Today on Total Retail

Retail sales increased during August as consumer demand outweighed the pandemic, supply chain disruptions and other factors affecting spending, the National Retail Federation (NRF) said Thursday. The U.S. Census Bureau reported overall retail sales in August were up 0.7 percent seasonally adjusted from July and up 15.1 percent year-over-year. Despite occasional month-over-month declines, sales have grown…

In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Joe Keenan and Kristina Stidham discuss an article recently published by Total Retail titled, “Amazon is Finally Acting Like a Retailer, and What That Means for Brands,” authored by Tim Hershey, chief retail officer at Netrush. Amazon has recently tightened its inventory restrictions, placing new pressures…

Big data is dumb. (oooh ... this guy is being provocative) OK, I’ll back off that statement a bit by saying: Big data is ambivalent. I’m picturing a giant robot with a stream of data flowing from its mouth. And below, marketers hoot and cheer and slosh around in a lake of information. But soon,…

Consumer demand for contactless service and curbside delivery was already on the rise before 2020. But when the pandemic began, it skyrocketed. Since then, 85 percent of consumers increased their use of curbside pickup; 60 percent now cite a lack of contactless services as a deal-breaker for whether they do business somewhere. This all points…

Attaining customer loyalty is perhaps harder today than it has ever been. Consumers have an abundance of choice, both online and offline, when it comes to the retailers they can choose to spend their hard-earned money with. If a retailer doesn’t meet a customer’s high expectations, no matter the reason, that shopper is unlikely to…

Digital commerce has emerged as a winning business strategy since 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe. While a number of retailers such as Nike and Williams-Sonoma successfully reached consumers without being able to physically interact with them, most retail brands had to find new and innovative ways to connect with their customers. A…

Kroger, the country's largest grocery retailer, announced Tuesday it's partnering with online platform Instacart to offer customers 30-minute delivery service. Called Kroger Delivery Now, the service will include 25,000 items, including food and household essentials, from Kroger and its banner stores for customers to order and receive at their homes. Kroger and Instacart have been partners…

On the heels of COVID-19, we sit in the most complex environment for parcel rates and service that we’ve seen in our lifetime. A confluence of factors have come together to bring sometimes fast-moving volatility to the market, which make parcel planning for large retailers incredibly challenging — both for peak and nonpeak.

After a year-plus of remote schooling, students and faculty are flocking back to the classroom this fall — and stocking up on supplies for it. Deloitte forecasts that back-to-school spending will reach $32.5 billion this year, up 16 percent from last year and 17 percent from 2019. While this expected influx of business should be…

There's no doubt that consumers are changing the way they spend, but how much of the change is permanent? Much has impacted established retailers and consumer product companies, from massive societal shifts and cultural change to marketplace disruption and accelerations in direct-to-consumer (D-to-C) models. As businesses emerge from one of the most sustained periods of…