The customer is the core of the convenience business. With so much data available about who the shopper is, retailers that capture the data, analyze it to create useful information and operationalize the insights gained from the information can drive sales, loyalty and profit—and, critically, differentiate themselves from competition by creating a better customer experience.

That goes for retailers of all sizes and is a tried-and-true retailing need: Before you can serve your customer, you have to understand your customer.

“How are you using customer insights as a sales and business driver? How are you leveraging data analytics to anticipate and meet your customers’ needs? What are you doing with personalization?” asked Ed Dzadovsky, global CTO & EVP at Alimentation Couche-Tard, during the keynote address at this year’s Conexxus Annual Conference, which took place in Tucson, Arizona.

“Focus on doing the basics really well. When you can’t find the answer for something through technology, go back to the frontlines and start with the customer experience. The answers are all there,” said Dzadovsky. “We aren’t just building tech for the sake of building tech. We need to make our customers’ and our employees’ lives just a little bit easier every day.”

Varish Goyal, CEO, Vintners Distributors, Au Energy and Loop Neighborhood Markets, said during his welcome remarks that one of his top priorities for 2025 is enhancing the customer experience.

“We all sell the same stuff at the end of the day. So how do you differentiate? The answer is in the customer experience,” he said. “We are looking at in-store technology for that, whether it’s SCO, mobile payments or looking at ways to change the layouts of our stores to make them more interesting and exciting.”

Loop Neighborhood Markets is also investigating ways to mitigate, or at least address, instances of lost customers due to a bad experience.

“Sometimes that happens and you don’t know about it. We want to figure out ways of NPS scoring or surveying to capture that information, so that our teams can adjust and improve in order to be better prepared for the next time that particular consumer comes to our store,” he said.

Bullseye on Boosting Customer Retention

A top priority for retailers is improving customer loyalty and retention.

Loop’s loyalty platform currently has 1 million active users, and 60% of them shop [at least] once per month. The average transaction of a loyalty customer is $11.03, while that number is just $4.83 for a non-loyalty customer.

“We want to have devices for each employee as they’re doing their tasks for their day, instead of having central devices to go back to like a computer or a terminal.”

Goyal said 8112 coupons will have a huge role to play in improving loyalty offerings and increasing both trips and basket size. “We need to try to get more personal with how we communicate with our consumer. We can use some of the latest technology, like 8112 coupons, to really see what promotions resonate with our consumer and drive more specific actions that will benefit the business.”

Doug New, chief information officer at Nouria Energy Corp., underscored the value of 8112 coupons when presenting the Conexxus Road Map at the 2024 NACS Show in October.

“One of the great things about 8112s is that you can know who accepted your coupon, when they accepted it and where they actually redeemed it. So you’re trying to build deeper consumer insights for your customers, and then you can more precisely target ads to them,” said New. “Your data will show one customer likes fried chicken, so you can send him a coupon or deal when you know he’s in the area or during a time he often comes to your store.”

8112 coupons are just one targeted way to engage customers within digital media ecosystems and retail media networks. These broadly allow retailers to offer customized promotions and deals and target the consumer with engaging and meaningful offers.

Targeting Consumers with Retail Media Networks

There is $40 billion of retail media network ad spend in the U.S. market available to capture over the next three years, said Art Sebastian, founder & CEO of consulting firm NexChapter during a working group meeting. “How much of that $40 billion do you want to capture? Whether you have five sites, 75 sites or 140 sites, there’s a sliver of that $40 billion pie that is available to you,” he said.

With 40 million daily transactions at the pump and 160 million transactions per day total, more than any other retail category, c-stores are “uniquely positioned to capture our share of that $40 billion. When a customer is at the pump for 90 seconds to two minutes, what are we doing? Are we letting them text and surf social media? Or are we interacting with them, engaging them and influencing a new behavior? We have a tremendous opportunity here and are entering an age of retail media,” he said.

With a retail media network, “Your end goal is to collect enough information so you can further refine and target promotions for your customers that you want to engage and bring into your store,” said New.

You can present personalized offers and promotions to consumers in myriad ways and through a variety of channels, from direct email and text campaigns to TV advertising and social media, to videos and display screens on the forecourt, but the most effective strategy will be to target the messaging to a consumer’s precise personal preferences and buying behavior.

For this, you need to collect data—preferably first-party data. This includes data from loyalty accounts, transactions, website and mobile app interactions, message open rates and call center interactions. With that, you can present the most meaningful offer to a consumer at the right time to increase the chance of a purchase.

“There is a lot of technology required to get these systems in place, but a lot of retailers already have many of the ingredients, like loyalty data and marketing funnels. There’s no reason not to get started now and begin road mapping a retail media strategy,” said Sebastian.

Security and Privacy

Collecting consumer information also requires keeping a close eye on data security and privacy.

Protecting PII

There is an average of over 2,200 cyberattacks every day, and the average cost of a data breach in the U.S. is $9.6 million, according to data presented by Sean Gately, VP of business bevelopment at Bluefin. In 2024, customer PII (personally identifiable information) was included in 46% of breaches.

“PII data is the most common, and most expensive, type of record compromised,” Gately said during his presentation. “If your organization is not in the right spot to protect your data, you will have a high level of risk and it will cost you.”

Beyond the monetary burden of a data breach and the high cost to remedy one, there is also damage to your brand’s reputation. “Companies that have experienced a data breach underperformed the market by more than 15% three years later,” Gately said.

“Defending” your data is not enough, said Gately. “This typically requires a substantial investment in time, money and effort to achieve and maintain a protective barrier around data systems. It is challenging to maintain defenses in an ever-changing threat landscape that requires stronger, higher and more expensive walls to keep threat actors out.”

Instead, Gately says to devalue the data, and tokenization is a critical path to doing so.

“One of the great things about 8112s is that you can know who accepted your coupon, when they accepted it and where they actually redeemed it.”

“Devaluing data is an efficient alternative. Using PCI-validated P2PE and vaultless tokenization to devalue sensitive data through encryption renders it useless to hackers if exposed,” he explained. “An organization can then survive by mitigating the impact of a breach, protecting its brand and customers.”

Gately said that vaultless tokenization:

• Enhances security by not storing data in a central location
• Reduces latency, allowing for quicker processing since tokens can be generated and used without the need to query a central storage location
• Lowers costs associated with maintaininga secure vault
• Improves compliance with regulations such as NACHA, GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA and PCI DSS
• Is easier and more seamless to integrate with existing systems

PCI Compliance

New requirements for PCI DSS 4.0.1, which protect payment card data for purchases, took effect at the end of March with an emphasis on target risk analysis (TRAs).

“You no longer have to do a full enterprise risk assessment for PCI, but you are required to do a risk assessment for each of the 10 controls that are involved with the targeted risk analysis,” said Jason Schroeder, director at K3DES LLC. “Of the 52 new requirements, some of them are prescribed (as a lot of the DSS requirements are), but some of them are also variable. You get to decide how you’re meeting them, the amount of time you’re taking to meet them and the frequency with which you’re meeting them.”

The 52 new requirements focus on:

• Web page protection
• Client-side browser protection
• Scripts and script protection
• Structuring your vulnerability and patching SLAs to meet both your needs and compliance

All retailers are required to be compliant to collect debit and credit cards for payment, or risk hefty fines from vendors.

Aiming to Enhance Employee Experience

Retailers are also focused on using technology to make employees’ jobs easier and help them be more effective at work.

Chad Kobayashi, senior director of retail technology at Maverik, said that a main goal for Maverik is to implement new technologies that enhance the employee experience.

The sheer amount of devices and technologies needed for the company’s 850 stores in over 20 states is vast, said Kobayashi, and it’s a challenge to manage all the different devices, which include POS, SCO, kitchen production terminals, ordering kiosks, iPads and other hardware.

Going forward, Maverik wants to move to a model where employees have mobile devices with them, which will reduce the need for traditional, stationary computers.

“We want to have devices for each employee as they’re doing their tasks for their day, instead of having central devices to go back to like a computer or a terminal. They need to have something with them as they’re working because that’s how people do things today,” he said.

The ongoing transition to mobile devices has been positively received, noted Kobayashi, especially among those who relied on desktop computers.