Customer Data

COVID-19 forced retailers and restaurants to squeeze years’ worth of digital transformations in the span of a few weeks. As in-store shopping and in-person dining models became untenable in March 2020, retailers and restaurants pivoted to contactless delivery/pickup; buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS); and mobile and loyalty apps to keep their businesses open. In…

COVID-19 has changed the way retailers do business now and into the future. Today’s consumer essentially has three core demands: make my life easier, make my life better, and make my life more fulfilling. Retailers are responding to these consumer requirements with more urgency in the wake of COVID-19. The pandemic-induced shift to much higher…

To say that 2020 was a historic year defined by life-altering challenges and disruption would be an understatement. Businesses across every industry faced, and continue to face, hurdles they’d never imagined. Specifically, changes in consumer behavior in response to the pandemic and resulting economic recession put increased strain on the retail industry. For instance, decreasing…

Thousands of companies today, large and small, are realizing the importance of building trust and giving customers a voice through functions such as customer consent and preference management. Regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, as well as customer backlash related to poor customer experiences, has forced much of this shifting environment for brands today. Why…

With the COVID-19 pandemic further shifting consumer retail buying habits online, it's more important than ever for companies to utilize tools that help them thrive in an increasingly competitive landscape. According to a recent McKinsey & Company report, “the shift to online retail is real, and much of it will stick.” However, only 60 percent…

Online marketplaces eBay, Etsy, Mercari, OfferUp, and Poshmark have launched "the Coalition to Protect America's Small Sellers" or the PASS Coalition, in opposition to a federal bill aimed at curtailing sales of fake and stolen goods through online marketplaces, reports Yahoo Finance. The federal bill in question is the bipartisan INFORM Act, which was introduced in…

Customer experience has been all the rage in B-to-B marketing, but it’s given way to defined, personalized journeys for win-win scenarios for each consumer. I recently received an email that opened with, “Hi Justin,” and thought, “Maybe this company will do it right.” Unfortunately, the rest of the email was a big disappointment and I…

There has been a seismic shift in the user identity landscape, led in part by technology giants’ response to recent privacy regulations and constraints. While the shake-up ultimately impacts all aspects of the ad-tech industry, it's worth noting that the initial challenge of scalable consumer identity will undoubtedly lead to new opportunities for advertisers to…

The consumer data privacy topic may feel like a slow rolling, deep water wave, far offshore without imminent threat, but in reality, there are many waves rapidly gaining in size and speed, and they’re hitting all at once. The first ripples started several years ago in the European Union with an abstract-sounding acronym “GDPR” and…

As early as April 2020, Forrester had predicted global retail sales to record a $2.1 trillion loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We've seen the retail industry go through a fundamental shift, with an average decline of 9.6 percent globally in 2020. With supply chains throttled and consumers asked to stay indoors, the world witnessed a sharp…