Technology

Retailers Go to the Edge to Gain a Competitive Advantage
March 23, 2023 at 5:09 pm

Retailers face brisk headwinds in 2023. With market competition increasing, retailers must invest in initiatives to boost revenue and differentiate their business offerings. At the same time, consumer expectations are rapidly shifting, with shoppers seeking a more experiential, flexible and seamless shopping experience than ever before. Given these factors in the context of an uncertain…

The Missing Piece in Achieving Retail Operational Excellence: Tech Enablement for Frontline Workers
March 21, 2023 at 11:07 am

Today’s retail organizations are under enormous pressure to make their operations more agile, resilient and productive. However, in many cases they're overlooking one of the main areas where it’s possible to quickly and efficiently make major productivity gains. I’m talking about frontline teams. Many retail employees currently feel neglected by their employers. Almost two-thirds of…

6 Critical Lessons for IT Teams to Improve Internet Resilience
March 13, 2023 at 12:14 pm

The internet is becoming ever more complex and challenging. An outage can happen to anyone at any time. For e-commerce companies, it means a standstill of business. Recent estimates put revenue loss of outages to Amazon.com at $220,318 per minute. You can’t fully prevent them, but your IT team can take measures to proactively reduce…

Consumers Voice How They Really Feel About the Use of AI and ML in Retail Experiences
March 9, 2023 at 10:06 am

It’s rare that a new technology draws as much fevered interest as ChatGPT, but then again an OpenAI chatbot that speaks and writes full paragraphs, writes college essays, and de-bugs and explains code fixes doesn’t come along every day. Most conversational chatbots today aren’t as advanced as ChatGBT, even with its many limitations. Even so,…

5 Tech Investments That Reflect Real-World Retail Trends
March 8, 2023 at 9:34 am

Since late 2021, we’ve seen a drop in the amount of venture capital (VC) funding globally. Financial markets have become tighter and VCs have become more discerning as a result. Not only are they spending more time vetting companies, they’re also gravitating toward solutions with an immediate product-market fit, rather than betting big on long-term…

Taking AI in Retail to the Next Level
March 8, 2023 at 8:49 am

Most online retailers recognize the importance of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. In fact, more than four-fifths of e-commerce businesses report that they're either exploring or already using AI solutions to increase business success. Whether these companies use AI to maximum effect, however, depends on exactly how they integrate AI into their operations. Leveraging…

Retailers Are Finally Bringing Digital Shopping Into Physical Stores
March 1, 2023 at 1:08 pm

During the early 2000s, while the retail industry was getting battered by e-commerce, grocery stores were seemingly safe. Twenty years — and a pandemic — later, much has changed; e-commerce and delivery services have transformed grocery retail. Today, when consumers visit a store, they enter with much higher expectations. A convenient and smooth, seamless shopping…

The Future of Retail: Turning to AI and Automation in 2023
February 28, 2023 at 5:58 pm

It's no secret that the retail market is ever-changing; six months ago, consumers had different interests and markets faced different headwinds. To better combat the turbulence, in everything from logistics to loyalty, retailers have been turning to automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to receive support in handling orders, managing market insights into customer demographics, and…

Raymour & Flanigan Gains Real-Time, Unified Inventory Data Visibility
February 27, 2023 at 1:35 pm

In episode 390 of Total Retail Talks, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviews Bryan Anastasi, vice president of customer care and business solutions at Raymour & Flanigan, the largest furniture and mattress retailer in the Northeast and seventh largest nationwide. Anastasi provides an overview of the Raymour & Flanigan business (1:00), his role with the organization (1:40), and to what he…

The Application of Appropriate Technology
February 27, 2023 at 12:29 pm

We're increasingly living in a world driven by technology, with new services and new applications appearing almost on a daily basis. It’s new, it’s the latest thing, it must be good, we need it ... right? Wrong. In the rush to be seen to be deploying the latest technology, there's a risk of losing sight…