Beyond the golden quarter: building omnichannel JBPs for 2026 Success

We are now heading towards the end of year, the busiest period for retailers, brands and manufacturers. This Golden Quarter typically delivers the highest sales of the year, driven by major seasonal and trading events.

Yet, while the focus is often on delivering short-term peak performance, this period is also when businesses look ahead to the coming year. For many, that means engaging retail partners in Joint Business Planning (JBP) discussions; aligning on 2026 goals, priorities, and investment.

Adapt JBPs to reflect realities of omnichannel shopping behaviour

Not every organisation is fully integrating omnichannel thinking into its JBP approach yet. While many activation plans acknowledge multiple channels, there remains a strong bias toward large physical stores. Opportunities could, therefore, be missed to create a joined-up shopper experience that reflects today’s “research online, purchase anywhere” reality.

When we at IGD speak to leading businesses we see three consistent traits:

1. Shopper-led, not brand-led planning.

They start from a clear understanding of shopper missions and occasions across the retailer’s ecosystem, identifying the behaviours and needs driving these.

Their JBP approach is shopper, rather than brand, centric.  As a result, shopper missions and occasions become central to the understanding of journeys across the retailer’s ecosystem, identifying the behaviours and needs driving these.

2. Clarity on the role of each channel.

Successful JBPs articulate how channels serve different missions, and shape activation accordingly.

There’s an understanding of the differing roles that channels play in servicing these missions and occasion needs, and that joint plans should reflect the individual strengths of these when it comes to activation

3. Aligned space, range, and investment strategies.

The best plans flex formats, pack sizes, and media activation to suit each mission and channels’ strengths.

Portfolio, space and investment focus is better matched to mission and channel variations, for example ensuring that the right price, pack or format range is in place to support differing needs, or new product launch initiatives are being supported with appropriate discretional store and online space, and media activation.

In short, strong omnichannel JBPs radiate out from the shopper, not the shelf, enabling brands to apply the right portfolio, marketing, and investment across the year in partnership with retailers. The result is a triple win: for shopper, retailer, and brand alike.

Considerations for JBPs that span digital and physical touchpoints

Suppliers who develop and deliver successful omni-relevant JBPs do so by ensuring digital components are considered from the initial opportunity definition stage through to build (identifying activations and resource allocation), then delivery and tracking; ultimately, the JBP reflects omnichannel needs.

For example, as you define opportunities for the year ahead, ensure you analyse online performance drivers alongside large-store and convenience data. When assessing shopper behaviour, look at the differences between offline and online baskets. Utilise channel specific insights, like retailer clickstream data, online journey and navigational information.

Unique channel insights, such as ratings and reviews, or product content quality data, from external providers should be combined with EPOS and panel data from traditional sources.

As you step into the design stage of the JBP, engage digital channel experts early to co-develop omni-relevant activations. They may recommend enhancing and supporting product content basics that drive visibility and conversion of your brands. You should consider retailer alignment to refresh product titles and deploy mobile ready hero images.

Opportunities could arise to improve a retailer’s web experience through taxonomy and navigation changes. Alternatively, there are several areas where conversion, frequency and basket size opportunities can be tackled through digital means.

Digital trading and media colleagues will be able to steer you on the activation and brand activity needed to capitalise on these areas. It will be key to mirror digital and in-store activations to reinforce discovery and conversion. Finally, they can guide on retailer ecommerce hierarchy and organisational structures to aid alignment and support.

The third stage is delivery and tracking. Having a strongly aligned plan with your retail partner will ensure consistent activation across all channels. This is vitally to drive consistent and timely deployment of your activity online, to boost visibility and aid conversion online as well as in store.

When your activations go live it is essential to track performance - be sure to “walk the store” physically and digitally, to assess compliance and quality. As part of your wider JBP you will likely have service levels for shelf availability, so be sure to watch these closely especially during online pick peak times.

Monitoring business performance over the life of the JBP needs to be done holistically, across all channels. However, omnichannel metrics may be new to your business so concentrate on:

• What’s my share of? (business, search, model)

• Am I growing faster than? (competitors, other brands, the business model?)

• Am I profitable? (at brand level, business model or method of delivery)

From here, you can add layers of channel relevant metrics which the retailer can adhere to from a reporting and data perspective. Additional metrics may include things like share of voice, review sentiment, click-through rates, and online availability. Retailer engagement is essential to align on which metrics can be tracked via shared or third-party data sources.

How retail media, AI, and automation could shape the future of JBPs

On retail media, the change is happening already. The most forward-facing brands are now separating their commercial agreements from their media ones.

The driver for this is the greater convergence of media with online product content and commerce. Meanwhile, retailers are seeking greater investment in the hyper-competitive retail media network space.  As a result, it is important for brands to identify greater value in the retailer-brand media partnership, which can be negotiated separately from commercial agreements.

Media focused JBPs can concentrate on specific capabilities, investment parameters or data sharing commitments without being tied to commercial or trading limitations. At times the media opportunity may be more mature than the commercial one, however, it is important that both remain aligned and focused around shopper needs.

Looking further ahead, AI and automation will accelerate personalisation, predictive planning, operation and performance optimisation. JBPs offer an ideal structure for experimenting with these technologies through joint pilots providing joint investment of people and other resources.

This helps build trust and shared understanding before tackling new or experimental initiatives in the form of “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” (BHAGs); stretch initiatives designed to drive long-term learning and collaboration across shopper, brand, supply chain, IT and data teams.

Start laying the foundations today for tomorrow

As the Golden Quarter intensifies, suppliers should be using this time to not only deliver strong execution today, but to lay the foundations for tomorrow.

Modern omnichannel relevant JBPs must:

• Start with the shopper, not the brand.

• Integrate digital and physical channels seamlessly.

• Use media, data, and automation as engines for collaboration and growth.

When done well, omnichannel JBPs become more than commercial negotiations, they become shared growth platforms built on trust, insight, and execution excellence.

If you want to know more, please get in touch with our experts: