Retailers are drawing different lines on how far artificial intelligence (AI) shopping agents can go on their sites. Amazon blocks outside agents while it builds its own. QVC lets agents complete purchases. Walmart lets Google’s Gemini surface its products, then hands the basket to its...
The economy has a growing collection of oddly named consumers. One has two incomes, no children and a dog. Another earns plenty but has yet to build much wealth. A third is old enough to remember dial-up internet and young enough, apparently, to spend heavily...
The retail landscape used to have four primary levers: share of shoppers, share of sellers, share of advertising dollars and share of wallet. However, artificial intelligence (AI) is creating the fifth and sixth levers: share of decision-making and share of intent infrastructure. Headlines this week...
Walmart is using flashing lights on its digital shelf labels to help customers and associates find the product they’re looking for, the company said in a Thursday (Oct. 1) press release. With a feature dubbed “Shop to Light,” in-store shoppers can ask the Walmart app...
In April 1956, a trucking executive named Malcom McLean loaded 58 metal boxes onto a converted tanker in Newark and sent it to Houston. Nobody threw confetti. The longshoremen hated it. But the math was hard to argue with. Loading a ship by hand cost...
Restaurant and retail digital technology platform Toast debuted Toast Fuel, new capabilities for gas stations and convenience stores, according to a Tuesday (Sept. 29) press release. Toast Fuel gives operators a single and connected platform for in-store and at-the-pump fuel payments as well as retail...
Amazon spent decades building a machine designed to make consumers come back constantly. Walmart has had one all along. It’s called grocery. Food and beverages now account for roughly 60% of Walmart’s retail business. Findings in the September 2026 edition of the Share of Wallet:...
Amazon spent decades trying to make itself the place where merchants sell. Its next act may be considerably more ambitious: becoming the place where merchants run their businesses, regardless of where the sale happens. Two exclusive announcements from Amazon shared with PYMNTS this week point...
The shopping basket has always held the answer. Brands just haven’t had a clear way to read it at the moment a customer pays. Smart checkout technology could change that by matching products in the basket with eligible offers and applying the savings automatically. “The...