Understanding whether a customer is shopping for themselves or buying a gift requires reading real-time signals rather than relying solely on purchase history. That matters most during the holiday season, when the same shopper arrives with different missions.

"The trick is figuring out what mission she's on," Kristi Carlson, vice president of digital technology at Kendra Scott, said on a recent episode of "Reimagining Retail." "While we may know a lot about her from her past purchase history, the trick really is figuring out, is she buying for herself? Is she buying for someone else? Is she buying for a special occasion?"

Kendra Scott, a national affordable luxury jewelry brand founded in Austin, Texas, sells through both physical stores and ecommerce channels. That mix gives the retailer customer signals across multiple touchpoints, but it also makes those signals harder to connect without disrupting the shopping experience.

Here's how retailers can balance data-driven personalization with customer experience during the critical holiday season.

Reading intent through behavioral signals

The sequence of customer actions reveals more than individual data points. Carlson emphasized that understanding shopping intent requires analyzing on-site behavior patterns rather than just historical data.

Key signals include:

• Traffic source (search engine versus social media)
• Search queries and product clicks
• Navigation patterns through the site
• Timing relative to known customer milestones

"A search for a birthstone jewelry piece might suggest a gift, but it could suggest that she's shopping for herself, too," Carlson said. "If we happen to know when her birthday is, and if she's searching for a stone outside of her birthday month, then maybe we know it's a gift."

Different shopping missions require different support systems, and retailers must adapt the experience to each one. Self-purchasers may explore styles or seek items to complement specific outfits. Gift buyers worry about recipient preferences, delivery timing, and making the right choice.

The challenge of personalization

Even with sophisticated data collection, personalization remains difficult when customers browse anonymously or when their intent doesn't match their history.

"There's so much data, and there's so many customers who still don't identify themselves when they're shopping online," Carlson said. "Personalization continues to be tricky when the customer's not identifying themselves."

The risk of over-personalization: Making assumptions based on past behavior can backfire during gift-giving seasons. A customer who exclusively buys gold jewelry for herself might be shopping for silver pieces as a gift, making highly personalized recommendations feel tone-deaf rather than helpful.

"I can make a lot of assumptions about you based on what I know about you. But if I don't understand what your intent is, I could be serving you up something that's completely irrelevant," Carlson said.

AI's biggest win

Kendra Scott's most successful AI implementation is an on-site chatbot that started three years ago as a simple FAQ tool, rather than a sophisticated personalization engine.

The chatbot now deflects more than 80% of customer care calls and is "approaching double digits when it comes to actual ecommerce revenue," Carlson said. "It's converting customers who maybe had a question about a product or even a complaint, and it's converting it into a sale."

The technology also informs physical retail strategy. Kendra Scott uses AI to analyze traffic patterns and determine optimal product placement at the store level, putting collections that resonate with local customers in high-visibility locations.

"We're collecting all this data on our customers, and we wanna make sure we're using that in a way to ensure they're having the best shopping experience possible," Carlson said. "But that doesn't necessarily mean it's gotta be their personal data."

Holiday preparation requires flexibility, not just planning

As retailers enter the critical holiday season, success requires more than executing a single well-crafted plan.

"It's just this elevated level of being there for the customer and ensuring that they have the best experience possible," Carlson said, noting that holiday preparation includes the "non-sexy stuff" like inventory management, friction removal across technology implementations, and delivery logistics.

Holiday plans need room to change midseason, according to our analyst Rachel Wolff.

"This is kind of an uncertain holiday season, and we're not entirely sure how the consumer is gonna respond," she said. "So I think you have to be prepared to maybe adjust tactics halfway through if you see the consumer being a little bit more value sensitive or if you see them being more open to self-gifting."

Retailers should prepare alternate messaging and tactics before the season starts, ready to shift midseason if shoppers turn more value sensitive or more open to self-gifting.

Listen to the full episode.