Nestlé and Allume Share Digital Shelf Lessons for Winning Over Modern Shoppers

Artificial Intelligence

August 19, 2025

12 minute read

Written By: Lizzie Davey

Nestlé and Allume Share Digital Shelf Lessons for Winning Over Modern Shoppers

The pressure to adapt is already here.

Social commerce has exploded. Shoppers are discovering new products through influencers, not end caps. Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t just transforming search; it’s changing how people shop. And internal teams are left racing to catch up, wrestling with outdated processes and tech that wasn’t built for this kind of speed.

One of the standout sessions at the 2025 Digital Shelf Summit (DSS) featured Andrea Leigh, CEO of the Allume Group and longtime ecommerce strategist, and Barbara Jenny-Wilson, Nestlé’s global head of content and design tech. Joining them were leaders from Red Bull and Mars, who brought sharp insights and refreshingly candid perspectives to the discussion.

Together, they tackled a big question: How can brands win with tomorrow’s shoppers without losing sight of the ecommerce fundamentals that still power growth? Their DSS session, “Transforming for Growth: Where To Place Your 2025 Bets To Win the Best Shopper,” gave a glimpse into how digital shelf leaders are navigating this seismic shift.

Whether you’re leading a global ecommerce team or just trying to scale smarter, these are the kinds of conversations that help you think more clearly in a retail landscape that’s rewriting itself in real time.

How the Shopper Journey Has Changed Forever

Shoppers are no longer following your lead or waiting around for brand campaigns or shelf placement to tell them what to buy. They’re flipping the script entirely, creating their own categories, defining trends in real time, and expecting brands to catch up.

Just look at brands like Liquid Death or Poppi.

These aren’t traditional product lines dreamed up in a boardroom — they’re responses to cultural undercurrents and consumer demand.

What’s fascinating is that shoppers didn’t just influence these categories. They created them. They wanted healthier sodas, ironic water brands, and viral, shareable moments, so they made them.

This is what Leigh means when she says, “We’re not the brand anymore. The shopper is the brand.”

That’s a seismic shift. And it’s not just happening on product shelves, it’s happening across the entire discovery journey.

Product Discovery Has Shifted

Influencers, creators, and social platforms have taken over the front lines of product discovery. If you’re not showing up on TikTok, Instagram, or whatever channel your audience is glued to this week, you’re probably invisible.

Traditional levers, like in-store displays, generic email blasts, and even banner ads, simply don’t break through the way a 10-second unboxing video from someone’s favorite creator does.

And if that wasn’t enough, AI is now becoming a shopper’s co-pilot.

Consumers are already using ChatGPT and other AI tools to research, compare, and even complete purchases. Some are delegating tasks entirely to AI agents. Others are starting their product searches with a chatbot.

Shoppers Have More Power Now

The bottom line is that shoppers have more power than ever, and they're moving faster than most brands can keep up.

If you’re still building campaigns on six-month timelines, waiting for internal approval cycles, or assuming discovery starts with a Google search, you’re already a few steps behind.

The brands that will win in 2025 and beyond are those that adapt now by listening deeply, testing quickly, and meeting shoppers where they actually are.

6 Essential Tips Ecommerce Brands Must Know About Winning Over Modern Shoppers

Today’s shoppers aren’t waiting for brands to tell them what to want. They already know. They're discovering products through influencers, social feeds, and AI tools, often before a campaign ever hits the market.

If you want to stay relevant (and ahead), you need to understand how this new wave of consumer behavior is shaping the path to purchase.

1. Shoppers Are in Control and They’re Moving Fast

Gone are the days when brands dictated trends from the top down.

Today’s shoppers are defining entire categories. We mentioned Poppi and Liquid Death earlier as examples of brands that weren’t born from months of corporate planning. Instead, they exploded out of cultural trends, online conversations, and viral moments.

The panelists emphasized that brands must stop assuming they’re leading the conversation. Instead, they need to meet shoppers where they are, which is often on social platforms, in TikTok Shop checkouts, or even in AI chat windows.

2. Convenience Is King

Whether it's next-hour delivery, curbside pickup, or same-day drop-off, convenience is becoming a non-negotiable part of the shopping experience.

Panelist Barbara Jenny-Wilson shares that in some markets, over 50% of ecommerce growth is coming from last-mile delivery alone. That’s a massive shift, and a clear signal that speed and ease are now key differentiators.

Even products that traditionally wouldn’t fit the last-mile mold, like cold, low-price-point items, are getting in on the action. Red Bull, for example, is seeing success delivering single cans of chilled product directly to consumers’ doors. That’s no small feat when you consider the logistical and economic challenges of doing so.

3. Cross-Functional Agility Is Critical

You can’t win in digital by keeping your teams in silos. Ecommerce is no longer just a “sales” problem or a “marketing” project. It’s a full-business transformation that requires coordination across every function, from supply chain to IT to regulatory.

Both Mars and Nestlé emphasized that building strong cross-functional action plans has been essential to their growth.

4. Local Market Nuance Matters

While it’s tempting to take what works in a mature market like the U.S. and roll it out globally, panelists warned against that mindset.

Instead, they shared how they’re building localized acceleration plans based on each market’s digital maturity and shopper behavior. That means identifying region-specific blockers, testing tailored solutions, and scaling what works.

Basically, growth often happens fastest when you stop treating every country like the same ecommerce case study.

5. AI Is Here, But It Needs Guardrails

AI came up again and again throughout the session, not as a future trend, but as a very real disruptor right now. Whether it’s content creation, search optimization, product discovery, or shopper research, AI is reshaping how brands operate and how consumers shop.

But with great power comes great complexity. To avoid any kind of duplication chaos, brands like Nestlé are standing up internal AI boards, cross-functional innovation teams, and governance committees.

“We don’t want to innovate the same AI chatbot seven times,” says Jenny-Wilson.

6. Internal Upskilling Is a Must

As ecommerce becomes more technical, more integrated, and more AI-driven, upskilling traditional teams has become a pressing challenge. Panelists spoke candidly about the need to create clearer career paths into digital, help associates build confidence with new technologies, and redefine what it means to be “digital-ready.”

“What’s keeping me up at night? Career pathing and upskilling our associates for digital,” Jill Hyman of Mars says.

You can invest in all the platforms and pilots you want, but if your team doesn’t have the fluency to use them effectively, your progress will stall.

4 Steps Ecommerce Leaders Should Take Next

If there was one shared message across this session, it was this: Waiting is no longer an option. Here are four clear next steps ecommerce leaders should consider as they navigate this new terrain.

1. Get Closer to Your Shopper

Before you reimagine your strategy, reintroduce yourself to your customer.

Too often, we rely on outdated personas or generic research reports. But today’s shopper isn’t static. They’re constantly evolving, discovering new products through creators, communities, and even AI agents.

Start with social listening: What are customers saying about your category on TikTok, Reddit, or Instagram? What language are they using? What pain points are bubbling up?

Better yet, be the shopper yourself.

Try searching for your product category using ChatGPT, watch a few influencer reviews, and go through a TikTok Shop checkout. You’ll quickly see where the gaps (and opportunities) lie.

2. Strengthen Cross-Functional Collaboration

One of the most consistent themes across the panel was that ecommerce doesn’t live in a silo, and neither should your ecommerce team. Growth comes from shared ownership.

That might mean forming cross-functional “innovation pods” that bring together folks from sales, marketing, supply chain, and IT to test new ideas together, or it might mean embedding ecommerce key performance indicators (KPIs) into the goals of traditionally offline teams.

3. Start Small With AI, but Start Now

AI can feel overwhelming and, yes, some parts of it are still early days. But waiting for things to “settle” isn’t a viable strategy. Instead, pick one pilot and start.

Panelists recommended using Lighthouse markets (a.k.a. those that are already more digitally mature) to explore use cases like:

Conversational commerce (e.g., chatbots for discovery or support);
Automated content creation and optimization; and
Predictive analytics for supply chain or shopper behavior.

But (and this is a big but), start building your AI governance framework in parallel. Don’t wait until you have a PR crisis to set standards. Establish clear usage policies, brand safeguards, and roles now.

4. Invest in Upskilling and Digital Maturity

If you want to be a future-ready brand, your people need to be future-ready too.

That means going beyond general training and offering role-specific upskilling programs tailored to how digital shows up in different functions, whether that’s marketing, supply chain, or sales.

Audit your current capabilities across regions and departments. Where are the gaps? Where is potential going untapped?

Consider rotational programs to give traditional teams exposure to digital projects, or bring digital leads into cross-functional leadership meetings so they’re not always “translating” from the sidelines.

As one speaker shared, the greatest threat isn’t a lack of tools; it’s a team that doesn’t feel equipped to use them.

The Next Era of Ecommerce Starts Now

If there’s one thing this session made clear, it’s that the pace of change in ecommerce isn’t slowing down, and neither can you. The shopper journey is being rewritten in real time, shaped by new platforms, new behaviors, and new technologies.

To stay competitive, brands need more than speed.

The companies leading the way aren’t just experimenting with AI or chasing the latest channel; they’re aligning teams, listening closely to shoppers, and making smart, strategic moves that reflect where the market is going.

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Tag(s): Artificial Intelligence Ecommerce Trends Digital Shelf Summit 2025

Written by: Lizzie Davey

Lizzie Davey (she/her) is a freelance writer and content strategist for ecommerce software brands. Over the past 10 years, she's worked with top industry brands to bring their vision to life and build optimized and engaging content calendars.