Data & Analytics

In a relatively short space of time, the retail industry has been turned on its head. Not that long ago, retailers would decide which goods they would stock, how much they would price each item, and which locations would sell which goods. Today, consumers are calling the shots. The smartphone has become like a store in a pocket and consumers use them to quickly find the exact item they want and compare prices to get the best deal. Depending on what is more convenient for them, they can arrange for home delivery or click-and-collect.

Dollar General is rightsizing its expense structure by eliminating several hundred positions at its home office.

Dollar General said that effective immediately it had eliminated 255 positions but noted that 115 of those positions were vacant. The move follows an announcement the previous week by Walmart to eliminate 450 positions at its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters. Dollar General said the move was part of a broader initiative aimed at proactively improving efficiencies and reducing expenses by restructuring its corporate support functions.

Stadium Goods, an unusual new retail consignment concept dedicated to premium sneakers, launched on Monday with a multichannel format that includes a website and a flagship in New York City’s Soho neighborhood.

Both channels specialize in limited and special edition sneakers, and the type of exclusive, hard-to-find styles that sneaker enthusiasts (“sneakerheads”) are willing to shell out thousands of dollars for.

Irvine Company is making history as the first major real estate company in the world to plan portfolio-wide use of energy storage.

The Irvine Company on Monday announced an initiative to become the world's first major real estate company to create a fleet of hybrid-electric buildings powered by state-of-the-art energy storage systems from Tesla Energy.

The company recently signed a memorandum of understanding for the ground-breaking environmental initiative with San Francisco-based Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS).

The world’s largest social network is testing new e-commerce eatures, including a dedicated shopping section, Re/code reported. Facebook’s push comes as other social sites, including Twitter, are exploring social shopping.

If you were to read an article about leaders in savvy energy and sustainability management programs and initiatives, who do you think that would be? Government? Manufacturing? Actually, it’s the retail industry, which has been a leader in energy efficiency investments since 2008.

Social commerce is finally here.

Various retailers and social media platforms have been experimenting with letting consumers make purchases directly from social networks for some time. But in the past few weeks a flurry of new and expanded social commerce options have been introduced.

Amazon.com now allows sellers to promote products with keyword targeted ads and cloud-based e-commerce solutions provider ChannelAdvisor is ready to help sellers take advantage of the sponsored products feature.

ChannelAdvisor Corp. announced its support Monday for Amazon’s Advertising API (application programming interface), becoming the first e-commerce solution provider to offer this support.

Here is the bottom line: EMV compliance protects against certain types of fraud but not all types.

Yes, EMV adoption will drive significant growth in online fraud. But in something that has received far less attention is the fact EMV-compliant technology can also actually help protect retailers against fraudulent e-commerce transactions.

Sephora and Ulta are successful retailers in their own right, but Bluemercury founder Barry Beck wants to chart a different growth path for the company Macy’s acquired earlier this year.

When Macy’s announced in February it was buying beauty retailer Bluemercury, a lot of watchers wondered what the little-known niche retailer could offer the nation’s second largest department store chain. The answer to that question lies in something the founder of Bluemercury calls “exceptionalism.”