Artificial Intelligence

The new retail is here and a sector that is definitely feeling the wave of this reality is the grocery industry. With the strong penetration of Aldi, Amazon’s move into online grocery, Wal-Mart’s purchase of Jet.com and the dreaded arrival in the U.S. of the highly competitive German grocery store Lidl, it’s no wonder grocers are fighting for survival in this ever-changing, highly saturated environment.   

eBay’s newest furniture destination looks like a page right out of Architectural Digest.  

Amazon gave some very special visitors a tour of its top secret drone testing laboratory in Cambridge, England.  

Everyone across retail industry is preparing for the holiday shopping season — especially the hackers.   Shoppers will continue to use more payment methods — from debit and credit to mobile wallets — during the hectic holiday shopping season, and hackers are standing at the ready. Whether infiltrating in-store peripherals, firewalls or databases, hackers are prepared to invade retail networks, disrupt systems and steal valuable information.   

A sizzling Ulta Beauty wowed the Street on Thursday, announcing aggressive store expansion at a time when many brick-and-mortar retailers are cutting back. It also upped its outlook.  

Retailers know that personalization equates to higher sales, but companies still struggle with execution.    Specifically, retailers are eager to offer personalized experiences to achieve higher sales. Failing to remove unintended barriers are only overwhelming shoppers, who then abandon shopping carts.  

Digital infrastructures are growing more complex, and taking a toll on decision-making.   Eighty percent (80%) of IT operations leaders reported that end-user experience monitoring (EUM) is very important or critical to delivering business outcomes. However, as distributed infrastructures grow in complexity, it is becoming more difficult to provide information needed to make business decisions, according to a study by analyst and consulting firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).  

While digital disruption continues to stymie a good part of the industry, Sam’s Club is using the concept to its advantage.   The company’s VP of omnichannel member communication and innovation, Darshan Gad, and executive VP of operations Don Frieson, teamed up at the “Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit” event last week in Rogers, Ark., to discuss how the chain is using disruption to drive innovation.