July 13, 2026
July 13, 2026
In the fast-moving world of retail, keeping up with shoppers can feel a bit like chasing a moving target. For researchers tasked with understanding Gen Z’s shopping behaviors, simply looking at sales spreadsheets or sending out basic multiple-choice surveys doesn’t cut it.
In the recent webinar From Insights to Impact: Research for the Next Generation of Shoppers, the Experience Design team from Foot Locker and Dscout’s Colleen Pate broke down how the team leaned into video tools and real-life storytelling. In doing so, they tackled the challenge of understanding a new generation reluctant to adopt AI shopping experiences.
Colleen Pate is a Senior Customer and Community Marketing Manager at Dscout.
Rosanna Volis is a Director, Experience Design at Foot Locker.
Kate Lackie is a Senior UX Researcher at Foot Locker.
Every research team eventually hits a crossroads when it comes to their tech stack.
For the Foot Locker team, that moment arrived when they were evaluating how to most efficiently scale qualitative insights while maintaining high standards for participant recruitment.
The team needed an approach that could…
Specifically, Foot Locker was struggling to recruit specific, nuanced consumer segments—such as hyper-focused Gen Z shoppers and fashion-forward trendsetters—through standard quantitative screeners. They required a platform capable of capturing rich qualitative depth, allowing stakeholders to see and hear their customers directly. After conducting a thorough competitive analysis of available tools, Dscout rose to the top as the ideal vehicle for running dynamic qualitative studies—and weaving those findings into compelling internal narratives.
There’s more to building a corporate culture that truly values customer stories than just choosing the right research platform. It also means changing how researchers talk to stakeholders, how cohorts are selected, and how findings are shared across the org.
Foot Locker laid this groundwork by focusing on dedicated expertise, business alignment, and proactive communication.
To keep operations running smoothly, Foot Locker set up their Dscout partnership to include a research advisor to help with the study.
Instead of acting as a standard help desk contacted only when something breaks, the Dscout advisor became a true extension of the Foot Locker team. She learned the ins and outs of the retail business, jumped into project kickoff meetings, and provided a trusted second brain for Kate to bounce ideas off of. Having another researcher in the room meant Kate didn’t have to spend hours breaking down basic context. The two could immediately get to work creating better studies.
Old-school screening tools usually limit researchers to multiple-choice questions or uninspired text boxes, making it tough to gauge a participant's real personality. Foot Locker leveled up their practice by using video auditions to find the right people. Instead of asking individuals to check boxes about their style, the team asked prospective participants to film a quick walkthrough of their actual closets, showing off their favorite outfits and shoes.
In one audition, a participant held up a pair of sneakers bought three months prior, explaining how he searched YouTube for sizing and styling tips, compared prices across competitors, and where he ultimately bought them. Seeing this participant standing in front of his actual wardrobe gave the team confidence that he fit their target profile. Even better, it provided authentic video clips that immediately grabbed the attention of corporate executives.
To ensure their work didn’t just sit on a shelf, Rosanna focused heavily on connecting the design team's daily tasks to Foot Locker's bigger corporate strategy. She invited VPs and e-commerce leaders to drop by team syncsde, share business updates, and explain the motivations behind shifting company priorities.
The team learned to plan their studies far ahead of the product roadmap and accepted the reality that about 30% of findings might never turn into an active build but were more thought-starters. Because they spent time building real relationships across the company, product partners became research ambassadors, advocating for customer insights and bringing up design findings in meetings the researchers weren’t even attending.
Corporate stakeholders don’t want to sit through a lengthy intro on research methodology. Research is meant to be a conversation starter that narrows down a problem, not a rigid, academic textbook.
Foot Locker started using a simple formula for presentations: the core findings were put right up front, leaving the study design details for the appendix. They also focused on making things completely frictionless for their partners. When the product managers started using a new digital roadmapping tool, Kate didn’t try to force them onto a separate research platform; she simply put the research roadmap directly into the exact same tool the product managers were already using. Meeting people within their preferred tools sparked natural curiosity and made customer insights a normal part of quarterly planning.
Armed with a better way to share stories, the team launched a week-long diary study to look closely at how different generations shop online and how they interact with emerging AI tools.
A massive shift is happening right now with younger consumers. After spending years scrolling through algorithm-driven social feeds that constantly show everyone the exact same products, younger shoppers are experiencing a growing pushback against digital sameness. They want to use personal style to express their true individuality.
When Foot Locker studied how AI fits into this picture, they discovered something unexpected: Gen Z reported the lowest level of trust in AI to guide their shopping decisions. Even though Gen Z grew up with digital technology, their fierce protective streak over their own personal style makes them incredibly skeptical of automated recommendations. They simply do not want an automated assistant telling them what to wear.
To map out these shifting habits, the team used Dscout to follow three main groups of shoppers over the course of a week:
A Dscout adviser helped draft multiple screeners and set the right incentives to ensure participants stayed engaged throughout the demanding multi-day study.
The study captured candid moments, like parent-child duos sitting on the couch together navigating shopping on a tablet, with the child completely running the shopping journey. By tracking these moments in real time, Foot Locker collected a massive mountain of authentic behavioral data.
Sorting through a week's worth of videos and journal entries is a daunting task. The team used Dscout's built-in AI tools to help summarize data, tag key themes, and double-check manual analysis. However, Kate made sure the technology acted strictly as a research assistant, not the boss. Human critical thinking stayed at the core of the project to ensure the final stories made sense for Foot Locker's specific brand.
The diary study highlighted a few major reasons why shoppers find current AI tools more annoying than helpful:
Instead of dumping data onto their stakeholders at the tail end of the project, Kate started dropping teaser trailers early on. She exported charts directly from the platform into an informal Figma file, and hosted casual, 30-minute debriefs to slowly build a narrative over time.
Because the broader team was brought along for the ride throughout the entire analysis, everyone felt a collective ownership over the data. The ultimate payoff arrived when a brand-new feature directly inspired by this study was successfully prioritized onto Foot Locker's upcoming product roadmap.
Looking back at their journey, Rosanna and Kate identified three core lessons for running a highly effective, lean research practice.
Internal teammates are not a monolithic group. An executive team needs a completely different story than a group of developers or product designers. Kate learned that it’s well worth the extra time to create different versions of presentation slide decks, framing customer problems as specific business opportunities using the exact language of the stakeholders being presented to.
Organizing findings around a clear user journey helps stakeholders visualize the customer's reality. However, researchers have to leave their academic egos at the door. When building user journeys, Kate realized she shouldn’t invent fancy new theoretical names for different phases. Instead, she used the exact terminology Foot Locker already used internally to describe its shopping funnel, so the story clicked instantly.
Standardizing how insights are delivered creates a predictable rhythm that teams can easily digest. Foot Locker normalized a simple, repeatable formula for their findings:
Foot Locker's experience proves that great user research isn't about running the most complicated study or writing the longest report, it's about making sure everyone in the company feels connected to the customer. By using simple collaboration features like Dscout's in-moment tagging tool, Rosanna and other internal stakeholders were able to watch study videos and tag specific moments for Kate to look at later, turning research into a shared team sport rather than a siloed department task.
For small research teams trying to scale their impact sustainably, Kate recommends learning to handle everyday corporate ambiguity with grace. If a researcher finds themselves overthinking a project or getting stuck in their own head, Kate's favorite trick is to simply set a 10-minute timer on the desk and force herself to start writing down whatever project management checklist or raw thoughts come to mind.
Looking ahead, Foot Locker plans to explore intercept studies to catch shoppers and ask questions right in the middle of their live shopping moments. By pushing to meet customers exactly where they are and treating the corporate roadmap as if it were their own personal business, the team has built a sustainable blueprint for real, customer-focused innovation.