Artificial intelligence (AI) was chosen as the emerging technology most likely to have the biggest impact on the retail industry in 2019, according to Total Retail's 2018-2019 Retail Technology Report. Retailers and brands are investigating ways to leverage the power of AI across their organizations, from marketing to logistics to customer service, and more. Workwear…
Recent market research predicts that voice shopping will explode to over $40 billion by 2022, up from $2 billion today. As popularity in voice assistants like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa grows rapidly, retailers are jumping at the opportunity to create unique and dynamic shopping experiences by leveraging the new technology. However, in an era…
There aren’t many conversations I have where I’m not asked a variation of this question: “What’s the future of social commerce look like?” Before I even answer, though, I level-set on what social commerce means. The term “social commerce,” it seems, has become shorthand for “making an Instagram feed shoppable.” And so I spend a…
Total Retail is excited to present to you its third annual Top 100 Omnichannel Retailers report. The report, produced in conjunction with Radial, an omnichannel commerce technology and operations provider, features a ranking of 100 publicly traded retailers based on their omnichannel retail programs offered as well as the execution of said programs. Why focus on omnichannel retail? The…
J.C. Penney confirmed that it stopped accepting Apple Pay in connection with an April 13 deadline that required merchants to retire old magnetic stripe functionality. The retailer decided to stop accepting the mobile wallet after a deadline from a third-party credit card brand, which the retailer declined to name, requiring merchants to accept EMV contactless…
When shoppers encounter a retailer that doesn’t accept their preferred payment method, 55 percent will spend less or go elsewhere according to a recent study by Adyen. Yet, payment preferences can involve an array of layered factors. Payment options should go beyond offering credit card or cash to allow shoppers to finance purchases, especially higher-priced…
Between rapid technology evolution’s effect on sales and smaller businesses stuck hiding behind the shadows of e-commerce giants, retailers are grappling with a great deal of uncertainty. Even in the best of retail sales and revenue growth, product returns are expected to have accounted for 30 percent of the 2018 retail economy — an estimated $37 billion. So,…
In this week's Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Joe Keenan and Kristina Stidham discuss Amazon.com's recent decision to accept cash payments at its Go store, and how this change could impact operations. The change was made following mounting criticism that the cashless stores discriminated against the poor. In our analysis, Amazon could see both positive…
The biggest e-commerce challenge of 2019 may be balancing marketing and sales channel innovation with the need for increasingly sophisticated fraud prevention. This will be especially challenging because fraud protection, like many aspects of business today, requires experience and fluency in working with data, and there's a growing shortage of data scientists across the U.S.…
Fueled by the collective effort of dozens of new luxury-specific technology solutions in the market, the online shopping experience continues to evolve, adopting the best features of brick-and-mortar stores. Unfortunately, in the click vs. brick war, digital retail is still the weaker competitor as it’s tough to bring the emotions and engagement of physical retail…
