Customer Acquisition

As states across the U.S. are relaxing stay-at-home orders, and with restrictions on everyday activities easing, Americans seem to be finally settling into a new routine. The burning question now is: How must retailers adjust to the new normal to best serve the post-pandemic consumer? According to the most recent EY Future Consumer Index, a…

Consumer behavior tends to change very slowly, but when it does eventually change, the shift can be quite rapid. After several "false dawns" around mobile shopping, the data now shows we're entering a new era. While concerns around the coronavirus have increased the adoption of contactless shopping methods, marketers have also played their part by…

Businesses are opening back up, but things are far from business as usual. Facing new customer concerns around health and safety, retailers have had to reimagine their operations. And while the crisis has spawned a bevy of new and innovative solutions to overcome unprecedented challenges, it’s become clear that the needs and expectations of consumers…

In part one of this article, I examined the challenges that the retail sector has faced since the beginning of the pandemic, and its inability to rely on traditional historic consumer data when it comes to meeting consumer needs. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, however, could be the key to providing retailers with the…

At the start of 2020, the biggest challenges for the retail industry were issues such as market saturation, finding new ways for old and aging brands to stay relevant, and the impact of new technologies and innovations. No one anticipated the greatest challenge of 2020 — and beyond — would be a pandemic that shut…

Over the past two decades, we’ve seen millennials put retailers through a loop. As retailers urgently set up e-commerce sites and slowed down their physical footprint, many people believed millennials would be the “death of retail.” Today, Generation Z is bringing balance to both online and offline retail models. Gen Z consumers will hold over…

As we move past the mitigation phase of COVID-19 and embark on reopening strategies, smart retailers and brands will learn from the early lessons we can draw from the unfolding crisis. The past several weeks and months have brought more disruption than almost any other series of events in recent American history. Previous disruptions, ranging…

With brick-and-mortar shopping on pause (at least for most retailers), a new breed of stay-at-home shoppers is emerging and boosting the e-commerce market. In fact, for some verticals, consumer demand has never been higher. There are the obvious winners here, such as grocery brands bridging the gap from supermarket shortages, toy retailers, or sports brands…

In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Ashley Chiaradio and Kristina Stidham discuss an article recently published by Total Retail’s sister brand, Women in Retail Leadership Circle, titled, “The New Moms on the Block: How Millennial Moms Approach Trying and Buying,” authored by Elizabeth Fogerty, chief strategy officer at EDGE Marketing. This article is…

Consumers willingness to adopt new products and try new experiences hasn’t merely increased; it’s reached an entirely new level of hyperadoption that retail brands are claiming they can’t keep up with. With consumers just as quick to try new brands as they are to walk away from ones they were once loyal to, retailers are…