Shopper marketing

Shopper marketing is marketing aimed at people while they are shopping, in the store, on a retailer's website or app, or on the way to buy, usually planned jointly by a brand and a retailer.

Consumer marketing builds a brand in people's minds; shopper marketing works on the choice at the moment of purchase. Typical tools are displays and signage, sampling, promotions, retailer flyers and emails, loyalty offers and, more and more, retail media. Because the work happens on the retailer's ground, brand and retailer usually agree it in a joint business plan, and the money often comes from trade or shopper budgets.

The IAB's July 2025 commerce media explainer separates the two worlds. Digital formats in stores, such as screens, audio and mobile-activated ads, count as in-environment commerce media. Static and analog tactics, such as printed signage and physical displays, stay under traditional trade and shopper marketing (IAB, July 2025). The explainer adds that networks increasingly fold shopper and trade programmes into their digital media offers.

The result is a merged plan. A shopper marketer can now buy a cardboard endcap and the screen above it from the same retailer, and expect the retailer's loyalty data to measure both.

Example: For a summer launch, a sunscreen brand and a pharmacy chain agree an endcap display and a shelf price cut, which is the shopper marketing part. They add sponsored listings in the pharmacy's app and screens near the checkout, the retail media part, and measure both against loyalty-card sales over the same four weeks.

Related terms: trade spend, co-op advertising, in-store media, retail media network, commerce media.

Authoritative source: IAB, "Defining Commerce Media and Its Ecosystem" (July 2025), section on in-environment commerce media.