Operations & Fulfillment

Retail leaders aren't short on enthusiasm for artificial intelligence, but they are short on certainty about how to use it. A recent poll of supply chain and logistics professionals found that only 29 percent are currently deploying AI to support real, operational decisions. The largest group, 37 percent, describe themselves as actively exploring how AI…

Black Friday/Cyber Monday are less than months away. That means promotions are mapped, inventory is inbound, fulfillment systems are in motion, staffing plans are set, and carrier allocations are made. The season’s strategies have taken shape, but there’s still time to fine-tune last-mile execution. The beginning of fall marks the closing window retailers have to…

In the U.S. retail market, the customer experience increasingly depends on what happens after checkout. Consumers expect brands to deliver on promises around convenience and transparency, but meeting those expectations requires strong operational foundations behind the scenes. Recent research highlights that retailers improving their total experience aren't simply adding new capabilities; they're strengthening the fundamentals…

It's a Tuesday in October, and a shopper has a wedding on Saturday. She's found the dress twice — once at the boutique label she's been following on Instagram for months, once at Amazon.com, for the same price. A few years ago that wouldn't have been much of a choice at all. Today it's the…

Costco is expanding its same-day delivery network as it looks to grow e-commerce sales and compete with retailers such as Walmart and Target. The retailer last week launched collaborations with DoorDash and Uber to pick up online orders at U.S. stores and drive them to customers' homes. The partnerships give Costco more channels to reach…

Free shipping remains one of e-commerce’s strongest customer incentives, but the economics behind it are becoming harder to sustain. Deloitte found that 67 percent of retail executives expect to raise their free shipping thresholds in 2026, while Salesforce reports that free shipping remains the most important factor influencing where consumers across every income level will…

Artificial intelligence is excellent at introducing shoppers to new retailers. It's far less forgiving when those retailers break their delivery promises. ChatGPT and Google Gemini are overtaking conventional search as starting points for product discovery. Agentic AI is then turning that discovery into real conversion as OpenAI and Google develop protocols that allow customers to…

Retailers have spent years and billions of dollars on digital expansion, prioritizing e-commerce, marketplaces, and social commerce to be where their customers shop. And that investment might be paying off as a brand’s omnichannel presence strengthens consumer confidence. Recent Radial research found that 39 percent of consumers say they trust a brand more when it's…

Every earnings season brings another wave of headlines attributing retail and fulfillment gains to artificial intelligence. Stock prices react, press releases multiply, and retailers are told that a new era of automation has arrived. Yet a closer look at what's actually being described often reveals something less revolutionary: optimization logic, routing rules, and automated decisioning…

Faster delivery is becoming an expensive promise to keep. It became a default expectation, but rising delivery costs, high return volumes, and tariff uncertainty are reshaping inventory plans. The National Retail Federation's latest estimate puts holiday returns at about 17 percent of sales, on top of nearly $850 billion in merchandise returned industry-wide annually. Growing…