Retailers in Asia-Pacific invest in loyalty tools to retain customers

New Delhi: Four in five Asia-Pacific (APAC) retailers express confidence in executing their customer engagement strategies over the coming year, despite economic headwinds, according to new findings from Twilio’s survey conducted at the National Retail Federation’s 2025 Retail’s Big Show Asia Pacific.

The research, conducted with 288 APAC retail professionals, reveals that while sentiment remains largely positive, customer loyalty is increasingly difficult to maintain. In the current value-conscious and price-sensitive landscape, 27% of respondents cited sustaining customer trust and loyalty as their foremost challenge. This was followed by concerns around addressing price-related dissatisfaction (23%) and managing communication on pricing or product availability (21%).

While 43% of retailers anticipate mixed market conditions, those expressing high levels of confidence are actively exploring ways to re-engage their customer base. Loyalty and re-engagement (28%) emerged as the most significant area of untapped opportunity, ahead of product discovery (24%) and post-sale care (18%).

Retailers are prioritising tools and strategies that support these focus areas. Personalised offers and loyalty programmes are being adopted by 25% of respondents, while 27% are investing in conversational AI and 22% are increasing human agent support. These choices reflect an industry-wide shift towards more empathetic and human-centred engagement at every stage of the customer experience.

"Confidence is high in the region, which is fantastic. However, the brands that truly shine will be the ones that actually do something with that confidence," said Nicholas Kontopoulos, Vice President of Marketing, Asia Pacific and Japan at Twilio. "Customer loyalty is under pressure. Building resilience means responding to customers with empathy, relevance, and precision. And that begins with a data-driven, customer-first approach."

Several APAC retailers are restructuring their engagement strategies with data and personalisation at the core.

Fashion platform ZALORA, which serves more than 55 million customers across Asia, integrated its customer data and equipped internal teams with self-service tools. This enabled faster campaign execution, reduced from weeks to minutes, and led to a doubling of conversion rates.

Pomelo Fashion, popular across Southeast Asia, introduced personalised product recommendations and discovery journeys tailored to each shopper. This approach resulted in a 50% rise in product engagement and supported a 15% increase in revenue.

Thailand’s Central Group unified its customer data across both digital and physical platforms, activating over 80 personalised, automated engagement use cases. These efforts led to a tenfold increase in campaign revenue attributed directly to the loyalty strategy.

The findings shared in this report are based on a survey of 288 APAC retail professionals conducted at the National Retail Federation’s 2025 Retail’s Big Show Asia Pacific, held from June 3 to 5, 2025.