Shopper Experience: Fulfilment as a Profit Lever and the Human Touch Index

Shopper experience is rarely won in campaigns – and often lost around the purchase: at the shelf, at delivery or in service. Three questions matter most:

1. Is the product the shopper wants in stock, on the shelf and in the online shop?
2. Does the order arrive on time and complete?
3. Can customers find a knowledgeable person when they need advice or have a problem?

Retailers who get these three things right consistently do more than improve the shopping experience. They also protect their margin, which in European grocery retail is already very thin.

The figures show just how thin. According to McKinsey, the EBIT margin in European grocery retail held steady at 2.8 per cent in 2024 and 2025, while labour costs rose by 5.1 per cent, outpacing food inflation of 4.0 per cent. In this environment, every lost transaction, every return and every unnecessary service contact shows up directly in the P&L.

This article explains why fulfilment is becoming a profit lever for the shopper experience, what the new Human Touch Index reveals about the role of people in retail, and why both rest on a foundation that is often underestimated: consistent product and brand data.

Fulfilment as a profit lever: availability is the new brand promise

Fulfilment is more than logistics. From the shopper’s perspective, it is the sum of on-shelf availability, reliable delivery and smooth handling of returns. Each of these has a direct impact on revenue, costs and customer loyalty.

Availability drives loyalty

A study by DHL Supply Chain and Retail Economics published in March 2026 quantifies this for UK grocery retail. It is based on store audits, a survey of 2,000 households and economic modelling (DHL, 2026):

• One in five grocery trips includes at least one missing item – around 930 million shopping visits a year.
• This represents roughly £2.1 billion in displaced sales.
• 44 per cent of consumers switched to, or added, another supermarket in the past year because of availability issues. Among under-45s, the figure is almost two thirds.
• One in three shoppers now prioritises availability, convenience and reliability over price.

The data refers to the UK, but the mechanism applies elsewhere: a gap on the shelf is not just a lost sale. It invites customers to try a competitor and can put the entire basket at risk.

Online fulfilment is becoming profitable – but only with discipline

In e-commerce, the debate is shifting. McKinsey reports that online grocery operations in Europe are beginning to break even on a fully allocated cost basis (McKinsey, 2026). At the same time, 30 of the 40 omnichannel retailers analysed achieved higher customer satisfaction scores online than in-store. The digital shopper experience is often better than many retailers assume. The challenge lies in the cost per order.

Returns: the most expensive moment in the shopper experience

In non-food retail too, for example DIY, the post-purchase phase is a margin issue. The National Retail Federation and Happy Returns expect US retail returns worth US$849.9 billion in 2025. An estimated 19.3 per cent of online sales will be sent back.

Some of these returns are created before the parcel even leaves the warehouse: on the product detail page. Incomplete dimensions, incorrect material information or images that do not match the variant delivered create expectations the product cannot meet. Our assessment: how large this share is varies considerably by range. It is plausible, however, that accurate product data is one of the cheapest levers against avoidable returns, because it works before the purchase rather than after it.

What this means in practice

With an EBIT margin below three per cent, fulfilment is not a cost centre to be minimised but a profit lever to be managed. Three questions help to set priorities:

1. Are promotions planned with stock levels and delivery capability in mind – or does the leaflet advertise items that are missing in the promotion week?
2. Is product data in the shop, the app and the leaflet complete enough for shoppers to make the right purchase decision?
3. Are there clear substitution rules for out-of-stock items, based on clean product attributes?

The Human Touch Index: where shoppers expect people rather than AI

Automation lowers fulfilment costs, but it has a limit: there are moments when shoppers explicitly want a human. The Human Touch Index from IFH KÖLN maps exactly where that limit lies.

What the index measures

The index is part of the study “The Human Touch – Zwischen Mensch und Maschine” (Between Human and Machine), published in September 2026. For the study, Prof. Dr. Werner Reinartz and Jun.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Scholdra (University of Cologne) surveyed 1,000 consumers in Germany in July 2026 (IFH KÖLN, 2026, in German).

For the pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase phases, the index shows whether consumers prefer human or AI-supported assistance. It combines six dimensions of trust (competence, benevolence, integrity) and benefit (effectiveness, efficiency, personalisation) on a scale from 0 to 100. A score of 0 indicates a clear preference for AI; 100 indicates a clear preference for humans.

Key findings

Source: IFH KÖLN, 2026. Values for the post-purchase phase are not included in the public summary; the full study is available for purchase.

Why friendliness has a measurable impact on margin

Bain & Company has shown for US grocery retail that human interaction has a measurable effect, not just a perceived one. Note: this analysis dates from 2022 and is used here as background context, not as a current market figure. When shoppers cannot find an item and get help from a knowledgeable colleague, the Net Promoter Score rises by 86 points. Unfriendly staff lower it by 110 points – far more than unavailable staff, at 45 points (Bain & Company, 2022).

The strategic consequence: automate to free up time for people

The human touch and fulfilment efficiency are not opposites. McKinsey estimates that 40 to 50 per cent of routine activities in grocery headquarters could be automated by AI agents (McKinsey, 2026). Our hypothesis: the economic value of this automation does not come from hours saved alone. It comes when the capacity freed up is deliberately channelled into the moments where the Human Touch Index is high: advice, goodwill and problem-solving.

This suggests a simple division of labour:

Brand consistency as a system issue: why consistent data underpins the shopper experience

Fulfilment and the human touch share one prerequisite: shoppers must find the same reliable information everywhere – in the leaflet, in the app, at the shelf and in conversation with a colleague. Where prices, variants or product images differ between channels, mistrust follows. And sooner or later, that mistrust ends up with service staff or in returns handling.

An example from brand management

Coca-Cola shows how seriously global brands take this issue. In 2026, the company introduced a new global brand identity designed to create a more consistent look across more than 200 markets (Design Tagebuch, 2026, in German). The red-and-white palette, the script logo, the “Dynamic Ribbon” and the red tile are to be used more prominently and consistently. Coca-Cola Zero Sugar moves visually closer to the core product.

According to Design Tagebuch, Arnab Roy, President of Coca-Cola Global Category, explains the move as creating “a clearer, bolder and more unified brand experience for consumers worldwide” (translated from the German quotation). The new system is also intended to strengthen recognition and simplify global brand management.

The criticism in the article’s reader comments is revealing too: several readers fear that Zero Sugar will be harder to tell apart from the original, especially on bottles. This highlights the downside of standardisation. Consistency must not lead shoppers to confuse variants at the shelf.

Applying this to product data in retail

For retailers and brand manufacturers, the example holds a transferable lesson: consistency does not come from the discipline of individual teams but from a system. Coca-Cola simplifies brand management by defining clear, globally valid rules. Retail needs the same for its product information.

In day-to-day retail, this means:

• One central data source for item, price and media data, feeding all channels.
• Clearly distinguishable variants with well-maintained attributes, images and names – the lesson from the Zero Sugar debate.
• Regional and language versions derived from a common core rather than maintained in parallel.
• Planning that takes stock into account, so that communication does not create demand for items that cannot be delivered.

Where LAGO comes in

This is exactly the interface between product data, marketing planning and channel output where the multichannel software LAGO by Comosoft comes in. The PIM in LAGO brings together item and price data with images, texts and videos and makes them available media-neutrally for all marketing channels. Media are managed via a connected DAM system.

One point is particularly relevant to the fulfilment questions described above: according to Comosoft, teams in LAGO can prioritise items by margin, excess stock or marketing priority. This allows communication to be aligned more closely with the actual stock situation. LAGO also supports versioning of language and regional variants of leaflets and digital media, as well as an integrated Adobe InDesign workflow that allows updates to be made even shortly before the print deadline.

The benefit for the shopper experience is indirect but concrete: when the leaflet, web shop and app draw on the same well-maintained data, there are fewer situations in which colleagues have to explain contradictions. That creates room for the conversations in which the human touch is genuinely needed.

Conclusion: shopper experience is a question of operational management

The shopper experience is decided less in campaigns than in three operational disciplines. Fulfilment ensures the promise is kept. The human touch ensures people are present where shoppers explicitly expect them. Consistent product and brand data connect the two.

Current data supports this view: availability drives switching, returns tie up billions, and the Human Touch Index shows that the preference for people increases towards the point of purchase. For retailers with thin margins, the priority is clear: automate routine work, consolidate data and invest the capacity gained in the few moments where a person makes the difference.

A pragmatic first step is to compare promotion planning with stock availability over the last few promotion weeks. It quickly shows how much shopper experience is already being lost at the planning stage.