Retail Trends

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” […]

In a rapidly evolving retail environment, brand manufacturers that have traditionally sold through wholesale channels now need to think very differently about distribution. Some traditional wholesale partners are shrinking — meaning those (often long-standing) distribution partnerships simply can’t generate the sales and growth for brands that they did for decades. By contrast, online marketplaces are growing — and fast. Marketplaces promise access to vast swaths of new customers — but potentially also arm’s-length relationships with those customers and less control around placement, plus proximity to […]

Discover some of the common benefit and cost factors that e-commerce merchants can use to build a business case for adding a new payment type.

Emerging technology is always changing, so we wanted to understand the impact on different industries. In this audio series, we speak with our analyst colleagues Jeff Becker, George Lawrie, and Arielle Trzcinski to explore how emerging technologies are changing (and will in the future), even solving some of the most important and complex issues in four key sectors: consumer packaged goods (CPG), healthcare providers, healthcare insurers, and retail. In a world where […]

One of the biggest transformations in retail that Forrester highlighted in its recent B2C buying research stream is the growth of brand manufacturers in commerce and the corresponding tension with marketplaces like Alibaba, Amazon, and others around the world. (“Brand manufacturers” are traditionally wholesale companies that distribute through intermediaries. They’re a complex ecosystem, and no […]

The pace of consumer behavior change has clicked into another gear this year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn how three of these trends will transform buying for the foreseeable future.

Q4 contributes a significant part of many retailers’ annual revenues and profits. As of mid-Q3, factors like high unemployment, a resurgence in COVID-19 cases, short-term and permanent store closures, and the expiration of the US Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program are making it challenging for US retailers to plan for Q4. We’ve created a collection […]

Brands have been reviewing and revamping their digital commerce strategies for some time. With consumers forced online during pandemic lockdowns across the globe, this focus on digital has only magnified. But digital commerce opportunities are not created equal for brands. Some brands are seeing significant growth in their direct-to-consumer (DTC) business and grappling with the […]

See how the retail economies of 30 major US metropolitan areas have fared in the wake of the pandemic, and learn what the near future may hold.

Recently, Walmart quietly launched Walmart Insurance Services LLC. To better understand and triangulate what this move means for the future of healthcare, a team of Forrester analysts weighed in. Read their takes.

As lockdowns ease, retail stores traffic and sales will only increase gradually based on consumer comfort levels, bringing preexisting strategic objectives into sharper focus and accelerate the need to execute on them.

Learn several digital strategies that quick-service restaurants impacted by COVID-19 can adopt to position themselves for the long term.

Forrester studied offline and online consumer shopping patterns and forecasted sales basis the impact of COVID-19 on the Asian Retail Market and the various factors regulating business. Learn the key market trends, impact of Covid-19 and opportunities for retailers in this complimentary on-demand webinar.

To encourage customers to come back and usher in economic recovery, companies must plan to redesign their physical-location experiences to address customer fears of COVID-19 and their desire to maintain social distancing.

Forrester retail industry analysts provide insights on how privacy and data ethics regulations will affect retail marketers.

Forrester's updated retail forecast shows that brick-and-mortar, non-grocery retailers will experience the heaviest losses, and that growth in online sales won't offset offline losses.

Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay; alternative payments are a hot topic. And they are key to seamless checkout experiences, especially while consumers shop on their smartphones. But which options are merchants offering? And which are consumers actually using? Forrester dove into 100 retailer sites to determine the state of alternative-payments acceptance in US online […]

For UK food retailers, coronavirus crisis has demonstrated the importance of flexible supply chain management. Read more, including potential solutions.