retail

Autonomous payments is the future state of payments — and banks, merchants, and payment vendors need to prepare now. Venture funding in this arena already exceeds $28 billion. Coupled with intensifying economic and political forces, consumers globally will see this new but nonlinear evolution of payments emerge, where payments will melt into the wider commerce experience […]

Over $1 trillion (no typo) — that’s how big 2017 holiday topline sales were in the US and Europe combined. As for online sales specifically last year, Forrester projected $129 billion in the US and €54 billion in Europe. As a retailer with substantial revenue at stake, you’ve made your merchandise buys, allocated your marketing dollars, and feverishly analyzed […]

Stripe, one of the leading payment providers for online and platform businesses, today announced “Stripe Terminal” to tackle the merchant challenges around in-person payments. Stripe’s solution combines several of the technology components that go into in-person payments and works to abstract the complexity away for merchants and developers. In-person payments are operationally challenging for merchants. […]

Forrester’s 2018 Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) results continue to show that companies are struggling to create and sustain a human connection with their customers. This is not a question of delighting customers as an endgame or some fluffy sense of emotional attachment; this is a crass and clear story of financial risk. Taking a step […]

Best Buy has made yet another startup acquisition that enriches its customer value with innovative digital products: GreatCall, a San Diego-based startup offering health and medical alert devices and services. Most retailers’ “innovations” have been incremental digital tech investments that extend their retail value proposition and customer value. It’s great to see Best Buy investing […]

Stories of thrilling, new AI use cases in retail have been popping up in our tech news feeds, whether computer vision, facial recognition, or elimination of human workers. But these sensational accounts miss an important piece of the AI learning curve. A complex infrastructure of end-to-end process automation underpins the flashy technology reflected on the […]

Many retailers today face a stacked deck. Consumers are spending their income at the highest rate in decades but not on the retail staples that have traditionally filled retailers’ coffers. “The State Of The US Retail Shopper In 2018” report examines the key personal economic factors responsible for turbulence in the US retail industry while […]

Apple’s Tim Cook announced stellar earnings yesterday, exceeding analyst estimates but not surprising us at Forrester. We have predicted for a while that Apple was poised to become the world’s first trillion-dollar company (at the moment of this writing, the company’s market cap stands at $982 billion). Apple’s products are outstanding, and its revenue outlook […]

The barrier has never been lower for retail shoppers to compare offerings and try new companies. Superior customer experience (CX) helps foster loyalty, and at the end of the day, CX leaders grow revenue faster than CX laggards. However, we found that most retailers continue to struggle at delivering great experiences to their customers. Forrester […]

In-Store Mobile Delivers Service, Efficiency, and Convenience. Customer service through associate-assisted mobile scanning and checkout. Operational efficiency through associate mobility. Customer convenience through self-service mobile checkout.

Amazon is on the tip of the tongue when folks analyze the retail sector or try to craft strategies to save or re-energize retail brands. Sure, Amazon is reshaping the retail sector, causing turmoil for most and devastation to some. But that point is misleading and dangerous to brands looking for a single villain or […]

Grocers Are Partnering For Digital Growth The last few months have been a watershed of new deals around grocery fulfillment. Walmart is partnering with DoorDash, Kroger is investing in Ocado, Target is acquiring Shipt, and Amazon is delivering groceries to consumer vehicles. Fulfillment has become the key parameter for grocers to grow their digital business. […]

When Piloting Colocation, Measure Impact To Location, Customers, And Operations It’s been interesting to see creative real estate colocation ideas such as the recently announced pilot for ALDI in 10 Kohl’s stores. As Kevin Mansell, former CEO of Kohl’s, explained, “We believe the opportunity to leverage our real estate through this effort has benefits.”[1] But […]

In today’s increasingly crowded digital commerce market and with increasingly tighter budgets, retailers have to make smart choices about which technologies to invest in and which they should forego for now. To help retailers sift through the options, we conduct an annual top trends study. This year, we interviewed more than 30 retail industry professionals to ask about retail […]

If you care about CX, you have to admire Etsy. It was the top digital retailer in Forrester’s Customer Experience Index™ in 2017. It excels at differentiating itself with a unique set of products and a distinctive online store, where buyers routinely upload pictures of their purchases alongside gushing reviews. Unsurprisingly, Etsy is also one […]

If you care about CX, you have to admire Etsy. It was the top digital retailer in Forrester’s Customer Experience Index™ in 2017. It excels at differentiating itself with a unique set of products and a distinctive online store, where buyers routinely upload pictures of their purchases alongside gushing reviews. Unsurprisingly, Etsy is also one […]

The internet has enabled brands to sell more of their products to an ever-expanding universe of shoppers, but digital distribution has also added complexity to the relationship between brands and retailers and other channel partners. All brands need to set parameters around the digital sales of their goods, regardless of the type of brand or […]

In digital transformation, there’s a fine line between fearlessness and foolishness. Bad decisions can have all the trappings of a bold new strategy: a costly acquisition suddenly pivoting to an unexpected new product offering that’s an ambitious new vision for the future. Similarly, when consumer media hypes a new business model that will “disrupt” an […]

I recently spent two weeks in China to attend an event hosted by eCommerce company JD.com for analysts and retail thought leaders. Here are my takeaways on the state of eCommerce in the world’s largest eCommerce market: Customers in China seek novelty and individuality. Nearly 60% of metropolitan Chinese consumers are Progressive Pioneers — the most demanding, […]