Sucharita Kodali

To get a closer look at what other retailers did during Prime Day, we reviewed 48 retailers’ home pages, spanning numerous categories. Here's what we found.

Retail recovery is proceeding at different rates in various parts of the US. See how our US retail recovery heat map reflects factors such as economic sentiment, change in COVID-19 cases, vaccine rates, and retail foot traffic.

In Q1 2021, we surveyed 140 brand manufacturer decision makers who are familiar with their company’s approach to digital sales. Brand manufacturers can use the results of Forrester’s Digital State of Brand Manufacturers Study to benchmark their performance and internally make the case for investments in digital sales strategies.

Artificial intelligence and analytics are increasingly critical to retailers’ ability to win, serve, and retain their customers. But the landscape of technologies is vast and advancing rapidly, so it can be hard to understand which technologies are overhyped and which have real business value. Retail execs read about initiatives such as Amazon Go and Walmart […]

In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that, between January 8 (the highest peak in the US) and May 12, the seven-day moving average of new cases decreased 85.8%. Vaccination rates are steadily increasing, and the CDC has relaxed mask guidance for vaccinated individuals. The US is finally entering a […]

Bots are bigger than the security team. Conversations with security professionals concerned about bots often start with credential stuffing attacks, but the bot landscape is much broader and can directly impact your top line. Even the defenses have business impacts: A bot management solution that slows down traffic on the biggest shopping day of the […]

It has been one year since we began estimating how the retail economies of 30 major US metropolitan areas were recovering from COVID-19. By aggregating numerous metrics (across retail sales, local economic indicators, and virus spread), our model predicts that these metropolitan areas will face differing levels of COVID-19 disruption. A lot has changed in […]

Every month, we estimate how the retail economies of 30 major US metropolitan areas are recovering from COVID-19. By aggregating numerous metrics (across retail sales, local economic indicators, and virus spread), our model predicts that these metropolitan areas will face differing levels of COVID-19 disruption. This month, we added a new variable to our retail […]

The pandemic has been a pivotal moment for the consumer packaged goods (CPG) category. Before the pandemic, most CPG brands lacked direct-to-consumer (DTC) buy-ability on their website. However, the pandemic spurred numerous CPG brands like Beyond Meat, Bimbo, Del Monte, and PepsiCo/Frito Lay to launch DTC websites. The latest update to our Digital Go-To-Market Review series […]

Since April 2020, we have estimated how the retail economies of 30 major US metropolitan areas are recovering from COVID-19. By aggregating 11 metrics (across retail sales, local economic indicators, and virus spread), our model predicts that these metropolitan areas will face differing levels of COVID-19 disruption. For these metrics, we looked at US metropolitan-, […]

Our latest update to our Digital Go-To-Market Review series for brands looks at the consumer electronics sector. Electronics store sales peaked in 2007, and since then, an ever-growing proportion of consumer electronics sales has moved online.* In 2020, 64% of US online adults said that they made a consumer electronics purchase online on a computer, […]

Over the last 10 months, we have estimated how the retail economies of 30 major US metropolitan areas are recovering from COVID-19. By aggregating 11 metrics (across retail sales, local economic indicators, and virus spread), our model predicts that these metropolitan areas will face differing levels of COVID-19 disruption. For these metrics, we looked at […]

The retail holiday season is in the home stretch. We expect US online holiday sales this year will top $173 billion — or fully 24% more than last year.

Forrester’s Digital Go-To-Market Review evaluates brand manufacturers and how well they are positioned to thrive independently of online marketplaces and even traditional retailers. In our second edition of this study, we focused on the beauty goods sector, evaluating 34 brands on five elements for a total of 20 attributes. From this review, we rated seven […]

The Amazon Effect Comes Full Swing To Prescription Services Amazon Pharmacy, the company’s much-anticipated online prescription fulfillment service (built from its acquisition of PillPack two years prior), launched this week. With this announcement (and its past healthcare investments), Amazon becomes a direct competitor with legacy retail pharmacies CVS Health, Walgreens Boots Alliance, and others. In […]

There were three interesting grocery developments in the last few days, all pandemic related and all reflective of the fact that digital transformation in grocery is still a work in progress and hardly a home run: Nestlé bought Freshly. This was probably the most predictable in that we’ve seen many big traditional companies buy startups […]

Since 2015, Amazon has hosted its annual summer sale, Prime Day, an exclusive deal event for its Prime members. In 2019, shoppers purchased more than 175 million items during the event, and its sales surpassed the prior year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales combined. For this year, due to COVID-19, Amazon’s highly anticipated event […]

In the wake of the pandemic's deluge of disruption, retailers, brand manufacturers, and ecosystem players such as mall operators are entirely rethinking their businesses, heralding much change ahead. Read what we predict for retail in 2021.

It’s Amazon Prime Day and Big Billion Days week — a fitting time to kick off Holiday 2020 and Forrester’s annual holiday prep blog series. In the coming weeks, watch for Forrester analyst expert insights about everything from marketing, podcast advertising, and smart post-purchase notifications to US holiday forecast scenarios, “11/11” event analysis, thwarting “grinchy” […]