Justin Thomas, VP Sales EMEA North for Akeneo, explores why product experience is no longer owned separately by brands or retailers but is emerging as a joint driver of revenue and competitive advantage.
Product experience (PX) is no longer simply a marketing layer and now sits in importance alongside price, promotion and availability. As a result, it is becoming a shared commercial responsibility between brands and retailers, with direct implications for margin, conversion and customer trust.
Product experience is moving onto the P&L, a shift brought about by the need to arrest poor product information before it frustrates the customer and creates measurable financial damage for both sides of the value chain. When a shopper receives a product that does not match its description, the cost shows up immediately in returns, lost margin, operational expenses and declining loyalty, all of these being shared costs.
Returns are the most visible symptom. A significant proportion of returns are now linked directly to inaccurate, incomplete or inconsistent product information, whether that is sizing, materials, compatibility or usage claims. For retailers, this erodes already tight margins through reverse logistics and write-downs. For brands, it damages equity and reduces sell-through. The harsh reality is that neither side benefits and yet both pay.
At the same time, customer tolerance for poor product information is evaporating. Shoppers who navigate fragmented journeys across marketplaces, social commerce, retailer sites and AI-driven discovery expect consistency. When product stories break between touchpoints, confidence collapses and when that happens, conversion follows. This is where the commercial impact of PX becomes unavoidable. Product experience is no longer about making products look appealing; it is about making them searchable/findable (?), understandable, comparable and trustworthy in every context where they appear.
Regulation is accelerating this shift. Emerging requirements around sustainability claims, product transparency and digital product passports are effectively turning product data into a regulated interface. Claims must be substantiated, attributes must be accurate and provenance must be traceable. In this environment, good enough product data is no longer sufficient. It must be governed, validated, trusted, comprehensive and agile.
Product truth is a shared responsibility which is why leading brands and retailers are beginning to formalise PX within Joint Business Planning (JBP). Historically, JBP has focused on revenue targets, promotions, supply chain efficiency and category growth. Increasingly, it is expanding to include shared KPIs around conversion rates, return reduction, data accuracy and trust signals.
This will change the way both parties collaborate. Instead of debating price and promotion in isolation, brands and retailers will come together around the quality and consistency of the product experience itself by investing in richer content, better attribution, improved taxonomy and stronger governance models.
The most progressive partnerships are already treating product data as a joint asset. Brands are taking greater responsibility for the completeness and accuracy of their product information at source while retailers are ensuring that this information is consistently presented, enriched and contextualised across channels.
Technology is a critical enabler of this shift. Platforms that provide a single source of truth for product information enable brands and retailers to collaborate on structured, enriched and governed data. However, the real transformation comes from how that data is used. Agentic AI is now emerging as the operational layer that turns product data into action. Rather than simply analysing data, these systems can reason, decide and execute across channels. They can dynamically tailor product experiences to individual shoppers, ensure consistency across touchpoints and continuously optimise content based on performance signals.
To work effectively though, AI needs structured, accurate and enriched product information because even the most advanced models will produce inconsistent or misleading outputs. This is why product data governance is becoming a strategic priority, not just a technical one.
The financial implications are significant. Improved product data accuracy reduces returns and associated costs, better product experiences increase conversion and basket size, and consistent information across channels builds trust, which drives repeat purchase and long-term loyalty. When these gains are shared between brands and retailers, PX becomes a tool for mutual growth.
There is also a competitive dimension. As AI-driven discovery becomes more prevalent, the quality of product data will determine which products are surfaced, recommended and purchased. In an environment where algorithms mediate the customer journey, structured and trusted product information becomes a prerequisite for visibility.
Product experience is becoming a core component of commercial strategy, embedded within joint planning, shared metrics and collaborative investment. For brands and retailers, the question is no longer whether to prioritise PX, but how quickly they can align around it.
