Marketing

Back-to-school used to be a relatively straightforward shopping season. Families bought supplies, sneakers, backpacks, maybe a few new outfits, and moved on. Today, it has become one of the most competitive periods on the retail calendar, stretching across classroom essentials, sports equipment, apparel, electronics, dorm products, food and beverage, and everyday household purchases all at…

More than half of consumers (58 percent) have replaced traditional search engines with generative artificial intelligence tools for product recommendations. That figure was 25 percent just two years earlier. Your next storefront visitor may not be a person at all. It may be a large language model (LLM) deciding whether to recommend your products. Most…

For years, shopper marketing has operated as a collection of disconnected systems. Retail media, promotions, loyalty programs, digital shelf strategies, and analytics lived in separate platforms managed by separate teams. As a result, brands and retailers have often struggled to connect marketing activity to actual sales outcomes. As consumer expectations rise and marketing budgets face…

Generative artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how advertising gets made. What once required days of model shoots, full video crews, and large creative teams can now be produced faster and at lower cost with AI tools. For retailers, that means quicker creation of digital ads, seasonal campaigns, product imagery, social media content, and even updated…

Personalization in retail has scaled a higher altitude in 2026. Consumers expect brands to not only recognize and remember them as unique individuals in the moment, but also to anticipate their needs as they change. A Capgemini Research Institute report shows that 71 percent of consumers want generative artificial intelligence to be integrated into their…

Remember Jarvis from "Iron Man"? Before generative artificial intelligence became part of everyday conversation, Tony Stark had something most of us could only imagine — an intelligent assistant that understood context, anticipated needs, answered questions, and helped him make decisions in real time. Jarvis wasn't just a search engine. He wasn't a static database of…

Ulta Beauty shoppers will soon be able to purchase Bath & Body Works' signature fragrances, hand soaps ​and candles in more than 600 stores as both companies pursue turnaround plans that include more partnerships. Part of Bath & Body Works' "Consumer-First Formula" aims to give shoppers more ways to find the company's ​lotions and candles,…

Walmart, which has developed one of the most sophisticated retail media networks, advanced its advertising strategy on Tuesday to sell more ad space across connected TV (CTV). The retailer announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Vibe.co, a self-serve CTV ad platform that aims to simplify advertising for small and midsized businesses (SMBs).…

Retailers are no longer asking whether artificial intelligence belongs in the business. Nearly every organization is experimenting with AI in some form, whether through personalization engines, predictive inventory tools, customer service assistants, or emerging agentic experiences.  The challenge now is understanding how to measure its impact as AI increasingly shapes discovery, decision-making and customer engagement.…

The early data on artificial intelligence shopping is in and it has a story to tell. Shopify reported that shoppers who arrive at e-commerce sites through AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are 50 percent more likely to convert to purchase than those coming from organic search. Not only are they more likely to…