retail

Earlier last week, UK high-street apparel retailer New Look announced plans to close 85 stores, up from the 60 it announced in March. These closures are happening under the auspices of a restructuring deal (a CVA, first introduced as a “company voluntary arrangement” in the Companies Act 1980). Simultaneously, it unveiled a return to profitability […]

Singles’ Day, the world’s largest online shopping festival, is celebrating its 10th anniversary. There’s no doubt that we will see another record-smashing year, although gross merchandise volume (GMV) will no longer be the highlight. Singles’ Day has always been Alibaba’s testbed for new business models and technologies, and this year is no exception. AI and […]

Digital is the rocket fuel for retail’s growth. But that growth requires retailers and brands to keep up — and step up — how quickly they evolve in terms of people, processes, products, and more. On top of all that, in 2019 we’ll see factors such as global economies, trade barriers, rising wages, and marketplaces pack a […]

Marc Andreessen once said, “Raising venture capital is the easiest thing a startup founder is ever going to do.” That’s a bit of hyperbole from Marc, but there’s a lot of truth to it if one’s timing is right. Technology startup markets can go through periods of irrational exuberance in which money seems to grow on trees. Those […]

My colleague Alex Causey and I have now finished “The Forrester Retail Wave™: European Mobile Apps, Q4 2018,” the second Retail Wave we’ve done. This year, we evaluated the functionality and usability of six European retailers’ mobile apps. For retailers with a pan-European presence, we selected one European market in which to evaluate the retailer’s app […]

Forrester’s Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) research shows that, year on year, retail performance is still not reaching levels of “excellence.” Instead, retailer performance clusters around the “OK” level. There are of course bright sparks, with retailers such as John Lewis outperforming peers, but even those standouts are only reaching “good.” So what is holding […]

This blog post is part of Forrester’s Holiday 2018 retail series. Black Friday holiday sales events are a fixture of the European holiday shopping season (even without a European equivalent of the Thanksgiving holiday!). Initially finding its way to the UK, the sales day has extended across Europe to become a significant sales event from […]

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. […]