Today on Total Retail

Conn's HomePlus, the Texas-based home goods, furniture and electronics retailer, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Tuesday and is closing 73 of its 170 stores, multiple news outlets reported. The closures and bankruptcy filings come after a year of lost profits for Conn's — the company ended 2023 with a year-over-year net loss of nearly…

Technology has long paved the way for consumers to shop beyond their own domestic markets. Today, a growing number of international e-commerce brands, including Temu and Shein, are enticing overseas shoppers with unique product offerings, competitive pricing, and more. Demonstrating the opportunity, over half (52 percent) of U.S. and U.K. online shoppers have purchased at…

It’s no secret the e-commerce industry is experiencing significant growth, with 23 percent of retail purchases expected to occur online by 2027. That number should be higher, as today nearly 71 percent of online shopping carts get abandoned, often due to user experience (UX) issues such as trouble creating accounts, pauses or delays related to product…

Amazon Prime Day is the mid-summer shopping event that serves as a litmus test of what to expect for the Q4 holiday season. Every July, Prime Day offers a valuable “dress rehearsal” for upcoming critical shopping periods such as back-to-school and the holidays. This year, Prime Day hit record-breaking sales, with shoppers spending $14.2 billion…

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a critical business process in both online and brick-and-mortar retail. Its efficiency directly affects customer satisfaction and loyalty and thus largely determines a retailer's revenues. As a retail business grows, the number of clients also increases, making CRM more labor-intensive and challenging. Retailers can address this challenge by adopting the…

After years of delay, Google says it will no longer cancel and replace third-party cookies for its internet browser Chrome, reports CNBC. Cookies are used by advertisers to track users across multiple sites and deliver targeted ads. In 2020, Google said it would end support for those cookies by early 2022 once it figured out…

In today’s world, customers expect exceptional experiences at every opportunity. One of the most exciting developments in this area is interactive packaging, which allows brands to engage with consumers before they even become customers. With advancements in technology, the potential for improving customer engagement through interactive packaging is enormous. In fact, the global smart packaging…

Planning for the end-of-year holiday shopping season is already well under way for many retailers. As strategies are hammered out, it’s critical to understand what consumers are looking for and where their preferences lie this year. While inflation has slowed, it hasn’t stopped impacting wallets. Vericast recently conducted consumer research to uncover how people are…

The seemingly endless proliferation of digital channels continues to grow, both the available channels for retailers and the manner in which they can reach customers. New media interactions and more complex customer journeys are increasingly the norm. While the funnel remains a popular basic structure for understanding the sales process, retailers are finding that the…

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…