Retail Stores

More than half of the U.S. population visited a shopping mall in the past three months. In the future, Americans adults are confident that physical stores will continue to capture the majority of their retail purchases. Shoppers’ priorities are changing, and successful shopping centers are expanding their reach beyond traditional retail, offering entertainment, services and…

Walmart Inc. announced yesterday that it has signed a definitive agreement to become the largest shareholder in Flipkart Group, an e-commerce company headquartered in Bengaluru, India that's a leader in electronics, large appliances, mobile, and fashion and apparel. Walmart will buy an initial stake of roughly 77 percent in the company for $16 billion, while…

Sears Auto Centers, a division of Sears Holdings Corp., announced yesterday that it's working with Amazon.com to provide tire installation and balancing for customers who purchase any brand of tires on Amazon, including its own DieHard brand. The rollout will begin in the coming weeks for eight metropolitan areas: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami,…

Over the 2017 holiday season, total sales rose by 4.9 percent, the biggest increase year-over-year since 2011. Consumers shopped via a variety of channels, but the biggest winner was e-commerce: online sales were up 18.1 percent from the previous year. To understand the ways consumers shop and the experiences brands and retailers offer, Astound Commerce…

They say one man’s fortune is another’s opportunity. As Toys"R"Us auctions off 30-plus properties and shutter hundreds more following its recent bankruptcy, other retailers such as Target, Aldi and Big Lots are lining up to bid massive amounts of money with the hopes of expanding their physical presences and upping foot traffic. Across the retail…

Lands’ End earlier this month unveiled a new 5,000-square-foot store concept in Kildeer, IIl. According to the company, it’s the first of four to six stores Lands’ End plans to open in 2018. The new store offers a “customer first” modern shopping experience, including a fitting room lounge with comfortable chairs, catalogs, a phone connected to the…

With big names in retail like Toys"R"Us, Kmart and Gap closing down hundreds of stores this year, it’s easy to start believing the retail industry has reached a point of no return. Bundled with the rise of mobile commerce, age-old brick-and-mortar retailers are struggling to keep up as the dawn of the "retail apocalypse" is…

Clay Johnson, executive vice president and CIO, Walmart, isn't afraid to fail. This was a key revelation gleaned from a discussion he had with Debbie Hauss, editor-in-chief, Retail TouchPoints, at the Retail Innovation Conference in New York City this week. “I’m one of those people who uses a fail fast model,” Johnson said. “The pace…

The soaring popularity of online-based retail among consumers cannot be denied, but physical retail will continue to represent the majority of sales. In fact, recent research found that physical retail will still account for 80 percent of sales globally by 2025 — an indicator that consumers still see huge value in visiting brick-and-mortar stores. However,…

As retail continues to evolve, it has become clear the old ways of thinking that pit digital vs. physical no longer apply. Today’s consumers go from browsing an item on their mobile phones, to reserving it online and then picking it up in-store, and they expect the same seamless, frictionless experience at each point in…