Omnichannel

Retailers looking to keep up with consumer demand for an individualized and seamless customer experience have a new supporting technology option to consider.

Although Amazon.com recently more than tripled the number of items available via its Amazon Dash buttons and cited some impressive growth statistics, actual use may be relatively low.

According to daily analysis of a panel of more than 4 million online shoppers from digital commerce research firm Slice Intelligence, fewer than 50% of people who had bought a Dash button before Amazon expanded the assortment on March 31 had ever actually made an order using one.

Two e-commerce vets are looking to tackle one of the retail industry’s most vexing problems: returns of online purchases.

David Sobie, former senior VP of marketing & business development at flash site HauteLook, and Mark Geller, former head of mobile at the company (which Nordstrom acquired in 2011), are launching Happy Returns, which seeks to eliminate the “pain” of returns by mail by establishing a network of “Return Bars” in malls and stores where shoppers can return merchandise purchased online and get an immediate refund.

Whirlpool Corp. will bring its Maytag brand of appliances to 600 Best Buy stores this month rounding out what was already an extensive offering.

Maytag brand products will hit the sales floor at 600 Best Buy stores in mid-April and also be sold online, the retailer said. The move expands Whirlpool’s assort at Best Buy which already includes the leading appliance manufacturer’s Whirlpool, KitchenAid and Amana brands. Best Buy also offer appliances from LG, Samsung, Frigidaire, Bosch and Electrolux.

When it comes to marketing spending, Deckers Brands is doing more with less.

The Goleta, California-based vertical apparel retailer is performing advanced predictive analytics on the performance of different marketing activities for its North American direct-to-consumer Ugg specialty footwear business. This includes an e-commerce site, as well as 45 stores.

Lowe’s Companies Inc. is expanding its use of augmented and virtual reality to help customers truly “visualize” home improvement projects.

Amazon.com is serving notice to Apple, PayPal and other leading online payment providers that it is looking to challenge their turf.

The online retail giant is launching a new program called the Amazon Payments Partner Program that enables e-commerce platforms to provide Amazon Payments functionality to their users. Previously, Amazon had made its proprietary payments service available to individual third-party online retailers.

The Kroger Co. is making a “meaningful” investment in specialty natural/organic grocery chain Lucky’s Market that could expand the supermarket giant’s product assortment.

Kroger did not disclose the size of its stake in Lucky’s, which is based in Boulder, Colorado, and operates 17 stores in 13 states throughout the Midwest and Southeast U.S. Lucky’s stores average 30,000-sq.-ft. and are laid out to resemble an indoor farmers market, and also offer an assortment of prepared foods.