With millions of Americans expected to travel this Memorial Day weekend when gas prices are historically high, spending both in-person and online are expected to be higher than ever. In an email to Chain Store Age, Adobe predicted that consumers would spend an estimated $10.8 billion online during the three-day weekend (May 23-25), representing a…

Anyone who operates a loyalty program knows that they’re designed to influence buying behavior ...  human buying behavior. A customer remembers their points balance, activates an offer, and checks the app before checkout. That model is showing its age. Artificial intelligence agents are actively making real purchase decisions on behalf of consumers, both within the…

“How’s the shopping center business going?” It’s a question I hear often as I travel across the country. And more often than not, people outside of our industry expect a very specific answer shaped by years of headlines about store closures and the rise of e-commerce. But that narrative is very different from what we're…

It is Monday morning. Your retail marketing lead or e-commerce director pulls up an artificial intelligence assistant and asks it to build next month's advertising plan. Ninety seconds later, the screen fills with a polished strategy: target audience segments; platform recommendations across Google, Meta, Spotify, and Nextdoor; budget allocation by channel; and creative angles tailored…

Retail has no shortage of “artificial intelligence shopping agent” demos that promise to get shoppers to the right product faster. And discovery is still hard. Shoppers still get lost in endless options, retailers still struggle with relevance, and the stakes are high when the product is physical. But in apparel and footwear, the failure that…