How UK Retailers Are Winning with Unified Commerce
Beyond Omnichannel
The concept of omnichannel retail — being present across multiple channels — is now table stakes for UK retailers. The new competitive frontier is unified commerce: the complete integration of all customer touchpoints into a single, seamless experience where the distinction between online and offline ceases to exist.
UK consumers now expect to browse on their phone, try in store, buy online, return to a different store, and receive personalised recommendations that reflect their entire history across all channels. Retailers that deliver this unified experience are capturing disproportionate share of a retail market that remains fiercely competitive.
According to the British Retail Consortium, UK retailers with fully unified commerce capabilities grew revenue 12% faster than those with traditional omnichannel approaches in 2025. The gap is widening as consumer expectations continue to rise.
The Technology Foundation
Unified commerce requires a single view of the customer, a single view of inventory, and a single commerce platform that orchestrates transactions regardless of channel. This sounds simple but requires fundamental re-architecture of legacy retail technology stacks.
Most UK retailers built their digital capabilities alongside their physical operations, creating separate systems for e-commerce, point of sale, inventory management, and customer data. Unifying these systems is a multi-year, multi-million-pound undertaking that many retailers have been reluctant to prioritise.
Those that have made the investment are seeing significant returns. John Lewis Partnership's unified commerce platform allows any item to be bought, fulfilled, and returned through any channel combination. The platform's impact on customer satisfaction and basket size has been substantial, contributing to the partnership's improved financial performance.
Inventory Visibility and Flexible Fulfilment
Real-time inventory visibility across all locations — stores, warehouses, and in-transit — is the cornerstone of unified commerce. When a customer searches for a product, the retailer needs to know not just whether it's in stock but exactly where it is and the fastest, most cost-effective way to get it to the customer.
UK retailers are increasingly using stores as fulfilment centres for online orders, a strategy that reduces delivery times and costs while improving utilisation of store inventory. Sainsbury's, Zara, and Next have all expanded ship-from-store capabilities, with Next's Total Platform now fulfilling over 30% of online orders from stores.
This requires significant operational change. Store staff need training in order picking and packing. Store layouts may need modification to accommodate fulfilment activity. And the metrics used to evaluate store performance must evolve beyond pure in-store revenue to reflect the store's contribution to overall commerce.
Personalisation at Scale
Unified customer data enables personalisation that was impossible when customer information was siloed across channels. When a retailer knows a customer's complete purchase history, browsing behaviour, store visits, and service interactions, it can deliver genuinely relevant recommendations, offers, and experiences.
UK leaders in retail personalisation include ASOS, which uses AI-driven personalisation to tailor the entire shopping experience to individual customers, and Boots, whose Advantage Card data enables highly targeted marketing that consistently outperforms industry benchmarks.
The key challenge is balancing personalisation with privacy. UK consumers are increasingly aware of data usage and expect transparency about how their information is collected and used. Retailers that build personalisation on a foundation of trust and consent will outperform those that pursue personalisation at the expense of customer trust.
The Strategic Imperative
For UK retailers, unified commerce is not optional. Consumer expectations are set by the best experiences they encounter, regardless of sector, and those expectations will only continue to rise. Retailers that fail to unify their operations will find themselves unable to compete for customers who expect seamless, personalised, and frictionless experiences.
The investment required is significant, but the alternative — continuing with fragmented systems and inconsistent customer experiences — is a strategy for managed decline in an increasingly demanding market.