Digital Innovation

It doesn’t take a genius to know that the holiday season is the Super Bowl of retail. Retailers plan for months, evaluating the competition, sweating the details, and getting ready for kickoff — i.e., Thanksgiving weekend. And we know why: This year, total holiday sales are estimated to be about $630.5 billion. Generally, holiday sales…

We’ve just passed the one-year anniversary of EMV adoption in the U.S., and it’s still a hot topic in the payments and retail industry. Microchip cards are here to stay, and retailers can’t afford to ignore their impact in the year to come.

United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) said yesterday it expects record deliveries this holiday season, with more than 700 million packages expected to be delivered between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve. The company expects peak holiday delivery volume to rise more than 14 percent from the same period in 2015, with two more operating days this…

Facebook’s announcement of its Offline Conversions API generated a lot of buzz and excitement among marketers, and for good reason: API provides retailers with a way to see how many people made offline purchases after seeing a Facebook campaign. The tool connects offline activity to digital campaigns. Retailers can then use these offline activities to…

Neiman Marcus Chief Financial Officer Donald T. Grimes resigned from the Dallas-based luxury retailer effective today, and has joined Sally Beauty Holdings as the retail and wholesale beauty company's senior vice president, chief financial officer and chief operations officer, effective Dec. 12. Grimes joined Neiman Marcus in June 2015, where he was also executive vice president…

Retail is currently facing one of the greatest opportunities and challenges in its history: the shift to digital channels. Across the entire retail landscape, online sales continue to increase while store-based retail sales stall or decline. In fact, according to a survey done by UPS, consumers made more purchases online than in stores in 2015…

Fifty-five percent of consumers start product searches by price checking on Amazon.com, according to a recent BloomReach survey. Fifty-five percent. This means the majority of shoppers are using price as the initial barometer for potential purchases, rather than a final deciding factor. As e-commerce has developed, it’s brought the convenience of online, on-demand comparison shopping. Large companies…

Wal-Mart is shaking things up a bit. The big-box retailer announced changes to its e-commerce leadership as Marc Lore, founder of Jet.com, takes on new responsibilities in the wake of the $3.3 billion merger of the two companies. As a result, several e-commerce executives are leaving Wal-Mart, including Fernando Madeira, head of Walmart.com, and Brent…

Rapid changes in consumer technology have created a demand for equally fast changes in retail technology. Today, there's an expectation that the instant results you receive on personal devices will be replicated in face-to-face transactions. However, retailers encounter a variety of challenges when trying to compete with e-tail (even, sometimes, with their own digital channels). Enabling consumer…

Retailers know that time and resources aren’t infinite in this shifting digital world, especially in marketing departments. Shoe Carnival, a “brand focused” footwear retailer that sells the likes of Nike, Adidas and Anne Klein, uses content like product images, lookbooks and video to give consumers a better understanding of its products. “Consumers historically like to…