New Supply Chain Due Diligence Laws Necessitate Greater Traceability
The call for brands and retailers to fortify their supply chains with robust traceability solutions has never been more urgent. Countries across the globe have enacted tighter due diligence laws to prevent child labor, poor working conditions, and environmental abuses, ranging from the United States’ …
Walmart Easing Delivery Requirements for Suppliers
Walmart said this week that it’s planning on easing its requirements for in-full and on-time shipments from suppliers. According to The Wall Street Journal, Walmart said that it wants its suppliers to deliver shipments on-time 90 percent of the time and in-full 95 percent of …
Retail Has Been Slow to Embrace AI. Here’s Why.
Artificial intelligence (AI) may be the next big thing, yet most retailers wait on the sidelines, watching what other businesses reap from this new digital technology. It’s not that they don’t want to pursue this new technology. Working in low-margin businesses, retailers understand the value …
This Supply Chain Year Will Be Dependent on Politics
Politics seems to be on everyone’s mind in this election year and the effects on supply chains are becoming evident in every aspect of our work. …
Email Marketing Trends for 2024: Competitive Differentiators
Offering the biggest reward for the least risk, these 7 email marketing tactics and technologies are rated as low adoption but high impact by our digital marketing experts. …
Future-Proofing Retail Through Wi-Fi Automation
The modern retail business owner knows these facts: their customers expect an experience that’s efficient, effortless, and caters to their preferred way of buying. As consumer shopping habits continue to evolve — expedited in part due to the global pandemic that forever changed how we …
Conversational Commerce for Better Customer Experience
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 …
Target is Reducing Self-Checkout Hours in Some Stores
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 …
The Walled Gardens of Social Commerce
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 …
January retail sales begin 2024 with mixed readings
Commerce reported that January retail sales, at $700.3 billion, were off 0.8% compared to December and up 0.6% compared to January 2023. NRF reported that January’s core retail sales, which it bases on Census data and excludes automobile dealers, gasoline stations, and restaurants, fell 0.8%, …