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Retailers across North America are facing intensifying economic headwinds. In both Canada and the U.S, persistent inflation, elevated interest rates, fluctuating currency value, and shifting trade policies are straining consumer budgets and reshaping purchasing behaviours. These macroeconomic pressures extend beyond rising costs; they are also reshaping how customers engage with brands, how they shop, and how they interact with loyalty programs.

Customers are becoming more value conscious, trading down, deferring purchases, and evaluating the relevance and value of loyalty programs that they participate in. Retailers are confronting a critical question: how does one keep their loyalty program as a profitable growth lever when consumer behaviours and cost dynamics are evolving so rapidly?

Holding on to customer loyalty will be a steep hill to climb as the sale of MEC will see it become a privatized company. This is a critical change to the type of business MEC had promised its customers who essentially are their owners – taking away their democratic decisioning power and putting its core promise of a socially conscious retailer at risk.

In today’s mobile-driven marketplace, and with the rise of the Millennial “always on” consumer, having an app complement a retailer’s marketing strategy has become table stakes. Apps have evolved from simply being an extension of the digital ecosystem to leading the way for brand innovation, campaign awareness, and deeper loyalty engagement.

Never before has a brand had the opportunity to be part of such a personal customer connection—your customers’ mobile device is more than just a communication channel; it’s their hub to connect to all things, all people, and interact with your brand in more personal ways than ever before. The challenge this brings is for retailers to truly understand how users want to connect with their brand, and to develop features that enable those interactions in innovative, creative, relevant, and simple ways. The opportunity is to retain top-of-mind awareness for your brand, create habit-forming engagements, and obtain a higher reach of brand advocacy, especially when a formal loyalty program exists for your brand. Surprisingly, Bond Brand Loyalty’s 2016 Loyalty Report shows that almost 50% of consumers aren’t even aware if the loyalty program they engage with has an app, which is a lost opportunity for many retailers.