To survive in today's economic climate, retailers must stay on the cutting edge of technology, business strategy, and more. This section is all about business strategy, with content focused on topics such as retail technology trends, retail and e-commerce marketing strategies, merchandising, omnichannel best practices, and more!
“Retail is on the cusp of the most profound shift we’ve seen since the rise of e-commerce,” my colleague Rachel Moore, who leads our Incubation and AI teams, declared in a Women in Retail Leadership Circle opinion piece earlier this year. It’s only been four months, but that shift to agentic commerce is accelerating. My...
Memorial Day has long served as one of retail’s most reliable revenue weekends, a moment when showrooms fill up, floor traffic spikes, and big-ticket purchases finally get made. This year, however, the familiar playbook faces some unfamiliar pressure. The conflict in the Middle East has raised the cost of energy and has people concerned about...
Retailers are facing a watershed moment in artificial intelligence development. Just as direct-to-consumer brands have begun to draft and implement solid policies, governance systems and approval thresholds for generative AI use cases, agentic AI systems are already out of the barn. Predictive, knowledge-based LLM systems have paved the way for systems that don’t just talk,...
The retail industry has entered a new era, one in which fragmented omnichannel strategies are no longer enough to meet rising consumer expectations and mounting operational pressures. According to Manhattan Associates’ latest report, Unified Commerce Powers Future Retail Success, the retailers pulling ahead are those that have moved beyond omnichannel and embraced unified commerce: a...
In this episode of Women in Retail Talks, Women in Retail Leadership Circle Managing Editor Marie Albiges interviews Amanda Bailey, vice president of customer marketing and loyalty at Lowe's. This interview was recorded at Shoptalk in Las Vegas last month, where Bailey spoke on a panel exploring innovative approaches to marketing across the customer journey. Bailey discusses treating loyalty as a relationship beyond transactions; serving both DIY and pro customers via one loyalty platform with tailored benefits; building executive influence; and more.
Duration: 22:06
Most brands talk about personalization like they’ve mastered it. However, personalization is still mostly smoke and mirrors. If customers click your email and land on a website that acts like it has never met them, you’re not personalizing, you’re decorating. True personalization spans the entire customer journey. Great customer experience (CX) feels like one continuous...
Retail media networks (RMNs) have become as mainstream as existing content and advertising channels. The problem is that RMNs are still measured according to traditional metrics like clickthrough rates and impressions. However, just as retailers embraced a new model when they added data monetization and publisher functions to their strategy to create RMNs, pioneering retailers...
In retail and consumer businesses, the store manager is the critical operator in the system. They own daily execution, set the expectations for the team, and translate strategy into action. When a store performs, it’s because the store manager has a CEO mindset. But in a multi-unit organization, performance cannot rely on individual excellence alone....
Every conference stage, board presentation, and strategy deck in retail includes some version of the same promise: artificial intelligence-powered personalization will transform how we engage consumers. It’s become the default answer to almost every question about where marketing is headed. But here’s the part that rarely gets addressed: Beyond the buzzwords, what does AI-powered personalization...
Technology buying failures rarely happen because a team chose the “wrong” software. They happen earlier when retail organizations enter the RFP process without the strategy, clarity or alignment required to make a good decision. Most retail technology buyers only see a handful of stores, regional operations, or supply chains over the course of their careers...
