Today on Total Retail

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a theoretical line item in retail supply chain and fulfillment discussions. It's real, it's advancing rapidly, and it's fundamentally reshaping how retailers forecast demand, manage inventory, and deliver to customers. From automated decision-making to advanced recommendation engines, the technological landscape is evolving quickly. Yet, as these systems become more…

Retail and consumer packaged goods (RCPG) companies have entered a definitive phase where operational precision is no longer a competitive advantage but the baseline for survival. In 2026, the industry is grappling with a stark consumer polarization. On one side, a value-seeking segment is trading down and scrutinizing every penny; on the other, a premium…

Amazon.com said Monday it has reached a ‌new agreement with the United States Postal Service (USPS) ‌on package deliveries, reports Yahoo Finance. Sources told Reuters the deal will result ​in Amazon, which is USPS's largest single customer, retaining around 80 percent of its existing deliveries with USPS, or more than 1 billion packages ‌per year.…

At Shoptalk in Las Vegas last month, Total Retail Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan spoke with Anna Haffner, senior director, large customer sales, retail at Reddit, a social network of communities where people can dive into their interests, hobbies and passions. They explore how Reddit’s massive collection of human conversations is transforming into a powerful retail engine.…

Returns fraud is accelerating, and “keep it” policies are making it worse. Frankly, they should be illegal. On paper, telling a customer to keep a low-cost item and issuing a refund looks efficient. No shipping. No processing. No restocking. No warehouse touch. In practice, it's lazy operations dressed up as customer convenience. It creates fraud…

Retailers have spent the past several years optimizing for efficiency. Lower acquisition costs, clearer attribution, tighter dashboards. Digital channels delivered speed, precision and performance, so budgets followed. But as commerce becomes more connected and competitive, retailers are rediscovering a simple truth: purchase decisions do not happen only on screens. Shoppers move fluidly throughout their day.…

After years of rapid growth, new networks launching monthly, and brands eagerly shifting budgets closer to the point of sale, the conversation around retail media has evolved into one of accountability. Advertisers are asking harder questions about what retail media actually delivers, and whether reported performance aligns with real business outcomes. This shift is both…

Scam robocalls continue to generate the largest volume of consumer complaints received by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Recent data show that scam and telemarketing calls increased by 15.6 percent in 2025 compared to the prior year, adding roughly 420 million additional scam calls each month. For retail and e-commerce companies, the implications are real…

Bed Bath & Beyond has entered into a definitive merger agreement to buy The Container Store in a transaction valued at $150 million. In a regulatory filing, the retailer said its newly created subsidiary, Falcon Merger Sub, will be merged into The Container Store, leaving the latter as a wholly owned unit of Bed Bath…

Retailers are currently operating in a golden age of autonomous commerce, where artificial intelligence-driven personalization and seamless customer journeys are the standard. However, there is a massive backdoor threat that many in the sector are ignoring. According to Valimail’s 2026 State of DMARC report, while online retail leads the world in email authentication adoption, a…