Beyond the Basket - 22/08/25

Friday 22nd August | Join Free

Hello, this is your Beyond the Basket daily brief.

In today’s beyond the basket:
📦 Walmart ecommerce sales surge 26% on grocery strength
🎄 Meta rolls out AI ad tools ahead of holidays
🚗 Hertz to sell used cars on Amazon Autos
🛒 Co-op adds “tap to join” membership via electronic shelf labels

+plus three deep reads and two tools that could increase your average order value, and let you see what your competitors are up to in the online ads space.

TL;DR: Walmart’s U.S. ecommerce sales rose 26% in Q2, led by grocery demand and a 50% increase in store-fulfilled delivery, prompting the retailer to raise its full-year sales outlook despite tariff pressures.

Why It Matters: Walmart is leveraging its grocery dominance to fuel digital scale. Grocery’s shift online, especially via store-based fulfilment, is locking customers into Walmart’s ecosystem, while new growth engines (advertising, memberships, and AI tools) are reshaping margins. Membership income grew 15%, Walmart Connect advertising rose 31% in the U.S., and its marketplace expanded 17% globally. This diversification helps cushion margin pressures from tariffs while positioning Walmart as a hybrid retailer–media–tech platform. AI also looms large, with the rollout of Sparky, Walmart’s digital assistant, designed to power personalised shopping and reorder flows. The takeaway: Walmart is quietly becoming a platform company, not just a retailer.

Your Move: Identify your own “grocery equivalent”, the products customers buy most frequently. Build loyalty around those with subscriptions, personalised rewards, and seamless reordering, then use that habitual engagement as the gateway to higher-margin categories. Walmart’s playbook shows that repeat-purchase essentials are the strongest driver of long-term customer loyalty.

TL;DR: Meta has launched new AI-powered ad options for the upcoming holiday season, including enhanced creator partnerships, shoppable Reels, omnichannel ads, and email sign-up offers to help brands capture seasonal demand.

Why It Matters: Meta’s updates show how AI and automation are reshaping performance marketing. Instead of marketers manually testing endless variations, Meta wants brands to supply diverse creative inputs, video, creator content, catalogs, and let its algorithms decide what works. The focus on shoppable Reels and creator-led promotions reflects how discovery is shifting toward video and social proof, while omnichannel ads and email capture tools point to Meta’s bigger bet: linking seasonal ad spend to long-term loyalty and first-party data. In short, the holiday push isn’t just about conversions, it’s about feeding Meta’s AI with enough inputs to maximise reach, efficiency, and retention.

Your Move: Don’t fight Meta’s AI, feed it. Enter Q4 with a pipeline of creator-led assets, diversified video formats, and catalog integrations. Use the new email sign-up and omnichannel features to turn seasonal buyers into customers you can reach directly, long after the holidays.

TL;DR: Hertz will begin selling its used fleet vehicles directly on Amazon, starting in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Seattle, with plans to expand to 45 markets nationwide.

Why It Matters: This partnership represents a major step for Amazon into automotive retail and a shift in how cars move from fleets to consumers. Traditionally, Hertz sold de-fleeted cars via wholesale auctions to dealerships. By listing directly on Amazon, Hertz cuts out the middle layer, aiming for higher margins and greater control. For Amazon, it’s another category where the “browse to buy” journey is collapsing into its marketplace. If this model scales, it could pressure dealers who rely on off-lease and fleet cars as their most profitable inventory, while also validating Amazon as a channel for big-ticket consumer purchases. The ripple effects could extend beyond cars, signalling how other fleet-heavy industries (appliances, equipment, even consumer electronics) might bypass wholesale channels to go direct.

Your Move: Watch Amazon’s auto playbook as a signal for how quickly consumers will trust ecommerce for big-ticket items. Consider whether your brand has categories that could bypass traditional wholesale routes, and how marketplace partnerships could unlock direct-to-consumer reach at scale, increasing margins in the process.

TL;DR: Co-op has upgraded its electronic shelf labels (ESLs) with NFC technology, letting shoppers tap their phone on price tags to join its membership scheme.

Why It Matters: Co-op is turning a functional pricing tool into an omnichannel customer acquisition touchpoint. By embedding membership sign-up directly at the shelf edge, the retailer is collapsing friction and nudges sign-ups at the moment of purchase intent. This move extends ESLs beyond pricing efficiency into marketing infrastructure, unlocking upsell, data capture, and personalisation opportunities. With 700+ stores already live and a full rollout to 2,400 by 2026, Co-op is effectively building a network of digital shelf beacons. The rollout come just months after a 6.5m-member data breach, meaning trust and security will be scrutinised.

Your Move: If you’re investing in loyalty, rethink where and how customers join, can the sign-up be embedded at points of discovery (shelves, packaging, kiosks) rather than only at checkout or online? Look at how existing hardware (QR, NFC, AR) can double as acquisition channels while delivering real-time value. Also, consider how these same physical touchpoints could be retooled over time to support broader omnichannel experiences and even endless aisle access.

BiSell (Shopify App) - A powerful upsell and cross-sell app that helps boost average order value with Amazon-style “Frequently Bought Together” bundles, pre-purchase prompts, and post-purchase one-click upsells. Ideal for DTC brands looking to unlock incremental revenue without extra traffic spend. Supports multi-language and multi-currency stores.

GoodsFox (Free Trial) - An ad intelligence platform that reveals competitor strategies across 10 major ad channels, including Google, Facebook, and TikTok. Useful for spotting traffic opportunities, uncovering creative trends, and benchmarking performance to refine your own campaigns.

Curated deep dives, longer reads and analysis shaping the future of retail and ecommerce.

Rage-Bait Ads Are Risky, So Why Do Brands Keep Making Them? (6 min) Read Here ›
Adweek unpacks why provocative “rage-bait” campaigns persist despite the backlash risk, and what brands are weighing in the trade-off between virality and reputation.

The Homepage Is Dead: Rethinking PDP Strategy for Revenue Growth (7 min) Read Here ›
Retail TouchPoints explores how product detail pages are overtaking homepages as the true revenue driver, and why brands must optimise PDPs for discovery and conversion.

Stop Losing Customers: 5 Friction Fixes That Boost Loyalty (5 min) Read Here ›
Entrepreneur outlines five practical ways to remove friction in the customer journey, helping brands improve retention and reduce churn.