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Allbirds rose to prominence during the direct-to-consumer (DTC) boom, quickly gaining a loyal following. However, the brand faced challenges in recent years and, in 2024, made a strategic pivot to optimize its store fleet and significantly rightsize its retail footprint. How has this shift impacted foot traffic? We took a closer look.
Allbirds closed almost a third of its U.S. store fleet in the first three quarters of 2024 – downsizing from 45 U.S. stores at the end of 2023 to 31 stores as of September 2024 – leading to expected declines in overall visit numbers. But as the number of Allbirds stores in operation fell, visits per location increased steadily – suggesting that the company is successfully consolidating its physical footprint and funneling visitors to its most successful stores.
While Allbirds has locations in a number of states across the country, its main stronghold remains its home state of California. And diving into the visit data reveals that its rightsizing strategy has paid off handsomely in the state, with YoY visits per location surging by 28.2% in January 2025 compared to 19.8% YoY growth nationwide, suggesting that Allbirds is successfully optimizing its footprint to focus on high-performing markets.
Rightsizing typically allows brands to focus on their best-performing markets – and it looks like Allbirds has succeeded in that regard. Between January 2024 and January 2025, the median household income (HHI) in Allbirds’ captured market rose from $108.5K to $125.6K. Similarly, the share of "Educated Urbanites" and "Ultra-Wealthy Families" Spatial.ai: PersonaLive segments increased, indicating that the brand is now catering to a more affluent visitor base that could help it weather economic uncertainties and wider retail challenges.
Allbirds’ strategic repositioning seems to be delivering some of the desired results. By focusing efforts on high-performance locations and the shopper experience, the brand is seeing higher visits per location and a more engaged customer base.
Will Allbirds continue to soar?
Visit Placer.ai to find out.
Last year was a leap year, so February 2025 had one less day than February 2024 – leading to dips in year-over-year (YoY) monthly comparisons across the board, including in the mall space.
But comparing YoY at average daily visits – a more accurate analysis of YoY performance when comparing a regular year to a leap year – reveals that visits to indoor malls and open-air shopping centers held relatively stable in February 2025, despite the sharp drop in consumer confidence. And both mall types outperformed the wider retail YoY average – highlighting the ongoing resilience of the retail format.
Meanwhile, outlet malls continued lagging behind both overall retail numbers and the other two mall types. This mall type tends to attract a slightly lower-income visitor base, which could be more susceptible to economic uncertainties – and outlet mall shoppers may have avoided long travels in the cold, preferring to look for discounted items online or in off-price stores closer to home.
Malls’ unique position as both shopping centers and entertainment hubs likely contributed to malls’ stable February visitation patterns amidst the wider consumer headwinds. All three mall types saw significant visit increases on Valentine’s Day (February 14th) along with a rise in the share of evening (7 PM to 10 PM) visits. At the same time, only outlet malls saw a slight increase in the share of shorter visits (under 30 minutes) on Valentine’s Day.
This data suggests that malls played a role in many consumers’ Valentine’s Day celebrations – both in serving as a one-stop shop for gifts and as a centralized place with a variety of dining and entertainment options for the perfect Valentine’s date night.
The steady February foot traffic coupled with strong engagement on key holidays like Valentine’s Day underscores the enduring role of malls as more than just shopping destinations. As we move further into 2025, the ability of malls to adapt and cater to evolving consumer behaviors will remain a critical factor in their continued success.
For more data-driven retail insights visit placer.ai.
The beauty industry’s reign over specialty retail may be slowly coming to an end in 2025. In the post-pandemic retail economy, beauty had been an outlier as it continued to grow visitation despite declines in other discretionary categories and a general pullback in retail demand. Beauty retailers were primed for the interaction of mass and prestige beauty growth; brands at both the low and high end benefited as consumers' appetite for make up and skincare exploded.
But in 2024, consumers began to shift their focus away from beauty and back towards other discretionary categories, such as apparel and home furnishings. At the same time, we’ve also observed more caution amongst consumers surrounding all discretionary demand. Beauty tends to do well during times of economic uncertainty; items are small and generally less expensive than other discretionary purchases like shoes or accessories.
However, the category’s sustained success over the past few years may have run out, even as consumers look for value and small indulgences. Beauty executives warned of these headwinds in early 2024, and Placer’s visit trends have corroborated the softening of trends across the industry.
2024 visits to beauty and self care retail chains grew 1.5% versus the previous year, compared to 18% growth in 2023 and 17% growth in 2022. There was a true shift in momentum of this industry over the last year, and the deceleration of growth is in stark contrast to the industry’s flourishing in the immediate post-pandemic years.
When we put this into the context of broader discretionary retail, the trends in beauty counter those of apparel and home furnishings, who accelerated their rebounds throughout last year. There are a myriad of reasons for these changes in 2024, but major beauty brands have shared a drop-off in demand and waning sales, signs that point to changing consumer behavior instead of a shift in channel preference from physical to digital.
Ulta Beauty had been driving much of the growth of the beauty industry, due to its positioning as a destination for both mass and prestige beauty products. This business model, which served it well over the past few years, also exposed some potential hurdles as demand decelerated in 2024. Ulta’s visit growth in 2024 was just 1.9% year-over-year (2.5% YoY growth for Q4 2024), which surpassed other beauty chains, but slowed dramatically compared to previous trends.
A potential source of Ulta’s visit growth declaration could be one of its greatest opportunities over the past few years; its shop-in-shop partnership with Target. The two chains attract similar consumer demographics and align in their value offerings to shoppers. Looking at Placer’s cross visitation analysis, among visitors to Ulta Beauty, those who also visited Target increased from 86.9% in 2022 to 90.1% in 2024. Ulta visitors may be choosing to visit an Ulta outpost in Target more frequently than in the past, due to the convenience. But, that increase in visits to Target may be cannibalizing visit frequency to standalone Ulta Beauty locations.
Another change to Ulta Beauty’s overall visitation comes from the distribution of visitors to the retail chain. There were declines in the share of visits to Ulta from wealthier, suburban, and younger consumer segments, which account for the largest consumer bases for the retailer. There have been slight increases in the share of visits by Blue Collar Families and diverse shopper segments, but those consumers are likely to be more constrained in purchasing power than Ulta’s core shoppers.
Overall, the beauty space’s journey in 2024 is likely an indicator of what’s to come, especially for the larger chains. One retailer that has been the exception to the rule is Bluemercury, which Placer selected as a 10 Top Brands to Watch in 2025. For the remainder of the industry, retailers must find their reason for consumers to visit, despite a potential decline in demand for the category.
Two of the biggest sporting events of the year – the Super Bowl and the Daytona 500 – took place in February 2025. We dove into the location analytics and demographic characteristics of visitors for both events to find out who attends the Big Game and the Great American Race.
Super Bowl tickets aren’t cheap, and combined with elevated travel costs, attending the game comes with a hefty price tag. So it may be no surprise that “Ultra Wealth Families” – Spatial.ai: Personalive segment for the nation’s wealthiest households – are consistently the largest segment within the stadiums’ captured markets* on game day. The same trend persists for NFL’s conference championships, indicating that regardless of the region in which the biggest games are played, fans in attendance come from relatively similar, affluent households.
*A venue’s captured market is derived by the census block groups (CBGs) from which the venue draws its visitors, weighted by the share of visits from each, and thus reflects the population that actually visits the venue.
Visitors to the Daytona 500, it seems, are a more diverse cohort. Although the race is the most prestigious in NASCAR, tickets are available at price-points that suit a variety of budgets. And analyzing the visitor base of Daytona International Speedway on race day in 2025 reveals that the event’s relative affordability seemed to have attracted visitors from all walks of life: The venue’s trade area included a wide range of psychographic segments – ranging from the wealthiest families to retirement-age folks on a budget – demonstrating the diversity of the audience in attendance.
Analysis of the 2025 Super Bowl and Daytona 500’s trade areas, which reflect the regions from which the venues received visitors on the day, reveals other key differences between the events’ attendees.
As was the case for previous Super Bowls, the 2025 Super Bowl at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, LA drew visitors from the country’s major metro areas – and from some of the wealthiest – including New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami. The trade area also revealed elevated attendance from the teams’ home regions – Kansas City, MO and Philadelphia, PA – likely by the squads’ die-hard fans, and robust visitation from the host region (the New Orleans area), as local football fans appeared to take advantage of the opportunity to attend a Super Bowl close to home.
The 2025 Daytona 500's trade area, however, revealed a more tilted regional distribution of visitors. Although the event did draw fans from all over the country, most of the Daytona International Speedway attendees came from the Eastern United States, and Florida in particular – which hosts the race every year. This suggests that while the Daytona 500 attracts visitors from all over the country, the event is particularly popular among locals.
Want more data-driven event insights? Visit Placer.ai.
Wondering why Dave's Hot Chicken is reportedly in talks to sell itself to Roark Capital for $1 billion? One key reason is its strong growth potential. In 2024, chicken chains outpaced the broader QSR category in both new restaurant openings and increased visits per location. Dave's Hot Chicken stands out among them, with Placer's data showing it was one of the top performers in visit-per-location growth among chains with more than 100 locations last year.
The Kroger Company is one of the largest grocery retailers in the U.S, and the company continues to play a key role in the supermarket industry in 2025. We dove into traffic data for the company as a whole and for its leading banners to understand what 2025 may hold in store for the corporation.
Kroger and its variety of banners play a key role in the U.S. grocery landscape, with the company receiving around 16% of all visits to grocery stores nationwide (excluding non-traditional grocers such as superstores and wholesale clubs). And although Kroger’s visit share varies by state, the company receives more than a quarter of all grocery visits in 18 states, including four states – West Virginia, Utah, Colorado, and Kentucky – where Kroger receives more than half of the state’s grocery visits.
It seems, then, that the company is positioned to continue having a major impact on the U.S. grocery market in 2025 – even without the addition of Alberstons’ grocery portfolio.
The company’s recent visit performance also highlights Kroger’s ongoing resilience within an evolving grocery landscape. Traffic data shows that overall visits to Kroger chains held steady in 2024, with yearly visits just 1.3% lower than in 2023.
And the visit stability continued into 2025, with year-over-year (YoY) visits up every week in January 2025 just slightly below 2024 levels in February 2025 – indicating that shoppers are remaining loyal to Kroger’s chains amidst the inflationary environment.
Kroger operates a variety of banners, each catering to different regional markets and consumer segments. And analyzing 2024 visit data for Kroger’s largest chains shows overall stability across the portfolio – although some banners experienced slightly stronger growth while others did post minor visit gaps.
California-based Food 4 Less led the way with a 2.5% YoY visit increase in 2024, and Colorado-based King Soopers posted YoY visit growth as well. Smith’s, which operates in most of the West, Ralphs in California, and Harris Teeter in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic stayed within one percentage point of their 2023 visit performance. Arizona-based Fry’s and the company’s namesake banner Kroger also remained close to their 2023 traffic levels, while Fred Meyer and Pick ‘n Save saw minimal YoY visit gaps.
Kroger’s steady foot traffic highlights its strong consumer loyalty and adaptability. And as the grocery sector continues to shift, the company’s ability to maintain its stable performance across its portfolio and regions of operations will ensure it maintains its status as a grocery giant in 2025 and beyond.
For more data-driven retail insights, visit placer.ai.
The positive retail momentum observed in Q1 2024 continued into Q2 – as stabilizing prices and a strong job market fostered cautious optimism among consumers. Year-over-year (YoY) retail foot traffic remained elevated throughout the quarter, with June in particular seeing significant weekly visit boosts ranging from 4.7% to 8.5%.
The robustness of the retail sector in Q2 was also highlighted by positive visit growth during the quarter’s special calendar occasions, including Mother’s Day (the week of May 6th) and Memorial Day (the week of May 27th). And though consumer spending may moderate as the year wears on, retail’s strong Q2 showing offers plenty of room for optimism ahead of back-to-school sales and other summer milestones.
On a quarterly basis, overall retail visits rose 4.2% in Q2. And diving into specific categories shows that value continued to reign supreme, with discount and dollar stores seeing the most robust YoY visit growth (11.2%) of any analyzed category.
Other essential goods purveyors, such as grocery store chains (7.6%) and superstores (4.6%), also outperformed the overall retail baseline. And fitness – a category deemed essential by many health-conscious consumers – outpaced overall retail with a substantial 6.0% YoY foot traffic increase.
The decidedly more discretionary home improvement industry performed less well than overall retail in Q2 – but in another sign of consumer resilience, it too experienced a YoY visit uptick. And overall restaurant foot traffic increased 2.6% YoY.
Discount and dollar stores enjoyed a strong Q2 2024, maintaining YoY visit growth above 10.0% for six out of the quarter’s 13 weeks. Only during the week of April 1st did the category see a temporary decline, likely the result of an Easter calendar shift. (The week of April 1st 2024 is being compared to the week of April 3rd, 2023, which included the run-up to Easter)
Some of this growth can be attributed to the continued expansion of segment leaders like Dollar General. But the category has also been bolstered by the emphasis consumers continue to place on value in the face of still-high prices and economic uncertainty.
Dollar General, which has been expanding both its store count and its grocery offerings, saw YoY visits increase between 9.1% and 15.9% throughout the quarter. Affordable-indulgence-oriented Five Below, which has also been adding locations at a brisk clip, saw YoY visits increase between 4.9% and 18.8%.
And though Dollar Tree has taken steps to rightsize its Family Dollar brand, the company’s eponymous banner – which caters to middle-income consumers in suburban areas – continued to grow both its store count and its visits in Q2.
Grocery store chains also performed well in Q2 2024 – experiencing strongly positive foot traffic growth throughout the quarter. Though the sector continues to face its share of challenges, stabilizing food-at-home prices and improvements in employee retention and supply chain management have helped propel the industry forward.
Diving into the performance of specific chains shows that within the grocery segment, too, price was paramount in Q2 2024 – with limited-assortment value grocery stores like Aldi and Trader Joe’s leading the way.
Traditional chains H-E-B and Food Lion (owned by Ahold Delhaize) – both of which are known for relatively low prices – outperformed the wider grocery sector with respective YoY foot traffic boosts of 11.4% and 8.7%. But ShopRite, Safeway (owned by Albertsons), Kroger, and Albertsons also drew more visits in Q2 2024 than in the equivalent period of last year.
Fitness has proven to be relatively inflation-proof in recent years – thriving even in the face of reduced discretionary spending and consumer cutbacks. Indeed, rising prices may have actually helped boost gym attendance, as people sought to squeeze the most value out of their monthly fees and replace pricy outings with already-paid-for gym excursions.
And despite lapping a remarkably strong 2023, visits to gyms nationwide remained elevated YoY in Q2 2024.
Diving into the data for some of the nation’s leading gyms shows that today’s fitness market has plenty of room at the top. Planet Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, Life Time Fitness, Orangetheory Fitness, and LA Fitness all experienced YoY visit growth in Q2 2024 – reflecting consumers’ enduring interest in all things wellness-related.
But it was EōS Fitness and Crunch Fitness – two value gyms that have been pursuing aggressive expansion strategies – that really hit it out of the park, with respective YoY foot traffic increases of 23.4% and 21.4%.
The week of April 1st saw a decline in YoY visits to superstores – likely attributable to the Easter calendar shift noted above. But the category quickly rallied, and with back-to-school shopping and major superstore sales events coming up this July, the category appears poised to enjoy continued success throughout the summer.
Within the superstore category, wholesale clubs continued to stand out – with Costco Wholesale, Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale Club enjoying YoY foot traffic growth ranging from 12.0% to 7.4%. But Target and Walmart also impressed with 4.6% and 4.0% YoY visit increases.
Inflation, elevated interest rates, and a sluggish real estate market have created a perfect storm for the home improvement industry, with spending on renovations in decline. The accelerated return to office has likely also taken its toll on the category, as people spend more time outside the home and have less availability to immerse themselves in DIY projects.
But despite these challenges, weekly YoY foot traffic to home improvement and furnishing chains remained elevated throughout much of the Q2 – with June and April seeing mostly positive YoY visit growth, and May hovering just below 2023 levels. This (modest) visit growth may be driven by consumers loading up on supplies for necessary home repairs, or by shoppers seeking materials for smaller projects. And given the importance of Q2 for the home improvement sector, this largely positive snapshot may offer some promise of good things to come.
Some chains within the home improvement category continued to perform especially well in Q2 2024 – with rapidly expanding, budget-oriented Harbor Freight Tools leading the pack. But Ace Hardware, Menards, The Home Depot, and Lowe’s also saw foot traffic increases in Q2, showcasing the category’s resilience in the face of headwinds.
Restaurants – including full-service restaurants (FSR), quick-service restaurants (QSR), fast-casual chains, and coffee chains – lagged behind grocery stores and other essential goods retailers in Q2 2024, as price-sensitive consumers prioritized needs over wants and ate at home more often.
Still, YoY restaurant foot traffic remained up throughout most of the quarter. And impressively, the sector saw a YoY visit uptick during the week of Mother’s Day (the week of May 6th, 2024, compared to the week of May 8th, 2023) – an important milestone for FSR.
The restaurant industry’s YoY visit growth was felt across segments – though fast-casual and coffee chains experienced the biggest visit boosts. Like in Q1 2024, fast-casual restaurants hit the sweet spot between indulgence and affordability, outpacing QSR in the wake of fast food price hikes. And building on the positive YoY trendline that began to emerge last quarter, full-service restaurants finished Q2 2024 with a 1.4% YoY visit uptick.
Chain expansion was the name of the restaurant game in Q2 2024, with several chains that have been growing their footprints outperforming segment averages – including CAVA, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Ziggi’s Coffee, California-based Philz Coffee, Raising Cane’s, Whataburger, and First Watch. Chili’s Grill and Bar also outpaced the full-service category average, aided by the revamping of its “3 for Me” menu.
Retailers and restaurants in Q2 2024 continued to face plenty of challenges, from inflation to rising labor costs and volatile consumer confidence. But foot traffic trends across industries – including both essential goods purveyors like grocery stores and more discretionary categories like home improvement and restaurants – suggest plenty of room for cautious optimism as 2024 wears on.
Return-to-office (RTO) trends have been closely watched over the past few years, with relevant stakeholders trying to puzzle out the impact remote and hybrid work have had on business operations and worker performance. And while visits to office buildings, overall, remain below pre-pandemic levels, office recovery varies from city to city – reflecting the complex and nuanced nature of regional economic trends, workforce preferences, and industry-specific needs.
This white paper harnesses location analytics to explore office recovery in the country’s second-largest economy – Los Angeles. The first part of the report is based on an analysis of foot traffic data from Placer.ai’s Los Angeles Office Index – an index comprising 100 office buildings in LA (including several in the greater metro area). The second part of the report broadens the lens to analyze visits by local employees to points of interest (POIs) corresponding to four major LA-area office districts: Century City, Downtown LA, Santa Monica, and Culver City. The white paper examines the impact that return-to-work mandates have had on visits to office buildings, discovers which demographic groups are driving the RTO, and explores the connection between commute time and return-to-office rates.
The return to office in Los Angeles has consistently lagged behind other major cities, underperforming nationwide recovery levels since the pandemic ground in-office work to a virtual halt. Still, the city’s office buildings are seeing a steady increase in visits, with foot traffic tending to spike at the beginning of each year. This indicates that even though office visits in LA are still below national averages, they are on a steady growth trajectory – a promising sign for stakeholders in the city.
A closer examination of Los Angeles office buildings also shows that despite the overall lag, some top-performing buildings in the LA metro area are defying the odds. Visits to the 20 local office buildings with the narrowest Q2 2024 post-COVID visit gaps were down just 8.7% in June 2024 compared to January 2019 – significantly outperforming the nationwide average.
So while overall office recovery in the city is still behind nationwide trends, these top-performing buildings indicate an optimistic outlook for the city’s office spaces.
Diving into the demographics of visitors to LA’s top-performing office buildings reveals an important insight: these buildings are attracting younger workers. This cohort has shown a stronger preference for in-person work compared to their older colleagues.
Analyzing the buildings’ captured markets with psychographics from AGS: Panorama reveals that these buildings are attracting visitors from areas with larger shares of "Emerging Leaders" and "Young Coastal Technocrats" than the broader metro area.
"Emerging Leaders'' – upper-middle-class professionals in early stages of their careers – make up 20.3% of households in the trade areas feeding visits to these top-performing buildings, compared to 14.9% in the broader LA CBSA. Similarly, "Young Coastal Technocrats," young and highly educated professionals in tech and professional services, account for 14.7% of households driving visits to the top-performing buildings, compared to only 12.1% in the broader area.
The trend suggests that companies in these high-performing office buildings employ many early-career professionals eager to accelerate their careers and work in-person with colleagues and mentors. This is a positive sign for the future of the office market in the LA metro area, indicating that it is attractive to key demographic groups that are likely to drive future growth and innovation.
Over the past few years, the debate regarding return-to-office mandates has been a heated one. Will employees follow return-to-office requirements? Can companies enforce the return to office after offering remote and hybrid work options? Recent location analytics data suggests that, at least in the Los Angeles metro area, some return-to-office mandates have been effective.
Three major tech companies – Activision Blizzard, TikTok, and SNAP Inc. – recently made their return-to-office policies stricter. Activision mandated a full return to the office in January 2024. TikTok has also intensified its return-to-office policy while seeking to expand its office presence in the greater Los Angeles area. And SNAP Inc. required employees to return to the office earlier this year as a condition of continued employment.
Visitation patterns at each of these companies' respective headquarters suggest that their policies have directly impacted visit frequency. Since the beginning of the year, the share of repeat office visits (defined as two or more visits per week) has increased for all three locations. Activision saw its share of repeat office visits grow from 52.1% in H1 2023 to 61.4% in the same period of 2024. TikTok’s repeat visits grew from 49.5% to 61.0%, and SNAP’s repeat visits increased from 36.6% to 42.8%.
These numbers highlight how return-to-office policies can lead to noticeable changes in office visit patterns and offer a blueprint to other businesses looking to foster a stronger in-office workforce.
Los Angeles is the second-largest metro area in the country, with several distinct business districts across its sprawling landscape. And a closer look at four major office hubs in the greater LA area – Century City, Downtown LA, Santa Monica, and Culver City – highlights how the office recovery can vary, not just by city or demographic, but on a neighborhood level.
Weekday visits by local employees to all four analyzed business districts have rebounded significantly since 2020 – though each area has followed its own particular trajectory.
Culver City, home to major businesses including Sony Pictures and Disney Digital Network, saw the least pronounced drop in employee visits during the early days of the pandemic. And in Q2 2024, weekday visits by local workers were down just 18.4% compared to Q1 2019.
Century City, on the other hand, saw the most marked drop in local employee foot traffic as the pandemic set in. But the district’s recovery trajectory has also been the most dramatic – with a Q2 2024 visit gap of just 28.5%, smaller than Downtown LA’s 29.7% visit gap. Perhaps capitalizing on this momentum, Century City is expanding its business district with the addition of a major new office building, set to be completed in 2026 and serve as the headquarters for Creative Artists Agency. Santa Monica, for its part, finished off Q2 2024 with a 23.3% visit gap.
Century City stands out within the Los Angeles metropolitan area for its dramatic decline and subsequent resurgence in local employee foot traffic. And looking at another metric of office recovery – employee commute distance – further underscores the district’s remarkable comeback.
The share of employees commuting to Century City from three to seven miles away has nearly returned to pre-COVID levels – suggesting a normalization of commuting patterns by local workers living in the area. In H1 2019, 33.5% of workers in Century City commuted between 3 and 7 miles to work; in 2022, that number had dropped to 29.8%. But by 2024, the share of visitors making that commute had grown to 32.5% – much closer to pre-COVID numbers.
Similarly, the region’s trade area size, which had contracted significantly in the wake of the pandemic, bounced back significantly in 2024. This serves as another indication of Century City’s rebound, cementing Century City’s status as a key business hub within the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Five years after the upheaval caused by the pandemic, office spaces are still changing. Although the Los Angeles area has taken longer to recover than other major cities, analyzing local visitation data shows significant potential for the city’s business areas. With young employees leading the return-to-office charge, the city is poised to keep driving its strong economy and adjust to an evolving office environment.
Retail media networks (RMNs) have cemented their roles as the future – and present – of advertising. These networks enable advertisers to promote products and services through a retailer’s online properties and physical stores, when consumers are close to the point-of-purchase and primed to buy.
Today, we take a closer look at two newcomers to the retail media space: Costco Wholesale and Wawa. Both chains have an online presence – but both also excel at in-store experiences, offering unique opportunities for consumer engagement and exposure to new products.
This white paper dives into the data to explore some of the key advantages Costco and Wawa bring to the retail media table – and examine how the retailers’ physical reach can best be leveraged to help advertising partners find new audiences.
Wawa and Costco, the latest additions to the growing number of companies with retail media networks, exhibit significant advertising potential. Both brands boast a wide reach and diverse customer base, and both have access to troves of customer data through membership and loyalty programs.
Foot traffic data confirms the robust offline positioning of the two retailers. In Q1 2024, year-over-year (YoY) visits to Costco and Wawa increased 9.5% and 7.5% respectively – showing that their in-store engagement is on a growth trajectory.
And since consumers tend to spend a lot more time in-store than they do on retailers’ websites, Costco’s and Wawa’s strong brick-and-mortar growth positions them especially well to help advertisers reach new customers. In Q1 2024, the average visits to Costco’s and Wawa’s physical stores lasted 37.4 and 11.4 minutes respectively – compared to just 6.7 and 4.6 minutes for the chains’ websites. These longer in-store dwell times can be harnessed to maximize ad exposure and offer partners more extended opportunities for meaningful interactions with customers. Partners can also analyze the behavior and preferences of the two chains’ growing visitor bases to craft targeted online campaigns.
Costco’s retail media network will tap into the on- and offline shopping habits of its staggering 74.5 million members to inform targeted advertising by partners. And the retailer’s tremendous reach offers a significant opportunity to engage customers in-store.
But while Costco is dominant in some areas of the country, other markets are led by competitors like Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale Club. And advertisers looking to choose between competing RMNs or hone in on the areas where Costco is strongest can analyze Costco's performance and visit share – on a local or national level – to determine where to focus their efforts.
An analysis of the share of visits to wholesalers across the country reveals that Costco is the dominant wholesale membership club in much of the Western United States. But Costco also captures the largest share of wholesale club visits in many other major population centers, including important markets like New York, Chicago, Phoenix, and San Antonio. Costco’s widespread brick-and-mortar dominance offers prospective advertising partners a significant opportunity to connect with regional audiences in a wide array of key markets.
Another one of Costco’s key advantages as a retail media provider lies in its highly loyal and engaged audience. In May 2024, a whopping 41.4% of Costco’s visitors frequented the club at least twice during the month – compared to 36.6% for Sam’s Club and 36.0% for BJ’s Wholesale.
Moreover, Costco led in average visit duration compared to its competitors. In May 2024, customers spent an average of 37.1 minutes at Costco – surpassing even the impressive dwell times at Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale Club.
YoY visits per location to Costco, too, were the highest of the analyzed wholesalers, all three of which saw YoY increases. These metrics further establish the wholesaler’s position as an effective retail media provider.
Even when foot traffic doesn't show a brand’s clear regional dominance, location analytics can reveal other metrics that signal its unique potential. Take the Richmond-Petersburg, VA, designated market area (DMA), for example. In May 2024, BJ’s Wholesale Club led the DMA with 41.2% of wholesale club visits, while Costco was a close second with 37.3% of visits.
But despite BJ’s lead in visit share, Costco's Richmond audience was more affluent. Costco's visitors came from trade areas with a median household income (HHI) of $93.2K/year, compared to $73.1K/year for Sam’s Club and $89.5K/year for BJ’s. Additionally, Costco drew a higher share of weekday visits than its counterparts.
Analyzing shopper habits and preferences across chains on a local level can provide crucial context for strategists working on media campaigns. Advertisers can partner with the brands most likely to attract consumers interested in their offerings, and identify where – and when – to focus their advertising efforts.
Convenience stores, or c-stores, are emerging as destinations in and of themselves – and their rising popularity among a wider-than-ever swath of consumers opens up significant opportunities in the retail advertising space.
Wawa is a relative newcomer to the world of retail media, after other c-stores like 7-Eleven and Casey’s launched their networks in 2022 and 2023. But despite coming a bit late to the party, the potential for Wawa’s Goose Media Network is significant – thanks to a cadre of highly loyal visitors who enjoy the physical shopping experience the c-store chain offers.
In May 2024, Wawa’s share of loyal visitors (defined as those who visited the chain at least twice in a month) was 60.1%. In contrast, other leading c-store chains operating in Wawa’s market area – QuickTrip and 7-Eleven, for example – saw loyalty rates of 56.0% and 47.9%, respectively, for the same period.
Additionally, Wawa visitors browsed the aisles longer than those at other convenience retailers. In May 2024, 39.9% of Wawa visitors stayed in-store for 10 minutes or longer, compared to 29.6% at QuickTrip and 25.7% at 7-Eleven.
Wawa's loyal customer base and longer visit durations make it a strong contender in the retail media space. By harnessing this high level of customer engagement, Wawa can draw in advertisers and develop targeted marketing strategies that resonate with its dedicated shoppers.
Wawa has been on an expansion roll over the past few years, with plans to open at least 280 stores over the next decade in North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. The chain has also been steadily increasing its footprint in Florida – between January 2019 and April 2024, Wawa grew from 167 Sunshine State locations to 280, with more to come.
And analyzing changes in Wawa’s visit share in one of Florida’s biggest markets – the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale DMA – shows how successful the chain’s local expansion has been. Between January 2019 and April 2024, Wawa more than doubled its category-wide visit share in the Miami area (i.e. the portion of total c-store visits in the DMA going to Wawa) – from 19.0% to nearly 40.0%.
A look at changes in Wawa’s Miami-Ft. Lauderdale trade area shows that the chain’s growing visit share has been driven by an expanding market and an increasingly diverse audience.
In April 2019, there were some 55 zip code tabulation areas (ZCTAs) in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale DMA from which Wawa drew at least 3,000 visits per month. By April 2021, this figure grew to 96 – and by April 2024, it reached 129.
Over the same period, the share of “Family Union” households in Wawa’s local captured market – defined by the Experian: Mosaic dataset as families comprised of middle-income, blue collar workers – nearly doubled, growing from 7.4% in April 2019 to 14.4% in April 2024.
Retail media networks that make it easier to introduce shoppers to products and brands that are closely aligned with their preferences and habits offer a win-win-win for retailers, advertisers, and consumers alike. And Costco and Wawa are extremely well-positioned to make the most of this opportunity.
