In partnership with BCG and BCG X, a leading retail company launched a new business aimed at reducing food waste to enhance climate and societal impacts.
$120B
in bottom-line value delivered to our retail clients in the last decade
5,000
retail consulting projects completed in the last ten years
>80%
of the top 50 global retailers have worked with us over the last decade
1,500+
retail consultants and 150+ dedicated retail partners serving retailers around the globe
Our Retail Industry Consulting Services
Build customer loyalty through quality, on-trend styles offered at the right time, with the right price, and in the right physical or online locations, maximizing operational agility and minimizing cost.
Balance heritage with innovation and inspire discerning clientele with timeless craftsmanship, exclusive experiences, and responsible provenance.
Grocery Stores and Mass Merchandising
Staying ahead in every essential by uniting sharp value, broad assortment, and effortless omnichannel shopping.
Gas Stations and Convenience Stores
Providing time-pressed travelers with fast, frictionless experiences at the pump—and fresh offerings beyond.
Specialty Retail
Helping retailers meet unique customer needs by driving loyalty, productivity, and efficient growth across diverse formats.
Food Distribution and Service
Delivering high-quality products to restaurants and grocery stores through safe, reliable, and cost-efficient networks.
Restaurants
Delighting guests with crave-worthy menus, consistent operations, and flexible ordering wherever and whenever they dine.
How We Help Clients in the Retail Industry
BCG’s retail consultants pair deep functional, geographic, and segment expertise with leading digital and AI capabilities to help retailers deliver rapid, transformative change, focusing on delivering bottom-line impact and tying our fees to tangible results.
No matter the goal, we bring the capabilities and expertise to drive measurable impact across the following:
No matter the goal, we bring the capabilities and expertise to drive measurable impact across the following:
Consumer Demand and Growth Strategy
By adopting our time-tested playbooks and proprietary technologies, retailers understand how to track consumer demand, meet stakeholder expectations, and stay ahead of competitors. We help them chart new formats, markets, and revenue streams; unlock M&A deal value; unlock green growth by implementing sustainability practices across the value chain; and amplify total shareholder return through growth, efficiency, and disciplined capital allocation.
Merchandising, Pricing, and Promotions
Assortment and merchandising decisions powered by our proprietary AI tools maximize category performance, drive customer-centric pricing and promotions, and ultimately increase margins and loyalty. In addition, we both help retailers design, source, and market differentiated private-label ranges to improve market share and profitability, and apply granular product cost and strategic sourcing redesigns to unlock savings and resilience.
Marketing, Media, and Loyalty
BCG’s data-powered marketing AI suite ignites brand love and superior ROI. We help retailers create personalization and loyalty offerings that build lifelong customers by turning first-party data into tailored moments and rewards on a global scale. Retail media and data monetization capabilities convert shopper insights into high-margin, data-based products that fund the next wave of growth.
Agentic AI and Technology
Our agentic AI capabilities span and enhance multiple retail functions, including personalization, loyalty, and e-commerce. By working with clients to deploy AI agents, modernize foundational technology, and accelerate digital innovation, our retail consulting team keeps them ahead of evolving consumer demands.
Cost Optimization
Addressing each element of cost management independently, we reset the cost base across the value chain and deliver significant value by aligning operating costs with a retailer’s customer value proposition. Along the way, we balance rigorous tradeoffs between cost, service, and experience.
Supply Chain and Operations
We assist retailers in optimizing operations along the full value chain. In supply chain logistics and distribution, we balance elevating service while also reducing costs. We use predictive AI to balance available inventory and working capital, all while growing sales and freeing up cash. Within store operations, our retail consultants help clients empower frontline teams and digitize processes to lift productivity and guest satisfaction. And to reduce shrinkage and fraud, we leverage deep analytics in loss prevention.
Our Impact with Clients in the Retail Industry
33%
above target
Working with a leading EU retailer, BCG created a new pricing and promotions strategy and applied a suite of automated merchant analytics applications on approximately 25,000 SKUs, optimizing all food categories. Our joint work delivered promotional results that were 33% above target in the first year. It also reduced the range of SKUs by around 20% while making it more relevant for customers. In addition, there was a 6% increase in like-for-like volume—driven by the investment of liberated funds into pricing for top lines—along with a significant improvement in value perception.
10k
products
BCG delivered an AI transformation at a global fashion retailer, in close partnership with the client’s internal team. Using our technology partners, including BCG X, the team leveraged AI to improve forecasting and pricing for more than 10,000 products, optimize inventory across more than 3,000 stores, and generate over 500,000 automated personalized emails. Completing a small pilot in four weeks, the team quickly scaled it, achieving a double-digit profit uplift. The project scaled to more than 70% of the global business in less than one year, and the industrialized model was complete in 18 months.
$1B+
in value delivered
A leading North American convenience-format retail chain partnered with BCG on a multi-year transformation to become a tech-enabled, AI-native retailer. Starting with pricing and markdown optimization, the work expanded to merchandising, operations, loyalty, and cost. The result: improved customer experience, workforce productivity, and more than $1 billion in value.
30%
growth
A retailer in Asia-Pacific with ambitious environmental targets partnered with BCG to create a business incubator to develop and commercialize projects. Together, we defined the incubator’s role, operating model, and governance, then prioritized and designed four scalable initiatives in upstream food waste, plastics action, sustainable agriculture, and waste-as-a-resource. Deliverables included a detailed roadmap and, with the resource budget needed to meet targets of 30% growth, 4X reduction in net GHG emissions and 2X diverted food waste.
Client Impact
Our Products and Solutions for the Retail Industry
Our retail consultants offer a unique set of products and solutions, powered by BCG X. These proprietary tools help clients harness the power of AI so they can shape the future of the retail industry.
Retail AI by BCG X
Retail AI helps clients optimize pricing, promotions, and markdowns to boost profit and customer value in a fast-changing retail environment.
Merch AI by BCG X
Within Retail AI, Merch AI decodes a fundamental retail challenge: how to offer the right products in the right stores at the right cost.
Fabriq Personalization AI by BCG X
Unleash the power of data-driven marketing and fast-track customized marketing with our personalization platform for retailers.
Article
October 6, 2025
Without intervention, retailers risk being reduced to background utilities in agent-controlled marketplaces.
Slideshow
November 3, 2025
BCG’s annual Black Friday Consumer Study reveals shoppers actively comparing prices, demanding discounts and transparency from retailers, and using generative AI to help.
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