Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The retail sector continues to face mounting pressure to meet higher standards of social and environmental responsibility. A recent survey found that over the next three years, 90 percent of organizations intend to ramp up their investments in ESG in response to both regulatory pressures and growing consumer preferences for sustainable products. Seventy-three percent of millennials now…

The U.S. holiday shopping season is almost here, and most retailers anticipate another record-breaking year. In fact, analysts at eMarketer predict that consumers will spend more than $271 billion, a 9.5 percent increase in domestic holiday retail e-commerce sales over 2023. Being a winner of the upcoming holiday season may come down to a retailer’s…

If you're familiar or have read up about artificial intelligence, it’s likely you’ve heard about large language models (LLMs), a type of AI that's used to analyze large amounts of data and generate text. However, you may not be as familiar with a newer phrase that's becoming more common: small language models (SLMs). SLMs are…

ThredUp, one of the largest online resale platforms for apparel, shoes and accessories, unveiled a new suite of artificial intelligence-powered tools to aid in discovery shopping, the company announced Monday. Visitors can now search for products with what ThredUp is calling "natural language" — for example, typing in "swimsuit for a triathlon" or "tank tops…

For years, brands have assessed the return on investment of customer experience automation by asking three questions: What does it cost to serve a customer today? What could it cost to serve a customer tomorrow? What is the investment price to get from A to B? With these questions guiding the way, we’ve seen a…

Businesses are constantly on the lookout for the next technology that can be deployed in their operations to help give them an edge, and right now modern enterprises are turning to artificial intelligence to gain a strategic advantage and drive tangible return on investment. Reluctance to adopt AI and machine learning (ML) risks businesses lagging…

In the evolving landscape of business management for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), artificial intelligence tools have emerged as vital assets to streamline operations and optimize resources. Small business owners continually seek ways to bolster their competitive edge and increase efficiency, understanding that in today's technology-driven market, staying ahead of the competition is critical. The…

Retailers will need to embrace the experience economy and strategically integrate next-generation technologies to effectively navigate enterprise transformation and industry disruption. To successfully enter the new era of cognitive retail, brands should keep these five trends in mind: 1. Customers Are Prioritizing Experiences Over Products. Nearly 90 percent of consumers say that the experience a…

As geopolitical and environmental events become more volatile and unstable, so can a retailer’s supply chain. Right now, war in the Middle East is causing shipping in the Red Sea to become more dangerous. In the U.S., the government has raised tariffs on some Chinese goods. Globally, shipping prices are soaring. All of these events…

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has taken retail commerce by storm, drastically changing the behaviors of online customers to a point that retailers are making investments in the technology to improve the customer experience. According to Forrester’s March 2024 Consumer Pulse Survey,  consumers use of GenAI is growing, with 48 percent of U.S. consumers agreeing that…