News

The pressure is on for retailers to not only meet customer expectations, but to exceed them as differentiation in the retail industry becomes paramount. Amazon has raised the bar for expectations with offers such as same-day delivery and free shipping, as well as spread its influence to become one of the world’s biggest retailers.  

Digital payments are getting a boost through a new partnership.   A strategic agreement between Citi and PayPal will enable Citi cardmembers to use their credit cards with PayPal seamlessly online, in-app or in-store in 2017. The agreement makes Citi the first global bank to partner with PayPal and tokenize cards for customers that want to use PayPal for in-store purchases, across Mastercard and Visa portfolios in the U.S.  

Best Buy pulled out its latest weapon in the battle to win last-minute holiday shoppers: free shipping.     For the third year in a row, Best Buy will offer free expedited shipping in the final stretch of the holiday season. Starting Thursday, Dec. 15 through 11:30 a.m. EST on Wednesday, Dec. 21, BestBuy’s online shoppers will automatically have their shipping upgraded to two-day shipping on almost everything.     

The fast-growing NYX Cosmetics has opened a store at Brea Mall, Brea, California.    The Los Angeles-based cosmetics brand opened its first brick-and-mortar location in 2015. It currently operate 23 locations throughout the United States.    Menemsha Solutions provided both architecture and construction for the new store.    

With most of the business community absorbed in the quadrennial D.C. parlor game of parsing cabinet picks and what they might mean for their industry's agenda going forward, little attention has been paid to what lies ahead for the labor community.  

For a long time, social wasn’t a closed-loop system; but with the shift of e-commerce to mobile-first, brands can now use the data and features of social media to create hyper-personalized connections that get users to buy. And as a result, retailers can better track in-channel purchases, as well as multi-touch attribution.   

Thirteen minutes — that’s all it took from the time the customer clicked “order” on Amazon to when the package was delivered in the first official legal delivery of the Internet giant’s PrimeAir drone delivery service in rural England.    

PetSmart continues to grow its store portfolio — and is also testing new formats.    The chain opened 20 stores across the U.S. and Canada for the quarter ending October 31, 2016. This adds to the 23 stores it opened in the first and second quarters, bringing the total number for the year to 43 new locations.