Jenn McMillen
The Black Consumer And Retail’s CX Progress – Target, Ulta, Amazon And Others
Of all the beauty retail chains in the U.S., there may be just one that aims to be both Black-owned and serve as a marketplace exclusively for Black-owned brands. And it’s just now opening its flagship store, in Chicago, in April. It isn’t for lack...
How Ugg, Lowe’s, Publix and Others Reward Customers With Freebies
At a time when consumers appear to be nickeled and dimed at every turn, one shiny apple can be a pretty persuasive freebie. Just ask the parents who eat at the Rib & Chop House, a chain of restaurants that operate throughout the Rocky Mountain...
How To Win Back Customer Love: 6 Tips
Seven in 10 relationships reportedly fail within the first year. Are retail-customer relationships any better? This is the right time of the year to think about it, when millions of people are celebrating their love and relationships. Because for millions of others, this time of...
It’s Crunch Time For Sporting Goods Retailers: 3 Customer Experience Workouts
In 2021, nearly 60% of consumers bought new sports shoes. Are all of those pandemic joggers now running for the exits? Sales in the sporting goods market indicate so much, having declined by 4% to 8% in the first nine months of 2022, according to...
30 Million Zillennials Are Waiting To Share Data. 5 Ways To Earn It
They’re 30 million strong, they live at home and they are willing to tell you all about their spending habits. Retailers, how geared is your marketing strategy for the zillennial micro-gen? This is the name for that hybrid population born between 1990 and 2000 (that’s...
How Social Platforms Like #BookTok Can Bookend Retail
Have you read that 25-year-old book, “Message in a Bottle,” from Nicholas Sparks? The 22-year-olds are raving about it. Actual, physical books of all ages are falling into the actual, physical hands of an expanding young market, due to the popularity of one group on...
The Hot Stores Of 2023 May Be Made Of Meta, Not Mortar
Imagine thousands of shoppers flocking to your latest store opening, trying on outfits and making big purchases. And there is no actual store. This is what the retail industry is poised to capture with the help of fully immersive virtual reality, or the metaverse. Thanks...
7 Customer-Centric Trends That Will Shape Retail In 2023
Let’s start 2023 with a retail homework assignment. List the top three reasons your customers are loyal to you. Convenience doesn’t count. I’ll wait. Here’s the point: Retailers and brands tend to confuse customer habits with customer loyalty. In truth, in the customer’s mind, all...
Six Retail Loyalty Programs To Watch In 2023
There may be as many as a million retail reward programs in the United States. Is it possible that just one can edge out all the others as the most likely to succeed in 2023? Without stepping through every one of these programs, it’s clear...
6 Missteps By Walmart, McDonald’s And Others, And How They Can Fix Them
Retailers had a tall order to fill in 2022, adjusting for pandemic-caused changes in shopping patterns, rising prices, a diminishing workforce and unrelenting demand for fast delivery. Yet, the National Retail Federation forecasts retail sales to exceed $4.86 trillion. That represents growth of 6%...
Zooming Into The Holidays: 6 Traits To Watch
Millions of young people became adults in 2022, and right now many of them are looking for the perfect gift. How they spend that gifting money is worth unwrapping. That’s because many of these young consumers, all part of the 68.6 million members of Generation...
5 Ways Rewards Can Improve Retail Spending In Inflation
Shoppers are turning to loyalty points to bridge their budgets. Retailers, don’t burn your bridges. It’s hard enough on shoppers that the cost of goods is up 8.2% over 2021 – heck, the cost of food we bring home has risen by 13%, CNBC reports....
5 Goals That Explain Dick’s Sporting Goods’ Sales Success
A friend recently told me about her bargain-hunting trip to Dick’s Sporting Goods. Yes, she got the nice sweatshirt she was wearing there on discount. But other than that shirt and something her daughter had picked out, she couldn’t find anything marked down. Still, she...
Is $5 The New $1? Dollar Stores Are Finding Out
Dollars don’t grow on trees, but one of the latest names in on-trend retail may provide a general idea of where they can grow. Popshelf, the bold and trendy “dollar-near” concept by value retailer Dollar General, is growing at a rate faster than inflation. The...
How To Marie Kondo Your Stores: A Retailer’s Guide
“Thank you, piles of ‘90s-era sweaters that didn’t sell. But we must send you away now, at 70% off.” OK, maybe talking to millions of dollars in overstocks before unloading them won’t make a retailer’s stores more orderly. But it could help right-size the thinking...
The Kroger-Albertsons Deal: An Opportunity For Non-Food Competitors
Those of us who can afford grocery delivery should be grateful for it. Because the nation’s largest possible supermarket merger could otherwise force many Americans to travel miles, and pay more, for healthy food. This is a likely outcome, experts predict, if federal regulators approve...
Direct-To-Consumer Rx: Retail’s Bitter Pill, Or A Shot In The Arm?
A billionaire sports team owner wants to cut the cost of American prescriptions. Should the big drug chains check their pulses? Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a long-time Shark Tank investor, in January launched his price-popping discount e-pharmacy, Mark Cuban CostPlus Drug...
4 Cost-Sustaining Strategies To Be A Net-Zero Retailer
If a retail company falls down on its sustainability pledge and no one notices, has it still failed to be sustainable? Regardless of the answer, the cost of doing nothing would likely be higher than doing something. Lots (and lots and lots) of retailers –...
Biggie Demand Leads To Adult Challenges At McDonald’s
Forget hair dye and wrinkle cream. The fountain of youth has been tapped by McDonald’s and a popular fashion brand in the form of the Cactus Plant Flea Market Box. And it’s giving some McDonald’s employees gray hair. The limited-edition meal box is a “grownup”...
50-Plus Women And Their Spending Power: 6 Facts For Retailers
You’d think $15 trillion would be enough to buy a well-targeted promotion from a major retailer. But not always. Those trillions of dollars represent the combined spending power of women who are older than 50, according to Forbes. And, considering that represents 27% of all...