Data & Analytics

Whole Foods Market and online delivery service Instacart have big plans to make it easier for consumers nationwide to receive home deliveries from the nation’s leading retailer of natural and organic products.
 

Fourth quarter profits at Stein Mart were cut in half as the company relied on heavy promotional activity to clear inventory and eke out a 1% same-store sales increase.

Women’s apparel specialist Christopher & Banks saw its online sales surge in the fourth quarter, but it wasn’t enough to keep the company from posting an even bigger operating loss than it did the prior year.

CVS Health on Thursday announced the launch of "Be The First," a five-year $50 million initiative to help deliver the nation's first tobacco-free generation.

The CEO of Toys “R” Us sounded an upbeat note on Thursday amid results that showed the chain cut its full-year net loss by more than half in fiscal 2015, and improved its adjusted earnings by 25%.

Everyone knows detecting fraudulent e-commerce activity is crucial, but how do you know when something is up?

Fraud detection provider Simility aggregated patterns across 500,000 browser-based devices throughout January 2016. Analysts looked for patterns in the 10,000 (or 2%) of those devices that were in the hands of fraudsters and contrasted those with the other 98% of devices in the hands of good or “organic” users.

Simility discovered seven anomalies that were leading indicators of fraud:

Bag, Borrow or Steal, a specialty online retailer that allows consumers to buy, rent and sell luxury handbags and accessories, is all about creating a sense of community.

The rumors are true – Whole Foods Market and Instacart are taking their relationship to a new level.

The organic grocer and online delivery service officially announced a deepening of their partnership, which had been reported in the media for the past few weeks.

Retailers looking to place blame for problems with inventory or fulfillment may want to find a target besides their IT systems.

According to a new survey of 200 retailers from inventory management technology provider Stitch Labs, two-thirds (63%) of inventory or fulfillment issues are caused by human error from manual process management. Delayed shipment from suppliers causes another 15% of inventory and fulfillment difficulties, with faulty technology only responsible only 12.5% of the time.

Chain Store Age recently spoke with Daphne Carmeli, CEO of Deliv, to get her perspective on what’s going on in the rapidly growing online delivery space.

What is driving growing consumer interest in online delivery?
We’ve got a bunch of players in the industry who are aggregating inventory in a simple, flexible and cost-effective way for last-mile fulfillment. Companies like Amazon and Google are resetting customer expectations of what’s possible.