eCommerce

Ross Dress for Less opened a new store in Woodbridge, Virginia, on March 5.

The 25,000=sq.-ft. store is located in Prince William Square, on the northwest corner of Smoketown Road and Gideon Drive, 20 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.

The opening is part of Ross’ 2016 expansion program, totaling about 70 new locations during the year.

Amazon.com has been slowly but surely building the capabilities of its interactive Echo voice-activated consumer device. According to Re/code, integrating Echo with the Alexa artificial intelligence platform to allow the ordering of new commodity items is only a step toward the final goal. Namely, full-scale, Echo-based access to Amazon’s entire inventory. [Re/code]

Social retailing is nothing new, but more retailers are starting to experiment with launching their own proprietary social media offerings.

Online delivery service Instacart is launching its first expansion of 2016 – and it’s a big one.

Instacart is now offering deliveries in as little as one hour from Whole Foods Market, Gelson’s Market, Stater Bros. Markets, Ralphs, Smart & Final, Costco (no membership needed), Petco, and H Mart to residents of Orange County, California. Whole Foods will offer delivery via Instacart at prices that are the same as shoppers find in-stores.

Consumer expectations are increasing and retailers are keeping up—but their trading partners are lagging.

This is one of the key takeaways from the fourth annual industry benchmark survey by Retail Systems Research (RSR) commissioned by SPS Commerce. The goal of the survey was to examine the internal and external forces driving today’s retail ecosystem, an industry that has evolved more in the past decade than in the past century. That evolution continues this year, with three critical drivers at the forefront:

Persistence has paid off at Ingles Market for Jim Lanning who was elevated to the role of CEO after joining the $3.8 billion supermarket chain 41 years earlier.

Asheville, NC.-based Ingles Markets named Lanning, 56, to the role of CEO, filling a position previously held by company Chairman Robert P. Ingle, II. Lanning will retain his position as president while Ingle, 47, will continue to serve as chairman and continue his day-to-day active operational role in the executive leadership of the company, according to a statement.

Photo: Aritaum, H-Mart, Ridgefield, New Jersey

Ross Dress for Less opened a new store in El Paso, Texas on March 5.