Category: Retail Trends

January 16, 2020

Mobile is set to dominate online shopping in 2020 thanks to a 20 per cent increase in shopping app downloads to 5.4 billion last year. App Annie’s The State of Mobile 2020 report has revealed the scale of influence mobile […]

January 6, 2020

The on-again, off-again, maybe-on-again of tariffs that got on retailers’ last nerve in 2019 serve as a neat metaphor for the industry as a whole — in retail, things are complicated, swiftly changing and sometimes contradictory. The U.S. consumer, for […]

January 3, 2020

Analysts have been expecting plenty of discounts during the fourth quarter. Moody’s analysts warned in December that the six fewer selling days between Thanksgiving and Christmas could “exacerbate the promotional environment” for the period. They noted, as an example, that […]

January 3, 2020

The uncharacteristically low December job cuts reflect a “wait and see” approach going into 2020, according to firm Vice President Andrew Challenger. Bankruptcies weren’t the only reason for significant cuts. Companies cited restructuring for most of the total — 137,968 […]

January 2, 2020

Respondents to the Accenture survey aren’t the only consumers who’ve expressed frustration about the shopping process. A Zebra Technologies survey found that 75% of millennials and 53% of Gen X consumers have left a store without buying an item to […]

December 30, 2019

Direct-to-consumer brands have increasingly moved into the physical space, blurring the lines between their business model and that of traditional retail. In Diffusion’s survey, consumers showed interest in visiting a DTC’s physical store to get a sense of the product […]

December 27, 2019

Logistics providers and retailers are bracing themselves for a flood of returns at the start of 2020. A study conducted by Oracle Retail stated that 77% of consumers plan to return a portion of their gifts this holiday season, with […]

December 24, 2019

New year, new business plans, new customers, new products… new you! A brand new year brings on so many exciting changes that can have a big impact on your business, and Independent Retailer is here to make sure those changes […]

December 20, 2019

The outlook is good for the growth of BOPIS, based on the results of the Kurt Salmon experiment. The average processing time was 2.5 hours, compared to 3.6 hours last year, and 85% of orders were fulfilled with no issues, […]

December 18, 2019

Perfecting online returns has been a problem for both online and brick-and-mortar retailers, alike. To that end, companies have been partnering with one another to improve convenience for consumers. Back in April, Kohl’s announced that it would accept Amazon returns […]