• by Sarah Mahoney , Staff Writer, December 30, 2025

Retail didn’t lack for headlines this year. But reader behavior -- at least, Retail Insider readers -- tells a clearer story about what actually got their attention. The most-read stories clustered around a few persistent concerns: whether consumers would keep spending, how retailers could reach them more efficiently, and which strategies still had room to grow.

Consumer anxiety and fatigue dominated attention. Stories forecasting slower -- though still massive -- holiday spending, along with research showing shoppers pulling back, resonated strongly, with Holiday Sales Expected To Slow, But Still Top $1.6 Trillion and Deloitte: Shoppers Will Cut Holiday Spending By 10% topping our list. So did softer signals of strain, including Ikea research finding Americans “really tired.” Readers seem less interested in rosy projections than in realistic assessments of how much more consumers could absorb financially and emotionally.

Another major theme was retailers hunting for new growth levers as traffic gets harder to come by. Readers gravitated toward stories about creator platforms, retail media, bargain-led strategies, and operational reinvention. Coverage of Home Depot’s creator portal, Stitch Fix’s attempt to rethink personalization, Costco’s loyalty-first approach to retail media, and Walmart’s surge in value-driven ad sales all performed strongly, suggesting a clear appetite for pragmatic, revenue-building ideas.

That focus on reinvention extended beyond digital tactics. In fact, the single most-read story across all MediaPost outlets this year was Walmart Buys Shopping Malls, Plans Multi-Use Centers, by my colleague Tanya Gadzik, another sign that readers are watching how retailers can reposition themselves in an increasingly omnichannel universe.

Brand relevance was another consistent draw. Stories about Sleep Number’s identity shakeup, Men’s Wearhouse tackling modern style confusion, JCPenney’s bold rebrand, and even Dick’s Sporting Goods injecting humor into brand messaging all performed well. The common thread isn’t novelty for its own sake, but whether the reinvention can genuinely invite new customers into the fold.

Finally, technology stories resonated most when they were grounded, not starry-eyed. Readers engaged with AI and media coverage that explored limits and trade-offs, from whether YouTube can really replace TV (for Saatva Mattresses, the answer is no) to how H&M is cautiously experimenting with digital twins and AI partnerships.

Taken together, it seems retail watchers are less interested in silver bullets than in survival strategies, looking for tactics they can experiment with at their own companies. Heading into the new year, that mindset looks less like pessimism and more like realism.