Technology

Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are becoming more accessible to retail businesses of all sizes, allowing even the leanest teams to reap the benefits. Instead of spending hours managing tedious manual processes, retailers that use automation can free up hours in the day to devote to customer service, product and inventory, and business growth. While…

In episode 372 of Total Retail Talks, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviews Nils Altrogge, head of technology innovation at On, the fast-growing specialty running brand. Altrogge discusses the Swiss sports brand's mission (0:46), his professional background (2:09), and the factors to which he attributes On's rapid growth (3:50). The footwear brand recently debuted the first shoe made…

Emma, one of the world's largest direct-to-consumer mattress brands, is expanding at a blistering pace. However, its legacy commerce platform was incapable of keeping up. As the company prepares for continued growth and expansion into new markets, it looks to commercetools as its new, best-of-breed commerce platform. Since the company's launch in Frankfurt, Germany in…

When evaluating their tech stacks and how they can be improved upon to better serve the evolving needs of digital-savvy, omnichannel shoppers, retail technology leaders are often confronted with a common dilemma: do they build needed solutions in-house or buy them from third-party providers? Of course there’s no easy answer to this question, and there…

Successful retailers in 2022 understand that digitization isn’t enough — digital acceleration is crucial. The state of digital acceleration that was sparked by mass quarantining during the COVID-19 pandemic changed how businesses operate and consumers behave. According to Gartner, 65 percent of executives say they accelerated their digital initiatives' pace in 2021 — and this…

For many retailers, the customer experience is about much more than customer satisfaction scores. More than anything, today’s customers want a personalized, quick and easy shopping experience, a frictionless experience. These expectations are heavily shaped by online retail experiences, challenging brick-and-mortar retailers to transform their physical stores into engaging, personalized experience centers powered by real-time intelligence. Whereas e-commerce sites…

In a hybrid world with online shopping options for everything, consumers rarely visit brick-and-mortar stores simply to shop for products — they want an engaging, cohesive, seamless shopping experience. To succeed in 2022, retailers must make it easy for consumers to find products, make purchases or learn about promotions, all at their fingertips, no matter…

Perpetual and increasing competition, economic fluctuations, and constantly changing consumer expectations strain the retail sector harder than most industries. To combat these challenges, retailers have turned to technology — from analyzing big data to better connect with consumers to launching omnichannel strategies to reach customers at every point of their respective purchase journeys. More recently,…

Thanks to advances in technology, QR codes are becoming increasingly embedded in the customer experience. From retail to quick-service restaurants, their use for payments is on the rise. In fact, it's predicted that the number of U.S. smartphone users scanning a QR code will increase from 83.4 million in 2022 to 99.5 million in 2025. As…

Unwanted inventory and a higher demand for low-cost items forced prominent retailers to adjust their earnings forecast and miss their estimates, causing the cancellation of billions in orders and heavy markdowns. Chalked up by one CFO as a short-term fix to avoid longer-term pain, the strategy nevertheless indicates that many large retailers don't understand their…