Retail

Retail
Maryland’s Personalized Pricing Ban Marks Shift From Disclosure to Prohibition
September 21, 2026

Maryland will become the first state to put an outright ban on certain personalized grocery prices into effect Oct. 1, moving beyond the disclosure requirements that have defined much of the early state response to algorithmic pricing. But it may not be the last. Maryland...

Retail
Instacart Gives Merchants and Brands New Views of Store Shelves
September 21, 2026

Instacart has unveiled software designed to let grocers and brands digitally view store shelves in real time. The new solutions, announced Monday (Sept. 21), will “map the entire store down to individual products on shelves,” letting grocers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands virtually comb...

Retail
Santa Would Like a Word With Your Pumpkin
September 19, 2026

Santa has apparently checked his calendar and decided Halloween has had quite enough time. Amazon, Target and Walmart are lining up overlapping October sales, inviting consumers in the United States to buy Christmas presents while still considering whether the front yard skeleton needs a companion...

Retail
Amazon Rolls Out AI Agents That Interview Job Applicants 24/7
September 18, 2026

Amazon Connect Talent, an agentic artificial intelligence solution for hiring, is now generally available, Amazon Web Services (AWS) said in a Thursday (Sept. 17) update to an article originally published in April. Amazon Connect Talent is designed to help enterprises accelerate the entire process of...

Retail
Senators Demand Probe Into Amazon and Walmart AI Over Made in USA Claims
September 17, 2026

Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate how Amazon and Walmart handle “Made in America” goods and claims on their website and apps, Baldwin said in a Thursday (Sept. 17) press release. In a letter...

Retail
Amazon Builds Its Own Answer to Walmart’s 5,000 Stores
September 17, 2026

Amazon needs more than faster warehouses to close Walmart’s delivery advantage. It may need to build and manufacture its own version of a neighborhood store network. Amazon knows this, and the digital retail giant is already acting on it strategically. Project Mercury, Amazon’s plan, reported...

Retail
Department Stores Move Upmarket as Luxury Struggles
September 17, 2026

The upmarket push is showing up at department stores, where the objective is to get customers to spend more without making the jump into luxury. Macy’s CEO Tony Spring described that effort during the retailer’s second-quarter conference call last week after an analyst asked about...

Retail
Walmart Adds AI Tools to Help Suppliers Act on Retail Data
September 16, 2026

Walmart Data Ventures is adding new artificial intelligence-powered features to its commerce intelligence platform, Scintilla, the company said in a Wednesday (Sept. 16) press release. “For years, the focus in retail has been on accessing more — and better — data,” Walmart Data Ventures said...

Retail
Nike’s S&P Exit Is a Warning for Every Consumer Brand
September 15, 2026

Nike’s upcoming removal from the S&P 100 is easy to read as a corporate fall-from-grace story. It may be more useful to read it as a retail one. After nearly 18 years in the index, Nike will be removed from the S&P 100 before trading...