Customer Acquisition

For affluent consumers who are ultra-sensitized to luxury brands and their codes of meaning, savoir-faire is the ultimate flex. In some prominent families, purchases and self-presentation trigger complex negotiations between social obligation and self-expression. A perfect example is the age-old tradition of donning your grandmother’s heavy wedding set instead of daring to decline the matriarch’s…

Acquiring new customers can cost up to 5x more than retaining existing ones. This puts more responsibility on retailers to find a sustainable way to create a positive, personalized relationship that maintains engagement and inspires repeat purchases. One way to do that? Gamify the customer experience. Put simply, gamification adds gaming elements to non-gaming scenarios.…

In this webinar, our experts will discuss best practices for incorporating and measuring direct mail in your buyer’s journey.

While retailers typically put a significant emphasis on post-holiday sales, they didn't resonate with shoppers after the 2023 holiday season. During the week after Christmas, year-over-year sales were down across the board, with only computer software sales seeing an increase from 2022. Department stores, cosmetics stores and clothing stores saw some of the largest declines,…

Grocery stores have been in a state of flux in recent years, influenced broadly by the economy and supply chain issues and, at the store level, by how consumers want to shop. This year, grocery bills are expected to exceed $300 a week, which in turn will impact the choices consumers are making at the…

For small businesses, resonating with as many potential customers as possible is a unique but critical task. With limited resources and more targeted product offerings, SMBs need the right plan and tools in place to effectively reach different demographics and drive sales year-round. Shopping journeys and preferences look different across generations, and retailers looking to…

Over the past few years, venture capitalists (VCs) and pundits have declared the direct-to-consumer (DTC) commerce business model all but dead. This much is true: The party is over for hockey stick growth driven by Instagram ads or the abundance of cheap VC money for retail startups in the ZIRP era. However, as one crop of…

One might think that after multiple years of inflation and a scarcity mindset that consumers would have adjusted their expectations of retailers to allow for more leniency and to ensure they’re just able to get the products they want. CI&T’s 2024 Connected Retail Report told a very different story. In our fourth year collecting consumer…

In a presentation at the ICR Conference in Orlando, FL last week, Marc Metrick, CEO of Saks, a digital platform for luxury fashion in North America, discussed winning over digital-native consumers and the concept of accessible luxury, among other topics. Metrick is a self-described "lifer" at Saks, having spent more than half his life at…

In episode 435 of Total Retail Talks, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviews Mary Ellen Coyne, CEO, and Kevin McLaughlin, co-founder and creative director of J.McLaughlin, an American lifestyle brand. Listen in as Coyne and McLaughlin provide an overview of the J.McLaughlin brand (0:55), detail the origin of the company (1:55), and identify the customer behaviors they…