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The Big Shift: From managing to mastering fragmentation

Fragmentation is eroding your marketing efficiency. Your brand teams, customer teams, and retail teams operate in completely separate silos—with different agencies, budgets, planning timelines, and KPIs. Add consumers abandoning linear purchase paths and retailers operating as media companies with proprietary data, and the problem multiplies. Meanwhile, smart brands aren’t running from fragmentation, they’re mastering it, connecting all these pieces into one unified system, and grabbing massive competitive advantage. This report shows you exactly how to shift from managing fragmentation to mastering it. 

The Big Shift: From managing to mastering fragmentation
Consumers today don't follow a linear path from awareness to purchase. They discover on social, get influenced by creators, trust AI for product recommendations, and buy across multiple channels. And they expect a seamless experience across all of it. Yet most brands still organize around functions instead of consumer journeys.
80%
of consumers take a non-linear path from discovery to purchase
73%
of Gen Z and 67% of millennials use social media to learn about new products
36%
of consumers have shifting from traditional search engines to Gen AI platforms
78%
of consumers expect a seamless brand presence across all channels

The 3 areas where fragmentation is challenging brands

With Consumers

The discovery and purchase journey has fundamentally shifted.

  • Discovery and purchase now happen via social media and creators
  • Consumers trust AI and agentic recommendations
  • Non-linear paths make traditional attribution limited

With Retailers

Retail partners have transformed into media powerhouses.

  • Major retailers now operate as media companies competing for your investment
  • Performance-based negotiations are replacing traditional relationship-driven JBPs
  • Consumer data is proprietary and siloed within each retailer ecosystem

Within Brands

Internal operations haven't kept pace with the external shift.

  • Digital and physical commerce teams operate separately with conflicting priorities
  • Walled gardens require unified consumer IDs that most brands don't have
  • Traditional ROAS doesn't capture long-term value or true ROI

Want the framework that shows you how leading brands are driving better ROI?

The brands that are winning have stopped managing fragmentation and started mastering it. This report shows you exactly how to do the same, before the gap gets wider.
Inside the report, you'll get:
  • A deep dive into the 3 areas of fragmentation and why it's costing you billions in wasted spend and missed opportunities
  • A detailed playbook on how to shift from managing fragmentation to mastering it across three key areas: consumers, retailers, and within your own brand
  • Proven frameworks and case studies from leading brands winning at scale across multiple retailers
  • Actionable strategies to unify your teams, align your budgets, and measure Return on Consumer
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