E-Commerce

In episode 501 of Total Retail Talks, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviews Nick Lezin, senior vice president of e-commerce and marketing at Ashley, an American home furnishings manufacturer and retailer. Lezin expands on Ashley's strategy for launching a fully transactional shopping experience through artificial intelligence platform Perplexity (1:20), along with the unmet customer needs that its…

Bankrupt department store company Saks Global is ending its e-commerce partnership with Amazon.com, reports PYMNTS. The arrangement between the two companies had already been strained when Saks filed for bankruptcy last month, even though the retailer hadn’t specified whether it would exercise its right under Chapter 11 bankruptcy to reject the deal. Now, the luxury…

At the National Retail Federation Big Show in New York City earlier this month, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviewed Tony Bacos, chief product and technology officer at Stitch Fix, an online personal styling service. Bacos detailed how Stitch Fix works to target common shopping challenges and change the way consumers discover style recommendations through the utilization…

At the National Retail Federation Big Show in New York City last week, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviewed Kelly Pedersen, global retail leader at consulting firm PwC. Pedersen delves into consumer behavior trends that emerged during the 2025 holiday shopping season, particularly highlighting a "say-do gap" where consumers spent more than they initially intended. He discusses…

The way people interact with retail sites is changing, and this past holiday shopping season made that very clear. Shoppers have relied on comparison tools and search assistants for years. However, a new pattern emerged last year, with automated activity shaping the experience in ways that were hard to see from the outside. New research…

While at the National Retail Federation Big Show in New York City last week, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviewed Shirley Gao, chief digital and information officer at Pacsun, a purpose-driven, leading specialty retailer, and Sharon Gee, head of AI at Commerce, an open, AI-driven commerce ecosystem and parent company of BigCommerce, Feedonomics, and Makeswift. They discuss…

Walmart and Google announced on Sunday that consumers will soon be able to use Google’s artificial intelligence assistant Gemini to more easily discover and buy products from the retail giant and its warehouse club, Sam’s Club. Incoming Walmart CEO John Furner and Google CEO Sundar Pichai made the announcement on stage at the National Retail…

U.S. consumers spent nearly $258 billion online during the holiday season lasting from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, according to new data from Adobe. The company said in a press release that was a new record — and beat expectations of $253.4 billion — with consumers spending more than $4 billion in a single day…

U.S. retail sales remained unchanged from September to October as consumers moderated their spending ahead of the holiday season. The U.S. Census Bureau provided the October sales numbers earlier this week; the report was delayed more than a month because of the 43-day government shutdown that occurred earlier this fall. Americans spent $732.6 billion in…

An estimated 158.9 million consumers plan to shop on the last Saturday before Christmas, known as Super Saturday, according to the annual survey released by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics. The figure is up from 157.2 million shoppers last year and surpasses the previous record of 158.5 million in 2022. …