Black-owned brands are underrepresented on store shelves: While many retailers use Black History Month to support Black-owned businesses, addressing long-term inequities is a year-round challenge.

The retailers that will be on top this holiday season are those that see mobile apps as the connective tissue between brick-and-mortar and ecommerce shopping experiences.

Hispanic Heritage Month is upon us: brands are making strides in reaching out to this growing demographic at this time of year, but what about the other 11 months?

Co-brand card issuers and brand partners have an opportunity to reimagine their offerings in the pandemic’s wake. Leaning on newfound digitization and shifting spending habits can help providers tailor their offerings in ways that widen their net, grow volume, and appeal to the maximum number of customers.

US click-and-collect sales more than doubled in 2020 and will sustain double-digit growth rates over the next four years, according to our latest forecast. We estimate that US shoppers spent $72.46 billion via click and collect last year, accounting for 9.1% of all ecommerce sales. This year, those figures will increase to $83.47 billion and 9.9%, respectively.

US click-and-collect sales more than doubled in 2020, driven by the coronavirus pandemic, and will sustain double-digit growth rates over the next four years. Over 150 million people will make a purchase via click and collect at least once in 2021.

As uncertainty over coronavirus continues to grow, consumers are becoming more cautious about shopping in public places and are utilizing online shopping as a means of getting necessities.

Among the 250 retailers Sailthru evaluated in its Retail Personalization Index, 51% have messaging preference centers, but most offer just two options: all or nothing. Just 35% go more granular, allowing consumers to select their preferred messaging frequency and type.

More direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands are moving away from their digitally native foundations and experimenting with physical retail locations in the form of pop-ups, showrooms or fully fledged brick-and-mortar stores.

Just 16% of the 250 retailers in Sailthru’s annual Retail Personalization Index said they use customers’ digital data to personalize their in-store experience, mostly through mobile devices. And that number is 100% among the top 10 retailers.

eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman talks with Scott Silverman, co-founder of retail conference CommerceNext, about how D2C brands and retailers are earmarking their digital investment dollars. Lipsman also weighs in on Brandless’s new CEO, Nordstrom being a “no-growth” retailer and Starbucks’s new tie-dye Frappuccino.

Thousands of new shopping apps continue to pop up in Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store each year as consumers gear their shopping habits towards mobile. But the increase in competition might be causing smaller retailers and startups to think twice about investing in app development, especially on the iOS marketplace.

The consumer retail economy, buttressed by low unemployment and rising wages, is experiencing its best growth since 2011. And despite the 2018 demise of old-retail stalwarts like Sears and Toys "R" Us, recent gains at retail aren’t only flowing in the direction of digital – although they do increasingly bear hallmarks of its influence.

If you think consumers want brands to be neutral on social issues, you would be wrong. Belief-driven buyers—consumers who choose, switch, avoid or boycott a brand based on its stand on societal issues—are the majority in 2018.

Doom and gloom often surrounds discussion of brick-and-mortar retail. It's hard not to see the demise of traditional stores like Sears and Toys 'R' Us as bellwethers for the industry. Many stores are closing locations but is it as dire as it seems on the surface?