A joint project between Kesko and Aalto University examined the development of retail media, focusing on both everyday life and the moment of purchase

Aalto University School of Business, in collaboration with Kesko, carried out a research project to investigate the attitudes of K Retail Media's advertising customers toward current advertising methods and marketing planning. Retail media refers to the multi-channel advertising environments of retail stores and shopping venues and the channels that direct traffic to them. The project also examined future trends in retail media by interviewing representatives of two media agencies and conducting a comprehensive literature review.

Aapa Kurkela, a student of information and service management, and Vasilis Rantzos, a marketing student, studied K Retail Media's potential to develop its services to meet the needs of advertisers and media agencies as effectively as possible. The academic supervisor for the project was Juho-Petteri Huhtala, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Marketing at the School of Business. The project lasted from the beginning of March to the beginning of June, enabling in-depth cooperation with Kesko for three months in the spring of 2025.

The project mapped out various retail media providers and their solutions and explored the topic internationally, as the phenomenon is still relatively new and growing in Finland. Retail media, i.e., the multichannel media environments of retail stores and shopping venues, are still in their infancy, and commercial standards have not yet been fully established. 

The project focused on advertisers' marketing planning and how retail media fits into their media mix. In addition, the study examined advertisers' needs and what kinds of solutions and retail media packages serve them best. At the same time, attitudes toward K Retail Media's current advertising solutions were also assessed.

Advertisers want to take advantage of the opportunities offered by retail media

The final project output was a report combining the interview results with global solutions and channel entities. The report's findings were presented to K Retail Media staff in early June. In addition, the project team participated in Kesko's partner event in August to present the study and its results.

The results of the study highlighted advertisers' desire to take greater advantage of the opportunities offered by retail media, both in terms of everyday reach and, in particular, at the moment of purchase, by leveraging the capabilities of retail media. The role of targeting and related solutions attracted particular interest. Among the current solutions, the traditional K-ruokalehti magazine and Pirkka also unexpectedly emerged as significant parts of the multimedia package. Advertisers were interested in, among other things, the comprehensive accessibility of retail media and the conversion of advertising into direct sales.

Kesko was satisfied with the implementation and results of the project. ‘The work done has provided us with good tools for product development and even better overall solutions for advertisers to utilize,’ says Armi Slotte, Sales and Development Director.

The students were able to apply the research techniques they had learned and analyze interviews in a work-like environment. ‘The project was particularly interesting because of the novelty of the phenomenon. Each topic we researched brought valuable new information to the whole, and we got to participate in interesting interviews,’ Aapa Kurkela and Vasilis Rantzos say.

Postdoctoral researcher Juho-Petteri Huhtala says that the project succeeded in bringing out the views of key stakeholders—especially potential customers and partners—on how current solutions should be developed to be more relevant from the perspective of customer needs. 

‘Considering that retail media is currently the fastest growing media group, the concepts that have emerged challenge traditional ways of thinking about the role of marketing in value creation, and through them, the project offers valuable insights into clarifying the direction of the retail media business. This also provides a broader understanding of how retail media offerings can develop into a more competitive overall solution in the future – an alternative that will complement or even challenge more traditional digital advertising, such as communication in social media, in new ways.’