For years, businesses have been focusing on establishing strong brands within the gasoline industry. Not only do strong brands potentially increase customer loyalty and retention, but they can also build trust and credibility within the marketplace. A large component of strong brands resides in the actual brand experiences customers have with a company. These brand experiences go beyond simple elements such as clean and well-organized store environments – although those are very important. Rather, solid brand experiences can significantly help differentiate companies within the industry, and hopefully drive measurable business growth.
Daniel Burrus, founder of Burrus Research, is an advisor and business strategist for major brands like Honda, BP, Chevron, FedEx, and Verizon. He works with organizations to educate them on how technology and the ability to anticipate the future can improve everyday brand experiences.
Burrus helps companies across retail and consumer brands rethink how serve their customers, and that directly connects to building a better brand experience at the pump.
Burrus says that over the last decade, the convenience store and gasoline retail sector has moved from transactional branding, which is focused on price and product availability, toward experience-based differentiation.
“The shift has been driven by increasing consumer demand for personalization and frictionless service,” Burrus says. “Leading retailers can now understand that brand loyalty comes from consistent, elevated experiences, not just location or cost. Technology integration, mobile loyalty apps, sustainability initiatives, and data-driven insights are becoming non-negotiable elements of a future-ready brand strategy.”
As Burrus further explains, brand is no longer a soft asset, it is a strategic differentiator with direct impact on profitability. In an era of digital transformation and rising consumer expectations, a strong brand experience elevates trust, drives repeat traffic, and allows for premium pricing of a wider range of select items.
“Additionally, with generative AI and predictive analytics enabling hyper-personalized engagement, brand trust is being redefined through anticipatory customer service and community integration,” Burrus says. “Retailers who fail to embrace this concept will find themselves reacting to commoditization instead of shaping customer preference.”
Steve Zisk, senior product marketing manager of Redpoint Global, a data readiness solution and customer engagement strategy company, says “the foundation to a great gas station experience is simply consistency. Clean bathrooms, quick lines, friendly faces are the baseline, which is the part customers expect. However, the stations that win loyalty today are the ones using their data wisely. ‘Loyalty programs’ are no longer punch-cards, and instead they are signals. For instance, who fuels up when, what they buy after, and what time they’re rushing. It’s all there in customer experience data, so when brands read it right, the whole experience lifts.”
Zisk says most convenience stores and gasoline marketers already have the technology, including POS data, loyalty-app trails, pump-level timestamps – but it’s just scattered.
“When operators connect those streams, the patterns pop,” Zisk says. “Time-of-day habits, payment flows – the little micro-signals that quietly predict what a customer might need next.”
It’s the same on the inventory side. When sales logs sit next to weather patterns or local traffic surges, you see the spikes like energy drinks after 7pm, hot sandwiches at lunch, windshield fluid after the storm.
“It’s simple customer experience analytics making the layout smarter so the store feels like it ‘gets’ people,” Zisk says. Maybe that means a “just-for-you” offer on the snack that repeat customers always grab, a fast-lane checkout during the morning surge, or understanding local patterns so staffing matches the rush instead of fighting it.
“When stations act on those signals, the service feels smoother, and customers feel known,” Zisk says. “And when people feel known, they come back – which is the real ‘brand experience’ everyone’s chasing.”
When you add a bit of community spirit on top such as local events, small givebacks, and even knowing regulars by name, it turns a quick fuel stop into something warmer. “Ultimately, data makes it smart, service makes it human… when paired together, it works,” Zisk says.
Kevin Perlmutter, author of Brand Desire: Spark Customer Interest Using Emotional Insights, is chief strategist and founder of Limbic Brand Evolution, a brand strategy and neuromarketing consultancy which puts emotional insight at the center of how brands attract and retain customers. Based near New York City, he works with business and brand leaders to create stronger connections between their brand and the people they want to reach.
Perlmutter remembers the days when stopping at a convenience store meant you’ll be using the bathroom on the side of a small gas station building. The owners primarily sold gasoline, motor oil, and cigarettes. They probably had soft drink and snack machines on the side of the building. Sometimes they had an auto repair shop. You’d leave your car, grab the big piece of wood with a key attached, use the restroom, and feel like you needed a cleaner sink to wash your hands in afterwards.
“Over time, the convenience stores got bigger, cleaner, and had more food options,” Perlmutter says. “More familiar brands showed up with food, gas or a combination of both. Now, there's even more of a priority on variety, cleanliness, food quality, and a good customer experience from well-known brands. Today, there's a stark difference between locations that have invested in their brand and experience, versus those that have not.”
Perlmutter adds that there’s growing recognition across the gasoline marketing industry that brand is not just a logo. Rather, brand is an overall impression people have about your business based on all their associations and experiences.
“Behavioral science tells us that people gravitate toward things that make us feel good, and we pull away from things that make us feel bad. For everything else, we’re indifferent. When people have a good overall impression, it can be a powerful driver of choice,” Perlmutter says. “Bad experiences, on the other hand, can literally drive people away. When c-store owners focus on creating better brand experiences, it gives them the opportunity to be more of a trusted destination. When you focus on improving your brand so that it's known for having a good experience, people will actively choose to go there – not just as a sudden stop on the journey, but as a pre-meditated choice.”
Enhancing brand trust requires more than surface changes. According to Burrus, retailers should begin with frictionless customer service assisted by AI and automation. Consider predictive restocking or cashier-less checkout systems.
“They should ensure facilities are not only clean but also smart, secure, and designed with the user experience in mind,” Burrus says. “On the community level, retailers should leverage hard trends like rising sustainability demands by offering EV charging stations, reducing packaging waste, or sourcing local products. These efforts will move retailers from a reactive to anticipatory brand leader state.”
Burrus points to Sheetz’s early investment in made-to-order food via touchscreen kiosks as one example of a gasoline marketer conceptualizing brand-building moments and integrating them into their operations.
“That move leveraged the hard trend of digital convenience, and created a customer-experience differentiator long before it became industry standard,” Burrus says. “Similarly, Wawa’s customer loyalty program and community engagement strategies transformed transactional visits into relational experiences. Both illustrate how understanding future certainties, not just reacting to trends, enables profitable brand innovation.”
Perlmutter further suggests that the best way to enhance a c-store brand in the minds of customers is to address what people care about the most. C-store owners and operators should have a clear understanding of the mindset of customers when they arrive and what their motivations are for their visit, to inform the design of the experience.
“Think about the mindset of people who choose to stop at a convenience store. It's likely that one of the highest-order motivations is, well, convenience, which translates to speed of service. Therefore, helping people come and go quickly is important to prioritize,” Perlmutter says.
Of course, there are other motivations as well that location owners and brand leaders can identify. Perlmutter says learning directly from customers – whether through reading reviews, conducting interviews, or other forms of already available or primary customer research can lead to insights about what people want more or less of during their experience.
“You want to discover what would make the experience one that people actively want to have again, and you’ll want to minimize the things that make for a bad experience,” Perlmutter says. “Our emotional motivations are the driving forces behind our decisions and behaviors. So, when you are addressing people’s emotional motivations and making them feel good during their visit, they will most likely make a conscious effort to return.”
Perlmutter is big fan of the rivalry between Wawa vs. Sheetz. As he points out, these two East Coast c-store retailers have been battling it out for many years, with fans of each frequently posting about the rivalry. It’s even become a topic that politicians navigate carefully.
“While each chain’s operating territories have historically had minimal overlap, there is fierce debate online over which store, brand, and experience is better. It’s been referred to as the ‘most heated food rivalry in the country,’” Perlmutter says. “According to the 2025 American Customer Satisfaction Index, Sheetz and Wawa are now tied for the second-highest rated convenience store chain in the country, with both receiving scores of 82 out of 100 in customer satisfaction. This rivalry has caused each of the brands to constantly work on improving their customer experience, interior design, and expanding menus with specialty items and made-to-order sandwiches.”
When it comes to brand experience initiatives, Burrus says the most common mistake retailers make is confusing incremental improvement with strategic transformation. Specifically any retailers focus on short-term promotions instead of long-term value creation.
“Other retailers rely on outdated assumptions about customer loyalty and fail to invest in AI-driven personalization or anticipatory service models,” Burrus says. “Lastly, retailers struggle with siloed thinking. This is where marketing, operations, and technology do not collaborate, which undermines the ability to create a cohesive, future-ready brand experience.”
For Perlmuttter, the most common mistakes that retailers make all resolve around one thing: not prioritizing a good customer experience. There are many factors that can lead to a bad experience, from dirty restrooms to long wait times, to unfriendly customer service people, and more.
“There’s no one thing. It’s everything. C-store business leaders who prioritize an outstanding customer experience will be the ones leading locations that people want to return to, and not the ones that people actively avoid,” Perlmutter says.
Indeed, the pressure is on to continue to deliver great experiences, and the competition is getting more intense. As Perlmutter explains, once a group of unknown businesses, c-stores are now dominated by well-known national brands. The bar is only going to get higher, and the focus must be on what's best for customers.
He says that in addition to the delivering on the basics, people will always like loyalty programs, and mobile app usage is steadily increasing. While automated customer service technology represents an opportunity to improve the customer experience, there are also issues that c-store business leaders need to be aware of.
“For example, a study from Temple University researchers found that kiosk lines can cause stress for customers when placing their orders, and that they end up purchasing less food. It found that some customers take longer to order when attempting to navigate the kiosk versus placing the order with a person, and stress comes from feeling the pressure of people behind them in line,” Perlmutter says. “The study suggested that customers are happier with the kiosk when it is perceived to add value to the experience, rather than being seen just as an attempt to save on labor costs, creating more customer inconvenience and stress than benefit. The thing for you to remember is that no matter how much people want to move fast through a convenience store, they still like human interaction and they still like to be treated like a valued customer. There needs to be an appropriate balance.”
AI is also transforming brand building from a reactive model to a proactive experience design. For gasoline marketers, Burrus says that generative AI can assist in enabling real-time personalization across platforms, while predictive analytics can help pre-solve customer frustrations.
“Brands will no longer be defined by their logos or slogans, but by their ability to anticipate customer needs and deliver memorable value before a competitor does,” Burrus says. “The winners will be those who integrate AI not as a tool, but as a strategic partner in creating anticipatory, adaptive, and elevated brand experiences.”
