Customer Retention

At a time when shoppers have more options than ever, Kohl's is placing a wager that one set of customers can help revive its sales: its loyalists. The discount department store, which outperformed Macy's during the third quarter, is hoping to ride its momentum into the critical holiday shopping period, which accounted for one-third of its sales last…

One month ago nearly the entire town of Hanover, New Hampshire woke up with something on their doorstep. While not a creature was stirring, a team of 30 Zappos employees descended upon the small town on Nov. 10 to deliver happiness. The gifts came in the form of 1,900 boxes, each containing cold-weather gear including…

Amazon.com’s Prime keeps attracting more and more members, and new data from Wall Street firm Cowen & Co suggests the subscription service is getting stickier, posing a more intense threat to traditional retailers trying to claw back market share. The survey suggests Amazon Prime is drawing younger and wealthier shoppers who are now using the…

The lowest price always wins in online retail, right? Not necessarily. Amazon.com is a perfect example of a company that doesn’t always offer the lowest prices, but has built up a strong perception of being a loss leader. While Jet.com has recently joined the online retail game, Amazon’s customers haven’t jumped ship just because Jet…

The holidays are just around the corner, and most merchants have already put a lot of thought into how they’ll try to maximize sales during the annual shopping blitz. But those with their eyes on the real prize will focus not only on sales volumes this holiday season, but also on how many of those…

Loyal customers are what every brand is after. Considering the cost to acquire new customers — as well as the challenge of identifying which of the multiple touchpoints drove them to purchase — many retailers are recognizing the value in spending to retain the customers they already have. From technology upgrades to improve the shopping…

Website and customer experience optimization aren't new. Both have been slowly and steadily evolving over the past decade and have become a key competitive differentiator for many retailers, especially global brands that have created a “culture of optimization” throughout their organizations. Along with this evolution comes new tips, tricks and techniques based on the previous…

Crowds are following Marvin Ellison around these days. The J.C. Penney CEO is spreading the word about what’s next for the department store chain after his predecessor, Mike Ullman, stabilized a company that had been on the brink of disaster. His strategy: focus on fostering customer loyalty.

Over the past few years, the media has painted millennials as a generation of high-maintenance, lazy and entitled people. Considering that there are more than 75 million millennials in the U.S. alone, it’s a bit faulty to lump them all together. These consumers vary drastically from one another. They’re the most ethnically diverse generation of…

The borders in retail have been broken. Would you agree that customer retention is less expensive that customer acquisition? To put it into perspective, a report by Bain & Company showed that increasing customer retention rates by just 5 percent could increase retail profits anywhere from 25 percent to 95 percent. How’s that for a…