Omnichannel

It’s been nearly a year-and-a-half since schools closed across the country. While there are still many unknowns when it comes to the pandemic, families are preparing for a return to school that resembles some sense of normalcy. As we know, the start of the school year means one of the busiest times for retailers. As…

In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Joe Keenan and Kristina Stidham discuss a research report produced in conjunction with Zipline titled, “Return to Retail: Preparing Your Stores for the Rush of Pent-Up In-Store Shopping Demand.” The resource shares why it’s more crucial than ever for retailers to reinvent physical stores for the…

There’s no doubt that retailers were dealt a blow in 2020. Although customers flocked to e-commerce solutions in droves, this was largely driven by immediate necessity during the peak of the pandemic. Now that quarantine restrictions are being eased globally and commercial activity resumes, many retailers are left wondering where in-store shopping demand will lie…

With vaccinated consumers returning to stores, retailers are looking to this summer and fall as a chance to regain momentum before the crucial holiday season. In June, the retail industry got a peek into what’s ahead with Amazon.com's Prime Day, the annual sales extravaganza put on by the U.S.’s largest e-commerce player with competition from…

The notion of “Agile Marketing” has been around for a while. As a superior operating paradigm, it has been sketched out across more whiteboards than any of us could begin to count. What started as an IT construct to adapt to an accelerated pace of software and systems development has bled into all sorts of…

These days, articles about the e-commerce industry rarely begin without some reference to COVID-19 or “the events of last year.” The suddenness of the pandemic and an industry caught flat-footed delivered many lessons about being prepared for unpredictable events. Many merchants quickly learned that having an omnichannel presence can be advantageous for survival when significant…

On Tuesday, Sam’s Club announced its new feature, Scan & Ship, allowing customers to purchase Sam’s Club items using their mobile app and then have the products shipped directly to their homes. According to CNBC, the membership club is testing this feature as “a way to improve the customer experience.” The convenience of Sam’s Club…

Offering a compelling omnichannel experience used to be the cutting edge of retail. Now it’s key to survival. More than one-third of Americans have made omnichannel features, such as buying online for in-store pickup, part of their regular shopping routine, and nearly two-thirds of those individuals plan to continue doing so. McKinsey research also shows that…

The pandemic fast-tracked the growth of e-commerce on an exponential level. In 2020, e-commerce accounted for over 21 percent of retail sales — a monumental jump from the 15.8 percent of retail that it accounted for the year prior. There’s no doubt that e-commerce will continue to be an important part of the consumer journey,…

The retail industry is a highly competitive, challenging and constantly evolving environment. Customer shopping behaviors are increasingly hard to predict, and retailers must constantly innovate or risk becoming redundant. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has heavily impacted the retail industry, is a prime example of this. Driven by technological advances, social and economic shifts, and a…