Today on Total Retail

As we move further into 2024, the in-store retail landscape continues to shift from transactional spaces to powerful mediums for engaging and communicating with consumers. This shift presents a pivotal opportunity to redefine the dynamic between brands, retailers, and consumers. Retailers are looking to invest in physical enhancements to stores to personalize customer experiences further.…

Target is considering offering customers a paid membership program similar to Walmart+ or Amazon Prime, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The news outlet said the potential membership program would be called Project Trident and could launch as soon as this year, according to people familiar with the matter. Target shares rose 2.4 percent Wednesday following the publication…

Truly connecting with customers and meeting their expectations is hard these days. Channels that were once effective are in decline. Customers are growing immune to the ads, emails and cluttered news feeds they see each day. Data privacy restrictions are making it harder to gather actionable data on those customers. These are all challenges that…

There's just one problem: consumers might not like artificial intelligence, at least not in an e-commerce context. Recently, we conducted a survey of 2,000 consumers, and its results on this front were unambiguous: 85 percent of shoppers reported that they were not interested in using AI to help make purchasing decisions, and 60 percent said…

Gone are the days when a catchy jingle or clever billboard held sway over consumer attention. Today, the shopping experience is a digital dance, one where brands must learn the measures delicately and efficiently to avoid stepping on toes and wasting money. In an era when digital advertising has become increasingly pervasive, the challenge for…

The explosive growth in e-commerce that flowed from the COVID-19 pandemic has made last-mile delivery more important than ever in the retail industry. Companies that meet consumer expectations when it comes to last-mile delivery will be well-positioned to thrive. Meeting those expectations, however, is easier said than done, as consumers want delivery to be fast,…

Estée Lauder is cutting 3 percent to 5 percent of its global workforce as part of a restructuring program that aims to increase profits and become more nimble in a challenging international environment, reports ABC News. The layoffs were announced Monday as the New York cosmetic giant reported falling profits and revenue in the second…

While at NRF 2024: Retail's Big Show in New York City, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan spoke with Parbinder Dhariwal, vice president and general manager at CVS Media Exchange, CVS Health's retail media network. Dhariwal provides an overview of the retail media arm of the CVS business, including the benefits it brings to both third-party brands and…

In February, the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) newest guidance for addressing joint employer status will go into effect, and the impact on the retail sector could be significant. In situations where there's a parent company that sets standards — e.g., related to working conditions or parameters around the quality of work — left to…

Over the past few years, venture capitalists (VCs) and pundits have declared the direct-to-consumer (DTC) commerce business model all but dead. This much is true: The party is over for hockey stick growth driven by Instagram ads or the abundance of cheap VC money for retail startups in the ZIRP era. However, as one crop of…