From rhetoric to relevance: Extended retail’s new rules for customer loyalty

The 2025 ASK AFRICA Orange Index reveals that in a fatigued yet resilient economy, empathy, efficiency and fairness are driving the next wave of loyalty across automotive, petrochemical and forecourt convenience, and casual dining.

The ASK AFRICA Orange Index, South Africa’s leading benchmark for customer experience (CX), reveals that the country’s extended retail industries are entering a new era—one defined less by corporate slogans and more by meaningful connection.

Now in its 24th year, the Benchmark draws from nearly 60 000 customer interviews across 26 industries and 200 brands, measuring not only how well companies deliver but how deeply they connect. Through its dual lenses, PerformFactor, which tracks rational, functional delivery, and FeelFactor, which measures emotional connection, the study captures both the science and sentiment behind loyalty in South Africa.

While functional performance across sectors remains robust, emotional resonance has emerged as the key differentiator between brands that merely maintain momentum and those that achieve sustained growth. In this climate, empathy, fairness, and clarity are the cornerstones of customer retention.

“South Africans are financially and emotionally stretched,” says Dr Sarina Howie, director: global products at ASK AFRICA. “But they are not giving up on participation, they are giving up on waste. They spend where they feel respected: when service feels fair, frictionless, and human. Relevance, not rhetoric, wins the day.”

A population under pressure, but still participating

The latest ASK AFRICA Orange Index findings paint a picture of a resilient yet fatigued population. Roughly 70% of South Africans report money-related stress, and many spend more than 30% of their income servicing debt. Yet rather than retreat, they are rebalancing—trading luxury for value, convenience for consistency and rhetoric for reliability.

Signs of savings fatigue are emerging, and the energy for continual austerity is waning. Consumers are managing cash flow week by week, seeking micro-moments of ease and fairness in everyday spending. Across the extended retail sector, this behavioural shift is reshaping what loyalty looks like.

“Consumers are measuring time as carefully as money,” adds Dr Howie. “They want experiences that relieve stress, not add to it. A slow app, a long queue, or a confusing deal is an emotional tax they simply won’t pay twice.”

CX in Extended Retail: What the ASK AFRICA Orange Index reveals

The extended retail landscape offers a clear view of how economic pressure translates into customer expectations, and how the best brands respond.

Petrochemical and forecourt convenience: The quiet winners

Forecourts have evolved from fuel stops to micro-convenience hubs. Clean facilities, seamless payment and loyalty integration have become essential CX touchpoints. With dwell times under four minutes, small moments of ease, like efficient tap-and-go systems, shape trust and satisfaction.

Automotive: A sector under strain

The sector shows the sharpest decline in CX sentiment. Rising costs, tighter credit and after-sales frustration are eroding confidence. Younger, value-driven buyers prioritise transparency, total cost of ownership and trustworthy service. Emerging players from China and India are gaining traction through perceived honesty and practicality.

Casual dining: Steady but squeezed

Consumers are trading down from premium venues to mid-tier experiences that balance portion, quality, and price. Brands that combine digital convenience with warm, consistent service maintain loyalty despite tighter budgets.

Across categories, relevance and empathy define success. Consumers are not only price-sensitive, they are waste-intolerant, rewarding brands that deliver fairness, reliability, and effortlessness.

Digital trust meets human touch

Customer journeys are increasingly omnichannel, and digital interactions now shape nearly every purchase decision. To capture this reality, ASK AFRICA introduced the Digital Experience Barometer, South Africa’s first benchmark dedicated to digital CX.

Covering 87 brands across 11 industries and 21 channels, the Barometer evaluates performance across five key digital experience dimensions and 28 supplementary aspects spanning channel performance, emotional touchpoints, and service recovery.

The data reveals that digital excels at speed, access, and convenience, while human channels dominate in trust and problem-solving.

“Digital has become the spine of CX, but people remain the heartbeat,” says Dr Howie. “The strongest brands choreograph both; they make technology invisible and empathy visible.”

What the leaders are doing differently

The industry’s top performers share a disciplined shift from rhetoric to relevance:

Radical clarity: Transparent pricing and simple language build trust.
Effortless convenience: Predictable, seamless processes remove emotional friction.
Empathic recovery: Quick, sincere responses turn service failures into loyalty moments.
Human-digital harmony: Technology handles the pace; people handle the feeling.
Fairness as strategy: Fair treatment is no longer courtesy, it’s commercial advantage.

These brands view CX not as compliance but as competitive intelligence, and a live reflection of how well they stay relevant to real human needs.

“The consumer has evolved,” Dr Howie notes. “They want to collaborate, not be targeted. They reward fairness over frequency and relevance over rhetoric.”

CX maturing: From fixing to flourishing

As customer experience as a discipline matures, so too does the conversation about what truly drives loyalty. Over two decades of ASK AFRICA Orange Index tracking show a remarkable evolution, from a time when dissatisfaction outweighed delight, to an era where more South Africans now report genuine satisfaction with their brand experiences.

“This shift signals that CX in South Africa has matured,” says dr. Howie. “We’ve built the frameworks, dashboards, and compliance models. But in doing so, we’ve sometimes become more focused on what’s broken than on what’s brilliant.”

She adds that the next phase of CX is about celebrating the positive; understanding what creates delight and amplifying it across every touchpoint. “Positive CX means asking not only where we fail, but where we wow—and how we can do more of that,” she explains.

For ASK AFRICA, this evolution reframes the role of measurement. It’s not just about tracking metrics, but about inspiring excellence, fuelling innovation, and keeping the human at the centre of data.

“CX isn’t static,” Dr Howie concludes. “It’s alive, emotional, and constantly evolving, and so must the way we measure it.”

From measurement to momentum

The ASK AFRICA Orange Index confirms that South Africa’s extended retail sector is not in decline, but in correction; a shift from loud promises to lived experiences. The functional baseline is strong; true differentiation now lies in empathy, fairness, and emotional clarity.

To lead in this next chapter, brands must:

Respect reality: Speak honestly, deliver predictably, and price transparently.
Reduce effort: Design journeys that give time back to customers.
Balance digital with human: Combine the efficiency of systems with the sincerity of people.
Measure the feeling: Track emotion as rigorously as performance.

Those who succeed will redefine customer experience in South Africa, moving the industry permanently from rhetoric to relevance.