The retail market has rarely been more uncertain. The retailers navigating this successfully aren’t moving slower — they’re testing smarter.
Over the past year, MarketDial has analyzed hundreds of in-store experiments run by large and medium retailers and restaurants. Across categories, formats, and banners, two questions consistently rise to the top:
- How are retailers actually innovating with AI in stores?
- Which pricing strategies are working — and which ones quietly fail?
These aren’t theoretical questions. They’re being answered every week through live experiments, using real customer behavior instead of assumptions.
Pricing: What’s Actually Working Right Now
Pricing remains one of the most sensitive — and misunderstood — levers in retail. Additionally, retailers are under tremendous cost pressures due to inflation, tariffs, and shifting consumer behaviors. Getting pricing strategy right has never been more important.
Across recent price experiments, a clear pattern has emerged:
- Smaller pricing changes tend to outperform bold moves
- Larger increases can deliver upside, but fail more often
- Promotions are increasingly used to manage customer sensitivity and protect margin
The takeaway isn’t to avoid pricing action — it’s to validate it carefully. Retailers that test before scaling are learning faster, with far less downside risk.
AI in Retail: Where Value Shows Up — and Where It Doesn’t
Across recent retail experiments:
- Roughly 30% succeed
- About 25% fail
- The rest deliver neutral outcomes
That failure rate isn’t a weakness — it’s the point. Testing allows retailers to fail fast and cheaply, preventing unproven ideas from scaling into expensive mistakes.
Without testing, retailers face similar odds — but with significantly higher financial and operational risk.
Want the Full Story?
This post highlights only a small portion of what MarketDial is seeing across hundreds of live retail experiments.
The full report includes:
- How peers are testing AI in real stores
- Which pricing strategies are outperforming expectations
- Where retailers are pulling back — and why
If you’d like us to walk you through the full findings and share what’s most relevant to your business, we’d love to connect.
