Retailers have spent the last two decades focused on conversion: driving more traffic, reducing checkout friction, tuning site search, and personalizing the experience. Those things still matter, they just don't answer the question that now decides whether many shoppers buy: What is the customer actually trying to accomplish? That's an intent problem. For years, e-commerce…

More than 10 years after Amazon.com launched Prime Day, tentpole deal days from Walmart, Target, Best Buy and others have become major events akin to the holiday months. And while not on the level of the holiday shopping period that runs November through December — when retailers earn upwards of 30 percent of their revenue…

Retail’s agentic commerce moment is already underway. Payment processors keep rolling out partnerships and integrations that open the door for nonhuman buyers. It’s the next step in a natural progression of artificial intelligence shaping shoppers’ decisions about what to buy. IBM reports that 41 percent of consumers already use AI to research products, 33 percent…

Shein’s U.S. business is under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, the fast-fashion giant revealed in documents connected to its upcoming Hong Kong initial public offering. In the filing, the Chinese-founded company didn’t say what the FTC is investigating, but the disclosure appears to be the first time the probe was made public. Shein previously tried…

In this episode of Total Retail Tech Insights, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviews Eugene Yukin, vice president of products at MessageGears, the data activation and engagement platform that helps enterprises harness their data by streamlining the tech stack. Listen in as Yukin discusses his career experience in retail and product (1:10), the MessageGears platform (2:30), and…