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The rise of TikTok as a recruitment medium is important given that the retail industry is currently battling a hiring problem. That is pushing some major retailers to look to new, as-of-yet-untested platforms for hiring.
Amazon's new climate badges, launched last September, have failed to make waves among sellers after their initial rollout. While they do hold promise for attracting new customers, even sellers that have received the necessary certifications are struggling to actually receive the climate badges.
While other states have had conflicting rulings over Amazon's liability risk -- a court in Texas last month said Amazon wasn’t on the hook for a battery sold by a third party, for instance -- the growing number of legal authorities who are holding Amazon accountable is a concerning sign for the company. The U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission lawsuit is only the latest.
As Amazon invests heavily in building new warehouses, leasing planes and hiring thousands of delivery workers, a new partnership with BigCommerce partnership offers a path for Amazon to monetize its new shipping capacity -- all using a carrier model not so dissimilar from a UPS or FedEx.
Ex-Facebook exec Fidji Simo's hiring -- along with the vision she outlined in an interview with CNBC -- signals Instacart’s shift into a more social-media-like future, one that focuses both on driving habitual usage, and ramping up the company's advertising business.
A new feature that Amazon started rolling out in June allows sellers to send messages -- scripted by the company -- to customers who leave one-, two- or three-star reviews of their products. That gives sellers the chance to respond to negative reviews is a strategic move for Amazon, as it once again battles a fresh round of scrutiny over fake reviews -- and it might let sellers keep their star ratings high without turning to paid reviews.
TikTok viral recipes drive billions of views, thousands of videos and even increase product sales. To capture this interest, brands have started investing in viral recipe content, creating responses to already established trends, building out new recipes in the hope to spark engagement and subsequently scaling TikTok trends to other owned platforms and in product development.
As retail brands migrate their ad dollars toward commerce-focused sites like Amazon or Instacart, or up-and-coming social apps like TikTok, outlets like Nextdoor, are also getting a second look. Brands like Stop & Shop, Imperfect Foods and Hershey’s have all invested in Nextdoor ads over the past year, and the social platform is especially gaining interest among grocers looking to run heavily local campaigns.
Anycart, which opened its doors to customers everywhere in May after undergoing beta tests stretching back to 2019, is a marginal player for now, but it captures a new, growing consensus for how to inspire people to make more impulse purchases online: build a platform for shoppable recipes.
Autonomous trucking might help Amazon with driver recruitment. The technology isn't just for the relatively pie-in-the-sky future of a fully driverless truck, but also for shorter-term demands, where certain parts of the trucking process can be automated in order to make the industry more attractive to drivers.
After a record-year of sales for its merchants, Shopify is overhauling its merchant platform, dubbing it Online Store 2.0. In an interview, Vanessa Lee, Shopify’s director of product for storefronts, spoke to Modern Retail about the e-commerce company's updated storefront tools and how it hopes to give brands more room for customization.
Etsy is making a play for Brazil with its latest acquisition of the online marketplace Elo7. Latin America is a weak-spot for Etsy, and it's the latest signal, as Etsy seeks to build a "house of brands," that it is increasingly on acquisitions — rather than partnerships — for new customer acquisition.
Increasingly, link-in-bio companies are building digital storefronts, where anyone who clicks a link in bio can toggle through various products that a creator has for sale. It's a shift that not only helps the link services stay relevant but also represents the latest example of e-commerce and product discovery moving to social media.
Despite offering competing sales, retailers are struggling to put a dent in Amazon's Prime Day momentum. Multi-category big box retailers like Walmart and Target, as well as Wayfair and Best Buy, all ran sales that overlapped with Amazon's June 21 to 22 Prime Day. Still, early data in app downloads and web traffic shows that these retailers are still seeing a modest uptick in shoppers relative to Amazon.
Amazon is known for its in-house electronics products. But this year, it gave its private-label products in its other categories an extra push. That underscores the extent to which Amazon is pushing specifically its non-electronics products -- which, unlike electronics, might inspire more frequent repeat purchases -- into consumers’ lives.
Every interaction a customer has with a brand is an opportunity to nurture the customer-brand relationship. This report highlights tactics that top brands are using to improve the customer experience.
While other states have had conflicting rulings over Amazon's liability risk -- a court in Texas last month said Amazon wasn’t on the hook for a battery sold by a third party, for instance -- the growing number of legal authorities who are holding Amazon accountable is a concerning sign for the company. The U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission lawsuit is only the latest.
Read MoreAt Modern Retail’s Livestream Commerce Trends, we’ll explore how the growth of livestream and video shopping trends are transforming how retailers, brands and marketing teams are engaging with consumers in-stream and live across social and owned-and-operated websites.
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