Technology

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been varied across industries, but the way it has shaken up the retail industry draws few parallels. Lockdowns and movement restrictions brought business in physical stores to a trickle and led to changes in buying patterns and consumer preferences almost overnight. Retailers that relied primarily on in-store experiences…

In 2020, the e-commerce industry saw a boom in popularity, with online spending accounting for 21.3 percent of total retail sales. With research suggesting that online purchases will make up half the growth in the global retail sector by 2025, retail marketers will need to get creative in how they attract, engage and retain customers.…

The pandemic was a reset for e-commerce as consumers turned to online shopping in droves, including demographics that were previously reluctant to buy online. However, online sales growth came with a steep drawback. U.S. customers spent a staggering $565 billion online in 2020, but approximately $102 billion of the merchandise was returned. Online returns more…

Walmart announced that it will acquire virtual fitting room startup Zeekit as it makes a push into fashion and caters to customers shopping for clothes online. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. In a post on the company’s website, Walmart U.S. executive vice president of apparel and private brands, Denise Incandela, said customers will…

A little over a decade ago, retailers applauded that they could move away from self-hosted, licensed e-commerce platforms with high development and support costs and painful upgrade paths. Many made the move to all-in-one SaaS platforms at a lower cost, with basic functionality for e-commerce, and app or plug-in marketplaces to add more features. Fast-forward…

New data from the 2021 Adobe Digital Economy Index makes it clear: online spending is surging and shows no signs of stopping. In fact, Adobe expects that by 2022, e-commerce will become a $1 trillion market. To stay competitive and efficient in this increasingly critical space — and to enable a more robust customer experience…

Pre-COVID, we saw the impact of online consumer demand growing and behavior adjusting, but brands often had time to analyze how they wanted to respond to it and when. Once the world shut down from COVID, that power quickly transitioned to the consumer, with brands forced to adjust almost immediately if they wanted any opportunity…

In this episode of Total Retail Tech Insights, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviews Mark Messina, chief operating officer of Geek+ America, Inc., the Americas division of a global artificial intelligence (AI) logistics robotics startup. Messina discusses the Geek+ global business, the impact of automated operations on retailers' warehouses, and how having automation in fulfillment centers during…

During the pandemic-induced online shopping boom, retailers invested in e-commerce capabilities out of necessity. As consumers shifted to retailers with online ordering, merchants were scrambling to provide new digital order and delivery options. These investments helped capture more market share, but now that stores are reopening and there's little market share remaining to capture, retailers…

2020 might have seemed like a year of forced innovation for retailers. But in truth, many were already experimenting with new channels and customer experiences before coronavirus entered the picture. What changed last year was widespread demand and fast-paced adoption. Suddenly these experiments with customer experience — grab-and-go, BOPIS, contactless payments, dark stores — were…