The retail conversation has a fixation problem. There is always another wave of commentary declaring that AI, ecommerce, or some combination of both will finally reduce shopping to pure utility: fast, frictionless, automated. And every year, specialty retail keeps proving that narrative incomplete.
Consider what actually happens when someone spends an hour deep in reviews before buying a foundation shade for their wedding day. They are not stuck. They are invested. Cross-referencing shades, watching tutorials, going back to the same product page three times — that is not friction, that is someone who genuinely cares about getting it right. Or consider someone who has been adding lamps to a wishlist for their first apartment for weeks, narrowing it down, going back to the same one, before finally checking out at midnight. These are not replenishment decisions. McKinsey's State of the Consumer 2025 found that Gen Z consumers, now the highest-splurging generation across every market surveyed, disproportionately direct that spending toward beauty and personal care, even as they pull back elsewhere. Shoppers in these categories are not looking to optimize; they’re looking to experience something.
The retailers who understand that thrill, and lean into it at every stage of the journey, are the ones building durable businesses.
Specialty retail runs on trust
The strongest specialty retailers are not just building stores. They are building relationships. The in-store experience, the sampling, the consultation, the moment a beauty advisor helps someone find the right shade, is where brand trust gets established. And increasingly, when a shopper comes back, they do it online.
That is the dynamic worth paying attention to. A shopper who has had a meaningful experience with a brand and wants to repurchase, goes directly to that retailer's site. They already trust the brand. They already know what they want. They are not browsing, they are buying. That shift from discovery to destination is what makes the owned ecommerce surface so valuable, and so high-stakes. Deloitte research published earlier this year found that 46% of retail executives named omnichannel experience enhancement their single biggest growth opportunity for 2026, ahead of loyalty programs and private label investment. The reason is not that stores and websites are equally important. It is that one primes the other.
McKinsey's State of Beauty 2025 puts numbers to it. The global beauty market is projected to grow 5% annually through 2030, driven by consumers who are skeptical of hype but willing to pay more for products that visibly perform. That loyalty, once earned, is sticky. Shoppers return not because an algorithm predicted they would but because they want to. That kind of relationship is exactly what makes the checkout moment on an owned ecommerce site so consequential. It is where trust either compounds or erodes.
The friction problem
None of that changes what happens at checkout. The moment a shopper has decided to buy is exactly where friction does the most damage, and the data on this is unambiguous. Cart abandonment rates sit above 70%, according to the Baymard Institute, which aggregates checkout UX data across hundreds of retailers. The leading culprits: unexpected costs, forced account creation, and checkout flows too slow or complicated to complete on mobile. The shopping experience may be emotionally charged and identity-driven. The checkout experience still needs to work.
Checkout abandonment is not primarily a price problem. It is a usability and trust problem. Shoppers who were genuinely ready to buy left because the final step felt like an obstacle. Fixing that has straightforward returns: fewer lost sales, higher order values, and better data on what actually converts. That window, between purchase intent and completed transaction, is where Rokt operates. Rokt's technology sits inside the checkout experience of specialty retailers, using real-time signals to surface relevant offers at the moment a customer is most engaged.
Where AI adds value (and where it does not)
AI is not going to replicate the hours someone spends researching a product, saving it to a wishlist, and coming back to it until they are ready to commit. A shopper who has done that work before choosing makeup for their wedding day is not looking for an automated shortcut. They want to be seen. Retailers who try to use AI to replace that moment will find out quickly how badly it lands.
The more grounded application is relevance, specifically at the Transaction Moment™ — the point when a customer has committed to a purchase and is moving through checkout. McKinsey's state of consumer research shows that more than one-third of consumers now trade down in one category specifically to afford a splurge in another. That means the right offer, shown at the right moment, can determine which side of that trade-off a retailer lands on. The wrong offer, irrelevant, mistimed, interruptive, loses both the upsell and the goodwill. Rokt's approach to the Transaction Moment is built around that reality: using real-time signals to make sure what surfaces next is worth seeing.
Retail media is shifting in the same direction. eMarketer projects US retail media ad spend will reach $69.33 billion in 2026, with the market moving steadily toward offers delivered at the point of purchase. The focus is no longer just measuring what happened but using what is happening right now to improve the outcome.
The post-discovery moment
That is the specific window Rokt operates in. The shopper has already done the hard work. They found the product, decided they want it, and are moving through checkout. What happens in that window shapes more than just this transaction.
Relevant offers at the Transaction Moment build loyalty and surface complementary products. But they also do something less visible: they tell the retailer who this customer actually is beyond the product they just bought. What they engage with, what they skip, what categories sit close enough to matter. That signal, accumulated across transactions, is what turns a one-time buyer into a customer a retailer genuinely understands. Rokt's technology is built to capture that intelligence, giving specialty retailers a clearer picture of their customers with every checkout.
Specialty retail's advantage has always been the quality of the experience it creates. The retailers who protect that at every step, including the moment of purchase, are the ones who keep it. AI does not change that equation. Deployed at the right moment, with relevance as the standard, it helps retailers deliver on it.