Merchandising

Imagine a shopper standing in a physical retail aisle. In the span of two minutes, they flip open a mobile app to check a digital product page, then hop over to an artificial intelligence assistant to verify a specific compatibility question. The shopper isn’t marveling at your corporate "omnichannel architecture." They're just trying to buy…

Retailers have spent the better part of the decade making their supply chains smarter. Warehouses run on predictive analytics. Trucks are tracked in real time. Demand forecasting has never been so precise. And yet, for all that progress, the final 10 feet of the journey — the walk from the back room to the shelf…

Global e-commerce returns reached nearly $850 billion in 2025, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF), and the number keeps climbing. The industry's response is a familiar one: stricter return policies, return fees, warehouse process optimization. However, these measures treat symptoms. The real cause lies elsewhere, and earlier. It forms in the consumer's mind long…

Once a retailer says it can fulfill an order, it has made a promise. If a retailer’s website says a product is available for pickup, the customer expects to walk into the store and make the purchase. If the retailer says it can make a delivery within four hours, the customer expects the order will…

I’ve seen predictions that humans will no longer shop for themselves and that the storefront as we know it is dead. While artificial intelligence has undoubtedly impacted the retail industry, it hasn’t changed why people shop. Merchandising has always been about getting someone to notice a product, imagine owning it, and purchase it. AI can…

It's the Friday before Cyber Week. Traffic is climbing. Budgets are locked. Teams are watching dashboards. Then a product gets disapproved on a shopping channel. A campaign stalls because a key product attribute went missing. A customer searches through an artificial intelligence tool and the item doesn't surface at all. By then, nothing fixes fast…

In this episode of Total Retail Talks, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviews Chris Hurt, president and CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop, a beloved multigenerational brand focused on its mission to "add a little more heart to life," known for its stuffed animals. Hurt discusses his career start at Polo Ralph Lauren and American Eagle Outfitters, and the…

Retailers are facing myriad broad-based challenges in today’s economic environment: high labor costs, supply chain disruptions, slow growth and cost-conscious consumers, and strict regulatory compliance. On top of all of that, multinational food and beverage retailers are struggling to close the gap between what they plan for in-store and what customers actually see when they’re…

Over the past few years, the holiday shopping season — and holiday marketing, in turn — has undergone a massive shift. Cyber Five, traditionally seen as the unofficial kickoff of the holiday shopping season, has long played an important role in driving sales, with spending often concentrated in the final few weeks of the year.…

Join us for an interactive discussion on how leading retailers are using AI to transform merchandising.