Technology

Online retail had already been experiencing massive growth before the arrival of COVID-19 — and then the pandemic hit. According to recently published data from IBM’s U.S. Retail Index, the abrupt shift to quarantine and social distancing measures accelerated the rise of e-commerce by about five years. Unsurprisingly, the same trends behind the surge in…

If you asked your favorite clothing brand if it knew the body measurements of its customers, the answer would likely be no. In fact, not many apparel brands or retailers do, and this lack of insight results in poor-fitting clothes, increased returns, and far too much wasted product. Amidst a global pandemic that has wreaked…

We’re thrilled to feature a Q&A with Eileen Mahoney, the executive vice president and chief information officer of PVH, the parent company of leading fashion brands such as Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Van Heusen, and others, in the Inner Circle this week. Mahoney discusses how she helped PVH pivot during the  COVID-19 pandemic, the retail tech trends she’s watching closely, how she feels about being a woman in a male-dominated field, and how she’s working to get more women into retail technology leadership.

While pandemic-driven disruption across the retail industry has brought new opportunities, it also exposed significant gaps in capabilities to balance demand and availability, while ensuring safe and contactless shopping experiences. Several retailers struggled with the surge in online purchases, inventory shortages due to skewed demand patterns, and workforce imbalance to fulfill customer orders. While the…

Customer service has become a competitive differentiator for retailers — on par with quality and price. When a person reaches out to a company with a question or issue, the experience has an immediate and direct impact on whether they will do business with a company again — now or in the future. Retailers like…

Enterprises in virtually every industry are utilizing a bevy of new technologies that create efficiencies and cut costs through new, advanced virtual services. Many of these organizations are working to harness these virtual technologies through automation so that they can vastly improve the customer experience whereby digital processes are accessible through optimized services. Leading technologies…

Two minutes into browsing through an e-commerce site for new workout clothes, I closed the window in favor of checking my emails. Three minutes later, I couldn’t even remember the name of the website. How is it that some e-commerce sites create completely unmemorable experiences, while others make you think, “Where’s my wallet?” The difference…

As customer expectations continue to shift in an increasingly digital world, shoppers have come to want products in the fastest and simplest way possible — even in the middle of a devastating pandemic. To say the retail landscape in 2020 was difficult would be an understatement. Brick-and-mortar stores were hit by a rapid downturn in…

Many companies are now wondering about the long-term impact of coronavirus on the retail and e-commerce industry, and what lasting changes it may leave. Despite the doom mongering, many brick-and-mortar stores are doing very nicely online, and so are smaller e-commerce players, with average e-commerce businesses reporting a 15 percent increase in annual revenue since…

The events of 2020 have forever altered the ways we live, work, eat and shop. As people come to rely on e-commerce for groceries, household essentials and medicine, there's a renewed pressure on retailers to deliver in lighting speed, enable easy returns, and provide a full product profile. This, coupled with the growing trends of…