This report looks at 12 of Walmart’s most important business areas, examining their maturity, disruption of the market, leverage over partners, integration with other products, and five-year outlook.

For almost two years, consumers and businesses have battled the effects of inflation. Let’s rewind to see how we got here … and take a peek at what’s ahead.

Only 13% of US adults have used augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) while shopping. Though the overwhelming majority have not, 38% are at least somewhat interested in trying the tech.

China’s Singles’ Day continues to top the charts, but the vitality of the world’s biggest shopping event is being called into question amid lukewarm recovery of retail sales. As a result, participating brands are focusing on building sustainable customer loyalty with innovative shopping experiences.

Can an AI recruiter save a troubled labor market? AI could disrupt recruiters’ jobs. Turn’s Brian Gaspar spoke with us about bias in AI and how to hire the right talent.

Watch the on-demand replay of our webinar, Industry KPIs, to learn how our premium benchmarking tool can help guide your budgeting and planning processes.

In 2024, robots will be used by just under half of medium to large operators of warehouses and fulfillment centers in the US. That’s up slightly from 44.9% this year and significantly from 28.0% in 2019.

Insider Intelligence spoke with Julie Van Ullen, Managing Director, Rakuten Rewards about the current shift in consumer behavior as a result of inflation and the recent challenges many brands have been facing.

Our primary research reveals how grocery buyers are responding to inflation.

Google eyes big banks as goldmine for new cloud customers: It showcased partnerships, new tools, and hardware to facilitate its global expansion plans at the fall event this week.

In August, ad spending dropped for the third month in a row. But the outlook for spending isn’t so cut and dry. “If you start at that pre-pandemic point and you plot a curve to where we are now, we're actually not doing so badly,” our analyst Paul Verna said on a recent “Behind the Numbers” podcast.

By 2026, 38.9% of US internet users will use a BNPL solution, up from 30.7% in 2022. And the average user will spend $1,371 via BNPL, up more than 43% from 2022.

Low adoption and stagnating growth are driving peer-to-peer mobile payment providers to make their services more accessible and attractive to increase engagement within the existing user base.

Digital ad spending by Germany’s retailers and travel firms will climb rapidly this year. By contrast, automakers’ ad outlays will rise modestly, but reach €1.26 billion ($1.49 billion).

Nearly 50 million people are still working from home as of July, according to The NPD Group. But many companies are calling their employees back to the office.

While Amazon Prime Day was bigger than ever this year, one key category took a hit. Electronics sales decreased by 5% from last Prime Day, while growth shot past 25% in home, garden, and tools, as well as in beauty and health.

Thanks to the pandemic and rising inflation, customer behavior seems more erratic than ever. Customers are not great at saying what they want, and understanding the motivations behind their purchases is difficult.

Overall digital ad spending in the US is set to grow by 17.8% in 2022, a steep deceleration from 2021’s 38.3% boom but still ahead of 2020’s pandemic-skewed slowdown. Industry-level digital ad spending has mirrored these extreme swings in recent years—with individual highs and lows often spread far apart from the median. Starting this year, however, most industries will settle into more steady spending patterns closer to the national average.

After two years of dramatic highs and lows for various industries, digital ad spending growth rates will settle into relatively similar patterns for the 10 industries we track. However, aggregate spending will remain vastly different.

Who took home the trophy and who went home with a consolation prize? We asked our Retail Reimagined team to give us the lowdown.