Today on Total Retail

Since Amazon Echo’s 2014 launch, conversational commerce has been a hot topic of conversation in retail (pun intended). The biggest question: How can conversational commerce improve shopping experiences? For the last decade, the answer seemed to be it doesn’t. Consumers struggled to leverage these tools to shop, unless they were reordering a previous purchase. Conversational…

Target Corp. announced it has launched a new private label product line for price-conscious consumers called dealworthy. The assortment of 400 everyday basics will include apparel and accessories, essentials and beauty, as well as electronics and home items. Items will start at less than $1 and with most under $10, the prices are designed to…

In episode 440 of Total Retail Talks, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviews Ariela Nerubay, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Curacao, a department store chain and retail lender that services underserved U.S. communities on the West Coast. Listen in as Nerubay provides an overview of the company (0:50), discusses the services and products provided…

A concerning trend has emerged in the evolving retail landscape over the past few years: the spike in retail theft. As examples, Los Angeles and Dallas experienced staggering increases of 109 percent and 73 percent, respectively, in shoplifting incidents from H1 2022 to H2 2023. As the problem intensifies, communities are left grappling with the…

It's the way of the world that giant corporations have the resources to crush their competition, especially when they attain a dominant position in the marketplace. The goliaths of Amazon.com and eBay did this to SMBs when they started offering FREE returns of online purchases. To be fair, the big companies probably didn’t foresee the…

For many vendors, the holiday sales period can spell the difference between success and failure, providing a boost that can turn around the fortunes of a struggling retailer. Conversely, an inability to capitalize on last quarter sales could be a business’s final death knell. That’s why retailers need to make sure their management processes can…

Target has slashed the hours of operation for self-checkout lanes at some of its stores. Not all store locations have had self-checkout hours cut, but the retailer is considering store staffing levels and sales volumes in its decision. Workers told Business Insider that Target is trying to keep the percentage of overall store sales via…

Shopping + social platforms = social commerce. It’s not a new concept in other parts of the world; as of 2022, over 70 percent of Asian consumers, specifically in Thailand, China, and Vietnam, had shopped on social media platforms. To put this into perspective, just 36 percent of U.S. internet users are social buyers, meaning…

As the retail industry evolves, strategies for success have dramatically shifted. Gone are the days of static store layouts, now replaced by a dynamic, data-driven approach that requires ongoing iteration. For retailers to thrive in 2024, a refocusing of key performance indicators (KPIs) is essential. Central to this new approach is understanding and maximizing foot…

In mid-January, I had the pleasure of attending the NRF “Big Show” Conference in New York City. As always, it was great to meet new people, reconnect with prior colleagues, and finally meet some people in person — we have been on video calls way too often in the past three years! As expected, retailers…