Technology is rapidly changing the retail industry, but for now the fears of an apocalyptic impact on brick-and-mortar stores seem overblown. With Walmart, Target and many other mass retailers leveraging their physical stores to help them succeed with online customers as well as those that prefer to do their shopping in person, there is also
NEW YORK — Just in time for the holidays, retailers received some good news about trade. First, right after retailers posted strong Thanksgiving weekend sales, came the news that President Trump, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto had signed a new trade pact — the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement — to
Unemployment is low, and consumer confidence is high. But no matter how well the overall economy is doing, Americans are still focused on saving money. Recent research from the National Retail Federation shows that the preference for value affects where consumers shop and what they buy. A survey of more than 3,000 U.S. adults found
The upcoming holiday season is projected to be a good one for the retail industry. But much of the sales growth will be a result of additional traffic on retailers’ websites rather than in their stores. Online spending during the upcoming holiday shopping season is expected to grow 14.8%, to $124.1 billion, according to Adobe
The recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Sears Holdings Corp. offers another reminder, as if anyone in the industry needed one, of how fragile success in retailing can be. Sears in its prime was as disruptive as Amazon.com is today, and, in fact, it pioneered shopping from home (via catalogs and the U.S. Postal Service)
As this issue of MMR goes to press, the economic forecast for the retail industry looks bright. Unemployment is low and the stock market is high. Consumer confidence is strong, and retail sales projections for the rest of the year, including the holiday season, are rosy. There is really only one dark cloud on the
Shopping is now something people can do nearly anytime and anywhere, by using an app on their phone or talking to a smart speaker in their home. Or even, of course, by going to a brick-and-mortar store. So in a world in which shopping is truly ubiquitous, how can retailers stand out in the minds
The past month has seen retailers from Amazon.com to Target Corp. to Kroger Co. launch new online grocery shopping initiatives.Which raises the question: Do consumers really want to shop for their food in this way? A recent Gallup poll suggests that they do not. Gallup’s latest Consumption Habits poll found that 81% of U.S. adults
The retail industry is a major employer of Americans, with the National Retail Federation (NRF) estimating that the retail trade (including food services and drinking places) accounts for 28,984,100 jobs in the United States. That compares to 19,855,000 jobs in health care and social assistance, and 12,596,500 jobs in manufacturing. It is possible to imagine
Bigger is not necessarily better anymore, at least when it comes to consumer packaged goods companies. According to research from the Boston Consulting Group and IRI, scale is not the competitive advantage it once was for CPG companies. In fact, one of the study’s key findings was that smaller companies are outpacing their larger counterparts
The National Retail Federation is once again using a funny TV commercial in an effort to send a serious message. Last year the trade group had a hit with what looked like one of those late-night commercials for dubious products. The commercial, which ran during the Fox News Channel’s “FOX & Friends,” and during NBC’s
Many companies today embrace some form of continuous improvement process, under which they strive to make their products, services and systems better over time. The CIP concept seems very professional and corporate, but former Dollar General Corp. chief executive officer Cal Turner Jr. had a blunter version of the same idea. “Would you like to