Across the UK, consumers are switching brands faster than ever, trading down in response to rising costs, and questioning whether familiar names still represent the best choice. In the B2B world, long-standing supplier relationships are being re-examined as procurement teams demand clearer evidence of value, effectiveness, and return. For many CMOs, this has created a widening gap between the investment in brand building and the loyalty it generates.
After more than 20 years in senior commercial roles at Tesco, Currys, and Homebase, I've seen first-hand how pricing, growth, and shopping behavior evolve, and how they're heavily influenced by both inflation and competition. Those forces are reshaping how people shop.
Evolving Consumer Behaviour in the UK Market
In my day-to-day role with Catalina, working closely with brands and retailers across the UK's loyalty ecosystem, this shift is visible in real purchase behaviour. Shoppers are not abandoning brands, but they are becoming far more selective about when, where, and why they return. The same applies in B2B, where loyalty increasingly depends on ongoing relevance rather than historical relationships. The challenge for brands is no longer simply retention, but redefining what loyalty truly means in a market shaped by huge volumes of data and constant choice, which can be overwhelming.
For years, no, decades, loyalty was viewed primarily as an emotional affair. High awareness, strong brand meaning, and emotional connection were expected to naturally lead to repeat purchase. This model worked when choice was limited, switching required effort, and price differences between brands were relatively small. But that world no longer exists.
Refining the Concept of Loyalty: Beyond Emotion
Consumers operate in a hyper-competitive environment of instant comparison, low switching costs, and relentless promotional noise; every transaction leaves a behavioural footprint. Loyalty is no longer a mindset; it is a series of micro-decisions made at the shelf, online, and across apps, thousands of times a year, and by real people. In short, actions matter more than surveys.
This shift fundamentally changes how loyalty should be understood and how it should be measured. Yet many brands continue to rely on outdated frameworks. Surveys, inferred intent models, and surface-level engagement metrics dominate reports and analysis. They tell us who opened, clicked, or browsed, but not who bought, switched, or stayed loyal. This is a dangerous blind spot, and that's when loyalty strategies risk becoming disconnected from reality, and efforts begin to lose effectiveness. Brands and retailers are simply hoping their targeting lands.
The UK: A Leader in Loyalty Program
In a climate of rising costs and growing accountability, this gap is becoming harder to justify, and it's what leaves brands lagging behind their competitors.
The UK is also one of the most advanced loyalty markets in the world. Consumers belong to multiple loyalty schemes and interact with retail ecosystems daily. That creates opportunity, but also fierce competition. Shoppers are open to loyalty programs, yet highly skilled at evaluating value. They disengage quickly when rewards feel generic, poorly timed, or irrelevant to their needs. When communications fail to reflect recent purchase behaviour, all these offers start to become irritating.
As a result, static segmentation and blanket messaging are increasingly ineffective. Personalisation that does not account for real behaviour becomes little more than educated guesswork. If brands are not using customers' recent actions to guide decisions, they are essentially throwing darts in the dark and hoping to hit the target.
The same holds true in B2B. Loyalty is often mistaken for retention, but contracts don't equal commitment. Real loyalty shows up in usage, adoption, confident renewals, and advocacy. Brands that fail to understand behaviour between purchase moments often discover too late that loyalty has already eroded.
In both B2C and B2B, the most reliable indicator of loyalty is behaviour. What customers buy, how often they return, how their basket evolves, and how their choices change over time provide a clearer picture of brand strength than any attitudinal metric. This is where transaction-level insight becomes essential.
Building a New Framework for Loyalty
These insights demand a new loyalty architecture. Purchase data captures real decisions made in real contexts. It reveals switching patterns, price sensitivity, frequency shifts, and the cumulative impact of marketing exposure. When this insight is connected directly to activation, brands can move from simply observing loyalty to actively shaping it.
Personalising based on real purchasing behaviour allows brands to influence not only what they say, but when and where they say it, delivering relevance at moments that matter.
Loyalty becomes more powerful when it is activated across both digital and physical touchpoints, rather than confined to a single program or channel. Historically, loyalty strategies were built around singular platforms such as points schemes or member discounts. While these mechanics still have value, they're no longer sufficient on their own.
In practice, this means engaging customers across digital environments they already trust, including retailer apps, loyalty platforms, on-site media, and off-site digital channels. When these touchpoints are connected by a shared understanding of purchase behaviour, brands can deliver consistent value without excessive frequency or repetition.
This omnichannel approach is particularly important in the UK, where shopping journeys are increasingly fragmented. Customers may browse online, check reviews on social platforms, purchase in-store, and receive loyalty communications through retailer apps, often within a single buying cycle. Brands that treat loyalty as a single-channel initiative struggle to keep pace, while those that embrace integrated, data-driven ecosystems are better positioned to build preference, trust, and frequency over time.
Challenges in Measuring Brand Loyalty
How to measure success is now the next sticky point. Many brands still focus heavily on engagement metrics such as opens, clicks, impressions, and satisfaction scores. While these provide insight into attention, they do not reveal whether behavior has changed. Engagement metrics track attention. Incremental spend, frequency, and share track loyalty. Brands that fail to make this distinction risk mistaking activity for impact. Closed-loop measurement (linking exposure directly to verified purchase outcomes) is now a necessity rather than an ambition.
Key Takeaways
As media fragments and attention become scarcer, brands face a stark choice: chase reach, or work more to be relevant. By connecting the dots across different channels, brands gain a clearer view of what truly drives growth. This enables smarter investment decisions, continuous optimisation, and more confident planning.
Instead of broadcasting messages broadly and hoping for the best, brands and retailers can engage customers based on real behavioural context. This ensures communication feels timely, useful, and personal, but without becoming intrusive.
Ultimately, the reality is that loyalty is no longer something brands declare. It is something customers demonstrate, transaction by transaction. It's much harder to earn (and brands need to re-earn it with every visit, every transaction), but more valuable than ever.
Simon Betts, Catalina UK Country Leader
> How to Build a Powerful Brand Amid Declining Brand Loyalty