Retailers who delay adopting generative AI risk falling behind as consumer expectations continue to evolve, driven by global e-commerce leaders and personalised digital experiences.
That’s according to Carly Lynch, Principal Strategist for Retail, Media and Travel at Adobe’s Digital Strategy Group for APAC, who said the pressure to meet rising customer standards is pushing businesses to rethink how they scale content, unify data, and personalise engagement across channels.
“Our customers are looking to those global retailers, and it’s those global retailers that have reset those customer experiences,” Lynch told RetailBiz on the sidelines of Adobe Summit 2025 held at the International Convention Centre (ICC) in Sydney.
“Unless you can offer an experience that is as good, if not better and differentiated for your brand, then your ability to compete is forever diminished or at least challenged.”
Building trust in Gen AI, one test pod at a time
Lynch noted that while generative AI is emerging as a key enabler for retailers, adoption is often slowed by internal hesitation.
“The challenge is really coming from a fear of trust, a fear of credibility, and making sure that we’re leveraging AI in a safe, incredible manner,” she explained.
To address these concerns, many retailers are setting up “small test and learn pods” to trial generative AI in a safe, controlled environment.
These initiatives are designed to help internal teams better understand the capabilities of the technology while establishing guardrails for brand safety and content governance.
“It’s about taking their internal organisation on the journey to understand it’s not something to be feared but something to be embraced,” said Lynch.
“It’s something to help the organisation scale and it’s something to help the organisation drive better customer experiences across channels, which will ultimately drive loyalty and thereby drive revenue growth as well.”
Connecting the customer journey: From store to screen
A persistent challenge for retailers is unifying the customer experience across multiple touchpoints — from physical stores to mobile apps, websites, and even wearables.
“When you have a fashion retailer and you have an experience in store, how does that in-store experience connect with the mobile phone?,” she said.
“That is a real challenge for our retailers, to be able to piece together. Now when they can start to actually understand the signals and they can start to understand where in the customer journey they can minimise friction. And by minimising friction, they improve the customer experience that’s offered and by doing that, they then start to drive.”
Lynch said that Adobe’s tools are helping retailers bridge this gap, using first-party data to stitch together customer signals and personalise content across touchpoints from web pages and apps to in-store digital displays.
Scaling content to match omnichannel demand
Another major pressure point lies in content creation. As personalisation becomes standard, retailers must produce modular content at a far greater volume and deliver it in real time across platforms.
“Content, once upon a time used to just be…a web page or a page or a poster. Now, when we think about content, we’re thinking about the modularity of that content, the components that make up the page or the poster and changing in and out, based on personalisation,” Lynch emphasised.
“And with that the proliferation and the volume of content needed to actually deliver that one-to-one personalised experience, is so much greater than what it used to be. And so the other way that Adobe’s helping customers is to be able to create the scale of content to be able to deliver the hyper personalised customer experience at a one-to-one level.”
Adobe’s solutions support not only content creation but also automated content assembly across channels from web and mobile to in-store digital displays, powered by the same customer data.
“We’re helping them with data connection with content scale and also the journey orchestration and how that experience transcends online and offline,” said Lynch.
E-commerce, B2B, and the blurred lines of modern retail
While Adobe is best known for powering large-scale B2C retail experiences, Lynch said the company is also seeing rising demand from adjacent industries — including banks, airlines, and hospitality providers — that are adopting retail-style strategies to engage consumers.
She also pointed to the growing importance of B2B models, particularly in regions like Asia and Africa, where small, independent retailers source products directly from large suppliers.
“It’s not just about the B2C. It’s also about the B2B experience as well,” said Lynch.
She cited Coca-Cola as an example, a company that traditionally operated through B2B channels but has introduced more direct engagement models as a result of COVID-19. That shift has also helped support smaller retail partners who rely on digital access to secure products.
“Now you’ve got the mum-and-pop stores, the smaller retailers, buying from the big conglomerates to secure a product.”
“It might only be one or two additional units, but when we think about the number of Mum and Pop stores that exist across Asia, across Africa, and so forth, the volume and the ability for those smaller retailers to scale to meet the growing demand of their consumers [matter] as well.”
Looking ahead: LLMs, brand guardrails and continued innovation
Adobe continues to expand its product suite to meet growing demand for AI-powered tools. A recently announced large language model (LLM) allows content to be optimised for Gen AI traffic, which Lynch said is “doubling every two months.”
To maintain quality and brand consistency, Adobe has introduced brand guardrails into its creative tools. These ensure that content generated through Gen AI aligns with a retailer’s specific brand guidelines before it can be approved.
“When content is created leveraging Gen AI, it actually checks against your brand guidelines,” Lynch explained.
“It gives you a score…Are you compliant with your brand guidelines or not? If you are compliant, then it allows a human then to intervene and approve for that creative to go through. If you’re non-complied it, then gives you a warning to say, ‘Sorry, this is not compliant, can you please make the appropriate revision?'”
Ultimately, Lynch said Adobe’s goal is to help its retail customers deliver experiences that are relevant, efficient, and scalable in a market where expectations are only rising.