Data & Analytics

Return fraud during the holidays is a growing problem for retailers—and also an extremely expensive one.

This holiday season, both laptop/desktop computers and mobile phones will play a critical role in the online path to purchase.

According to a new study of more than 1,000 U.S, consumers from online discount platform Ebates, more than half of Americans (53%) are choosing to use their laptops to shop this holiday season, followed by their home computer (39%) and their mobile phone (24%).

The Lone Star State is going to get its fourth Ikea.

The City Council of Grand Prairie, Texas, has approved Ikea’s plans to build a second store in the Dallas-Fort Worth-area. Pending remaining approvals and permits, construction of Ikea Grand Prairie could begin fall 2016, with an opening in fall 2017. It will be the company’s fourth store in the state of Texas.

At its annual Analyst Day in New York Wednesday morning, CVS Health raised the midpoint of its earnings outlook for 2016.

A CEO who took over family business when he was 27 years old is the next retailer to be spotlighted on the CBS television show, “Undercover Boss.”

Sam Dushey heads up Shoppers World, a family-owned and -operated full-line discount department store chain headquartered in New York City. In his 10-year stint as CEO, Dushey has grown the business from eight stores to 40 locations across 11 states and up to $250 million in annual retail sales. Dushey is now looking expand the company to 500 stores.

2015 has been a good year for e-commerce. Alibaba shattered records on Singles Day with $14.3 billion in sales. India witnessed a boom in e-commerce investment from companies looking to win the millions of new smartphone users. Even the Girl Scouts joined the digital mix, rolling out version 2.0 of their Digital Cookie program to boost their online cookie sales. We expect even bigger things from 2016.

Social commerce is evolving, which means the omnichannel world is changing, too. Even the mere definition of omnichannel is in flux as the lines between commerce and communication blur and new platforms proliferate.

It’s been a slow evolution, with many attempts to perfect social commerce resulting in failure. Will consumers ever have a world where commerce is one with their social experience? Right now the experience is a lot like being at a party, talking with friends, only to be interrupted by an uninvited guest trying to sell you fabric softener.

Dylan’s Candy Bar has achieved double-digit revenue growth since deploying a new solution to replace multiple legacy on-premise systems, including a custom-built warehouse management system. Dylan's Candy Bar has deployed NetSuite to manage its mission-critical business processes, including financials, inventory and order management, warehousing and customer relationship management.