Industry
Retail
Omnichannel CX and Intelligent Innovation – The Future of Retail
HIGHLIGHTS
- Billions of shopping baskets cross retail counters every week. Yet, only a tiny fraction of those baskets reflect a conscious green choice, even though most shoppers say they care deeply about sustainability.
- Green loyalty rewards customers not just for what they buy, but how they buy. Data and transparency make sustainability as clear and comparable as price.
- Sustainability has to be more than a shelf tag. With proper adoption, ‘green loyalty’ can be a useful strategy to convert ESG ambitions of the retailers to measurable business advantage.
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The green gap
What if your grocery basket could help the planet and your wallet?
Most shoppers want to buy better but their baskets don’t reflect that sentiment. Every week, billions of shopping baskets cross retail counters. Yet, fewer than 5% of those baskets reflect a conscious green choice, even though most shoppers say they care deeply about sustainability. That’s the sustainability paradox in retail, a gap between intent and action. Per the TCS Global Retail Outlook study integrating sustainability and ESG into operations is one of the top mission-critical objectives for retailers with nearly 31% of the respondents polled saying they plan to do so by creating sustainable product lines with transparent sourcing.
Shoppers want to buy better. Retailers want to serve the planet. But three barriers keep sustainability on the sidelines:
- Signal noise: Eco-labels are inconsistent and confusing.
- Incentive mismatch: Sustainable products often cost more, with no visible reward.
- Trust deficit: Consumers doubt green claims and regulators are cracking down.
What if the solution wasn’t persuasion, but participation? What if every sustainable choice earned shoppers something they could see, spend, and celebrate?
From shelf to impact
Loyalty must reward how consumers buy, not just how much they spend.
About 93% of companies polled for the TCS Global Retail Outlook study, currently have or are planning loyalty programs. A third of those say loyalty programs are a critical enabler of long-term customer retention, and over a quarter view them as a key channel powering enterprise-wide personalization. In addition, 31% of the respondents have bookmarked improving customer experience and loyalty as a mission critical objective.
While retailers spend billions on loyalty programmes to build repeat business, yet most reward only one behaviour - more spending. ‘Green loyalty’ changes the equation by rewarding customers not just for what they buy, but how they buy.
A loyalty framework that integrates verified product data and sustainability credentials can do three things:
- Reward better choices, not just bigger baskets
- Make impact measurable at stock-keeping unit (SKU) level
- Turn sustainability into a differentiator, not a compliance box
For example, a pack of planet-friendly eggs can be certified carbon-neutral and an eco-cleaning range could earn shoppers green credits. Each verified sustainable purchase could translate into points, discounts, or even a donation to environmental projects. When sustainability becomes visible and rewarding, it can help shift behaviours.
Sustainability & price
Sustainability must be defined as clearly as price.
To build trust, retailers must treat sustainability data as rigorously as pricing data. Every product can be mapped to an impact score derived from recognised standards like ISO 14067 or the GHG Protocol, quantifying emissions, water use, or packaging recyclability.
Not all products will have full lifecycle data from day one, so a tiered approach helps:
- Tier 1: Verified product footprint (eg., carbon-neutral eggs)
- Tier 2: Certified products (FSC, Organic, Fairtrade)
- Tier 3: Directional attributes (locally sourced, recycled content)
Clear labeling and transparent communication about these tiers can cut confusion and strengthen consumer trust. When tied to rewards, these signals drive measurable change.
For sustainability to scale, it must make financial sense for customers, brands, and retailers. Brands can redirect a portion of trade-promotion budgets to subsidise green credits, packaging reduction and refill formats can lower logistics costs, and SKU-level tracking supports environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting and regulations like the European Union’s (EU) Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and India’s Green Credit Programme.
Bigger payoff
‘Green loyalty’ is not charity, it's strategy.
At the heart of ‘green loyalty’ is technology that unites product data, consumer insights, and ESG reporting.
Retail systems can connect:
- Product impact graphs (SKU to suppliers and life cycle assessment (LCA) data)
- Eligibility engines (real-time reward rules)
- Loyalty wallets (credits and impact saved)
- Analytics dashboards (ESG and supplier insights)
The benefits multiply across the value chain:
- For shoppers: Tangible rewards and transparent choices
- For retailers: Deeper loyalty and compliance-ready data
- For brands: Visibility for verified green products
- For the planet: Reduced waste, emissions, and overconsumption
Pilots, including Colruyt’s Eco-Score and Mastercard PlanetPoints, show encouraging results, with emission reduction and higher engagement in sustainable SKUs.
In a nutshell, sustainability can’t live on a shelf tag, it must live in the shopping journey. ‘Green loyalty’ converts ESG ambition into measurable business advantage. Retailers already own the two most powerful levers of change: data and loyalty. The question now isn’t whether shoppers care, it's whether retailers can afford to ignore the power of rewarding them for proving it.