Omnichannel

Retail media ad spend in the U.S. is forecast to hit $71.09 billion in 2026, according to EMARKETER. Yet despite the innovation happening in the channel to capitalize on that buzz, one thing that hasn’t evolved is measurement. The worst offender? Add-to-cart rate. On the surface it’s easy to see why it’s popular. When we’re…

Ask most retail marketing teams which channels are driving sales and the same answers tend to dominate: search, paid social, and marketplaces. That doesn’t mean marketers believe these are the channels that create the demand. Yet they remain the easiest parts of the customer journey to measure, despite many of the influences shaping purchase decisions…

Most retailers still think of RFID as a counting tool. The ones gaining ground have figured out it's something else entirely. I've spent the better part of two decades working in retail technology — including in IT at lululemon, at Avery Dennison, and as a vice president of supply chain at PVH — and the…

Most retail fulfillment technology investments don't fail at go-live. They fail months earlier, in a planning meeting where a vendor hands over a 14-week implementation timeline and nobody — not merchandising, not store operations, not the warehouse team — pushes back on the assumptions underlying it. By the time the project is six months in…

In today’s complex omnichannel retail environment, margin pressures are no longer a temporary headwind but a structured reality that isn’t going away. Rising labor costs, volatile freight rates, tighter delivery expectations, and the growing complexity of selling across multiple commerce platforms are forcing brands to rethink how their back-end operations are designed and managed. One…

Retail leaders have spent the better part of three years running artificial intelligence experiments. Smart shelf analytics here. A dynamic pricing engine there. A conversational bot standing in for customer service agents on the overnight shift. The results have been encouraging, sometimes even impressive, and the industry has responded with enthusiasm. But enthusiasm, unchecked by…

Managing inventory is challenging across all industries, but retailers face the added challenge of scale. While a standard company may need to plan for 100,000 products in a single warehouse, a major retailer needs to manage that same volume across thousands of different store locations. This makes even basic data collection difficult. For example, even…

2026 is delivering both challenges and opportunities for retailers and the retail sector. There is no avoiding the unknowns of supply chain pressures and inconsistent consumer purchasing confidence. However, there are opportunities for retailers that get the in-store and omnichannel experience equation right to spur sales, customer loyalty, and satisfaction. Core pieces of this puzzle…

The retail industry has entered a new era, one in which fragmented omnichannel strategies are no longer enough to meet rising consumer expectations and mounting operational pressures. According to Manhattan Associates’ latest report, Unified Commerce Powers Future Retail Success, the retailers pulling ahead are those that have moved beyond omnichannel and embraced unified commerce: a…

Inventory data has quietly become the most important customer experience (CX) system in modern retail, and the foundation of true, storewide intelligence that connects what customers see on shelves with what systems believe is available. When shelf reality and system reality match, every other experience promised — from personalization to buy online, pick up in-store…