Climbing walls and curated assortments power sustained comp gains.
Singles Day began as a prank at a Chinese university in 1993, when students created an "anti-Valentine's Day" to celebrate being single. Alibaba transformed it into a shopping holiday in 2009, and it has since become the world's largest retail event, complete with Taylor Swift performing at the 2019 Singles Day Gala.
An acquisition of The Very Group could speed growth, yet macro strain may cloud the upside.
Walmart, Instacart, and logistics startup Stord hope to benefit as brands try to compete with Amazon.
As multiracial audiences expand, brands ignoring them risk ceding revenues to rivals that don't.
Cash overindexes with older, ruraler, and lower-income consumers.
MoonPay’s early integration in the chatbot gives the platform an edge over rivals.
Asia-Pacific will be agentic commerce’s guinea pig as adoption outpaces Europe, US.
AI implementation in retail and ecommerce has reached an inflection point where individual experimentation must give way to organizational strategy, but the path from proof-of-concept to production remains fraught with challenges around data security, cost justification, and realistic expectations about automation.
Commerce media is pushing brands to break down internal silos and rethink how they organize teams, allocate budgets, and measure success across an increasingly fragmented ecosystem.
VR growth is slowing as AR moves into everyday behavior. Smartphones are making immersive content easier to adopt, while headsets still face limits in comfort, use cases, and reach.
LLMs take a larger role in recommendations, insurers could face greater pricing pressure.
World Cup’s US reality check: Just 10% of Americans show interest, limiting US scale—but not broader global appeal.
Armed with comprehensive information in their banking apps, consumers pursue chargebacks less frequently.
Companies ranging from E.l.f. to Kroger are trimming prices to keep shoppers spending.
Ending merger talks frees both companies to focus on shoring up sales as prestige beauty demand wavers.
The coffee chain’s scarce shelf space boosts brand cachet and lifts sales across channels.
Traffic gains and sharper assortments widen the gap with full-price rivals.
Klarna’s installments for pricy auto repairs and maintenance can win long-term customers.
AI Overviews remake retail search: Beauty AIO presence rates jumped from 14.5% to 72.3% Q3 to Q4, spurring brands to optimize for zero-click visibility.