12/01/2025

What Retailers Must Get Right This Holiday Season

Here’s what the data and consumer trends say

If you have recently been in a retail store, you have probably seen long checkout lines, hard-to-find help — and disgruntled shoppers. Online shopping shows evidence of similar stress, as frustrated consumers abandon digital shopping carts. A telling data point: Customer experience indices have been declining, as seen in drops over four consecutive years with Forrester’s customer experience (CX) index across industries hitting an all-time low in 2025 for North America.

In the retail industry in particular, Forrester's retail CX index fell to 71.3 in 2025 from 72.4 in the previous year for the U.S. (Forrester’s CX indices measure how well a brand’s customer experience strengthens customer loyalty, on a 0-100 scale: 0-54 is very poor, 55-64 is poor, 65-74 is okay, 75-84 is good and 85-100 is excellent.)

Customers' dissatisfaction with their shopping experiences has real business implications: According to PwC's 2025 Customer Experience Survey, 52 percent of consumers switched to a different brand due to an inferior product/service experience, while 29 percent did so because of a poor in-store or online experience.

Please select this link to read the complete article from MIT Sloan Management Review.