in my class,

maybe even more than they want me to, but I talked about it all

the time. And they're going to come out very literate in this

area, and very well aware of another employment career path.

Yeah, and I think what we're seeing with retail

media networks, is that it's a leg of the stool, to a bigger

stool called Connected Commerce, really. And so if you look at

what's happening with social commerce, advertising,

marketing, there's going to be a time where we get to there's no

dead ends, where everything you see could actually turn into a

transaction or a purchase opportunity. And I think that

plays out for students in one of the things Molly does in the

marketing class, which I think is brilliant for the students is

take, take them on store walks, and prepare them for store

walks, and go on store walks to see the customer journey, with a

retailer, a buyer, with a supplier, and very few students

get that opportunity. But now they can go through that

opportunity with a connected commerce vision ahead of time,

and they can ask different questions because they, they

understand the importance of what's happening digitally

first, understand how that space might be searched before it's

actually shopped in store? And how do you look at that through

the eye, a fresh set of eyes, the connected commerce, for

students, and I think they're getting very practical and very

unique experiences that come from similar learnings from this

particular research.

Yeah, and these students that are that are

taking these classes, you know you mentioned, they have a leg

up, I believe that fully to be true. Because they understand

the context, they have a leg up in knowing the context that

they're about step into and contribute to. So you know, I

hear time and time again, where where our students, you know,

are ready, you know, whether it's an agency, a consumer

products company, or retailer, a company focused on supply chain

management, like they have the context, and they're ready to

contribute really.

I think Rod is a great example of this, because

he has been saying since day one, let's look at the supply

chain implications of this, you know, so what if we give

somebody a personalized, relevant message and get them to

the shelf to reach for a product that oh, isn't there? You know,

and so he's discussed this. And I know he's taken that back to

the classroom too and his supply chain students are hearing about

how they fit into this ecosystem. I guarantee that

conversation's not taking place on other campuses, but he's been

living and breathing this project. And then taking it back

to his very fortunate students.

I have, right and I teach a supply chain strategy

course. And we talk about capabilities that we need to

meet in consumer needs. That's why supply chains exist, to meet

those needs. So my master's students have heard about it, my

undergrads have heard about it and they get excited, and it's

reinforced across the curriculum, when they're

marketing as well. I think that ties back to what you're talking

about earlier, the value of research. Our research should

inform and drive our teaching. Right? And if if we're, if we're

doing good research that's relevant to industry, by all

means, let's bring it into the classroom. And if we're out in

front of the industry on this, it really does set up our

students.

Industry focused research that involves multiple

disciplines, academics and leaders from practice that's

impacting thought in industry, will impact the academic

literature and is impacting current students. Win win win

win?

More than a trifecta.

Yeah, that's right. Well, Rod, Andy, Molly,

thank you for what you've been doing for the college for

pushing this research forward this knowledge forward. I really

enjoyed working with all three of you on this project.

Ditto.

Thank you, Brent. Really enjoyed it.

Absolutely.

On behalf of the Walton College. Thank you for

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