This morning, JCPenney revealed plans to shutter more than 100 stores, putting it in the unwelcome company of other anchor store stalwarts — like Sears and Macy’s — who have recently begun paring down their retail footprint. [More]
online shopping
Why Is Credit-Card Fraud Still Rising In The New Chip Era?
By 2.1.17
For years, American consumers have waited for safer credit cards with embedded chips that make them more difficult to clone, and which can require a unique PIN or a signature to use. Now that these cards are finally in widespread use, and retailers are begrudgingly shifting over to new card-readers, why is identity fraud still on the rise? [More]
Has Amazon Helped Indie Bookstores?
By 1.26.17
Bookstore chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble were among the first retailers to feel the sting of Amazon, with its vast variety of titles and speedy delivery times, not to mention its huge share of the ebook market. However, the online goliath doesn’t appear to be having the same diminishing effect on the number of independent bookstores. [More]
Amazon Adds Virtual Dash Buttons To Website, App For One-Click Ordering
By 1.20.17
If you’re the kind of person who already has enough clutter around without adding a bunch of plastic shopping dongles, Amazon thinks it has the solution for you: it’s adding virtual Dash Buttons to both its website and app so Prime shoppers can reorder common products with one click. [More]
UPS Expecting To Send 1.3M Packages Back To Retailers On ‘National Returns Day’
By 12.27.16
If you’re the kind of person who likes keeping track of arbitrary holidays, here’s one more to add to your list: Jan. 5, known as “National Returns Day,” or, “The Day You Send That Horrorshow Of A Sweater Back From The Fiery Chasm From Whence It Came.” [More]
Pizzas, Pot & Fields Of Gold: 7 Important Firsts In Online Retail History
By 12.16.16
How long have you been shopping online? People have been using electronic networks to buy and sell things for 40 years, and the first commercial transactions over the web took place over 20 years ago. Compared to bricks-and-mortar retail, where it took more than a century to evolve from catalogs, boutiques, and haberdasheries to big box stores, online retail has seen a significant amount of innovation in a very short amount of time. [More]
Amazon Makes First Commercial Drone Delivery To Customer In England
By 12.14.16
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has had a dream for a while now: delivery drones flying here, there, and everywhere, zooming over rooftops and dropping off packages to customers. That dream has now become real with Amazon’s first Prime Air drone delivery, Bezos announced today. [More]
UPS, FedEx Already Struggling Under Avalanche Of Holiday Deliveries
By 12.13.16
One might think that after years of online shopping growing in popularity that major shipping carriers would finally be prepared for the Big Show, also known as the holiday season. And yet here we are again, heading into crunch time, and UPS and FedEx are having trouble keeping up with all those packages. [More]
Don’t Fall For The ‘Missed Delivery Notice’ Email Scam This Holiday Season
By 12.9.16
If you’re like everyone else you know, you’ve probably been doing — or plan to do — a bit of online holiday shopping this year. Missing a delivery could put a serious kink in your day, but don’t let that fear draw you into a scammer’s net. [More]
Retailers Beef Up Ship-From-Store Operations To Fill Online Orders
By 12.1.16
For retailers that sell the same merchandise in person and online, shipping online orders from stores makes sense. Running out of hot items can mean ending promotions early or disappointing customers by canceling their orders, neither of which is a good idea during the stressful and crucial holiday season. Yet expanding ship-from-store is not as simple as it sounds at first. [More]
Monday Projected To Be A Record Day For Online Shippers
By 11.23.16
In news that will surprise absolutely no one, the major package carriers, UPS and FedEx, expect to handle record numbers of packages this holiday seasons. As Americans shift more of our holiday shopping — and more of our shopping in general — online, that makes this Monday particularly important for retailers. [More]
Amazon Using Merchants’ Warehouse Space So It Can Ship More Prime Orders, Faster
By 11.17.16
What’s an e-commerce giant supposed to do when it needs more warehouse space? If you’re Amazon, you just ask the merchants whose stuff you’re selling to share, by offering to let them slap Prime labels on their products. [More]
Groceries & Millennials: They’re Buying Less, Shopping Online
By 10.27.16 — Updated: 10.31.16
From Whole Foods launching a supposedly hipper 365 brand of stores to Target’s mini-stores aimed at attracting young shoppers, retailers across the board have millennials in their crosshairs. But a new report suggests those efforts have been for naught, with younger shoppers continuing to seek out e-commerce options when it comes to grocery shopping. [More]
Amazon Dash Shopping Wand Now Lets Users Order Any Prime Item They Want
By 10.5.16 — Updated: 10.6.16
While Amazon has been busy expanding its selection of Dash buttons, which allow shoppers to reorder a designated product with one click, it’s also updating its two-year-old Dash shopping wand: users can now use it to order anything they want, instead of just groceries from AmazonFresh. [More]
Uber Thinks You Might Want To Look At A Bunch Of Ads During Your Ride
By 9.29.16
There are definitely some things people would like more of during an Uber ride — more control over music, more free cookies, etc. — but more advertising and content from brands trying to promote themselves? That might not appeal to everyone. [More]
IKEA Betting Click-And-Collect Stores Will Appeal To Online Shoppers
By 9.13.16
If the thought of wandering through a giant maze of housewares and furniture and inevitably fighting with your significant other/roommate over which dish rack to buy strikes fear into the very depths of your online shopper’s soul, IKEA’s recent shift in strategy is aimed at attracting shoppers like you. [More]
Gap Shoppers Buying Online May Wait Longer For Orders After Warehouse Fire In NY
By 9.2.16
A rough year for Gap Inc and some of its brands — Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic — just got rougher: A fire that tore through a major distribution warehouse for the retailer earlier this week means that customers in a busy region are going to have to wait longer than usual to get their hands on the stuff they paid for. [More]
Report: There Are 1.2M Fewer Retail Workers Than There Would Be Without The Internet
By 8.18.16
What would the retail landscape look like if we didn’t have the Internet and online shopping? No one can say, for sure (unless you know someone who can travel to parallel universes*), but one analyst says there’d be about 1.2 million more people with jobs in retail. [More]
