In June, retail sales continued to grow, but the composition of that growth saw consumers making more deliberate choices about where their money goes. Households continued to spend where purchases were difficult to postpone, while many discretionary categories struggled to gain traction. For merchants, banks...
A weekly grocery run seems like the perfect opportunity to fill a shopping cart with everything else a household needs. New data suggests consumers increasingly see it differently. A recent PYMNTS Intelligence report, “The Basket Breakaway: How Amazon Is Turning Walmart’s Store Traffic Into a...
Retail is getting a first-principles upgrade at the hands, or lack of them, of artificial intelligence. The shopping transformation looks less like a better eCommerce search bar and more like something out of science fiction. It’s a bot-filled operating layer that autonomously mediates between consumer...
Retailers have treated self-checkout as an operational decision shaped by labor costs, consumer preferences and technology. Rhode Island may be setting a precedent and changing those calculations by making parts of the checkout experience a matter of state law. The state recently enacted the Restrictions...
A coalition of global fashion brands and digital marketplaces is mounting a campaign to eliminate sales taxes on secondhand clothing, according to a report June 30 from Retail Brew. The group argues that taxing items at the point of resale constitutes “double taxation,” as the...
Every July, America gathers around the grill, gazes at the sky and asks the same timeless question. Can liberty be itemized? The answer, increasingly, is yes. It comes with hot dogs, surge-priced airfare, a cooler that cost more than expected, and at least one uncle...
Amazon has enough satellites in orbit to begin rolling out Amazon Leo, the company’s broadband service, Bloomberg reported Thursday (July 2). The company gained another 29 satellites, bringing the total deployment to more than 390, when a United Launch Alliance rocket delivered them into orbit, according to the report. The...
The shorthand of direct-to-consumer (D2C) might boil down to selling through a brand’s own website or brick-and-mortar location. But writ large, the model is about controlling the customer relationship. Consumer brands poured resources into owned channels, betting that higher margins, richer customer data and stronger...
Retailers found a way to get inflation-weary Americans to buy in June. The question is how much it cost them. Amazon’s four-day Prime Day pulled into late June and was quickly matched by Walmart, Target and other chains. Still, Amazon’s discount push appears to have...