In its 50-year history, Costco has never seen such demand for gas. Many of its stations have been so overwhelmed that they've had to call in tanker trucks multiple times a day to avoid running dry, Costco said this week during its quarterly earnings call. As prices have surged above $4 nationwide — and above…

You have to be living under a rock if you haven’t heard about the tremendous growth of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude. Though early adopters are using LLMs for their shopping search and discovery, my money is on mobile apps dominating Q4 holiday shopping in 2026. History Doesn’t Lie According to research…

Retail brands are stuck in a promotional paradox: Everyone’s running discounts but finding it harder to see and sustain results. The economy is faltering, margins are under pressure, loyalty is fragile, and consumers are more promotion-aware than ever. The result? A vicious cycle where brands run even more discounts, even as those discounts become less…

Artificial intelligence is disrupting the world faster than any previous technology change ever. The next decade of retail will be won by the brands that use technology to deepen human relationships, not replace them. A few weeks ago I stood at the back of a London flagship and watched a sales associate greet a returning…

A new wave of artificial intelligence-powered shopping tools is changing how consumers buy online and creating fresh legal exposure for retail brands. In what the industry calls “agentic commerce,” AI assistants do not merely recommend products; they autonomously search, compare, and complete purchases on a consumer’s behalf, often without the consumer ever visiting the retailer’s…