Lego’s consumer sales grew 4% last year: Aggressive expansion plans helped it grow even as the toy market worldwide contracted 7%.
Inflation was hotter than expected in February: Uneven price relief is dampening consumer sentiment and contributing to retailers’ conservative outlooks.
On today's podcast episode, we discuss why TikTok might not actually be a social media platform, how much young people use it to search for things, and whether TikTok Shop is ruining TikTok. "In Other News," we talk about the battle between Threads and X (formerly Twitter), as well as whether Snap distancing itself from social media will work and start a trend. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Jasmine Enberg and director of Briefings Jeremy Goldman.
Xoom will offer customers fee-free remittances via PayPal USD to attract new stablecoin users
The bank’s offering faced competition from its own card-linked installment plans as well as from BNPL fintechs with expansive ecosystems
“The beauty of a clean room is that it's a privacy-centric way for CVS to share data from its 74 million Extra Care members and for us to share the data from our 498 million users, and end up with a repository of powerful, completely anonymized first-party data,” said Carrie Sweeney, VP of retail at Pinterest. “Then we can connect our users with targeted ads without sharing any of their personal data, just as CVS can on its website.”
Uber, Lyft, and Instacart fine-tune their ad strategies: The platforms are leaning into personalization and experimenting with formats as they try to boost revenues without alienating users.
The majority (83.7%) of US retail sales take place in physical stores, per our forecast. The retailers that can infuse digitally forward strategies into their in-store experiences are more likely to win over consumer dollars. Here are five charts on why the in-store experience is so key to retailers’ success and how they can use technology to create a more seamless, engaging shopping experience.
B2B is the largest segment of overall US payment volume, holding roughly five times that of consumer payments. It has been slower to digitize than the consumer sector, but finally passed the tipping point during the pandemic. Even now, almost a third of the market is up for grabs.
Though on-site search and display remain retail media’s bread and butter, off-site advertising—placing ads in channels outside of a retail media network’s (RMN’s) own properties—will lead the next evolution due to its ability to expand advertisers’ reach and achieve upper-funnel goals like increasing brand awareness.
The Lunar New Year drove up Chinese consumer spending in February: That contributed to prices rising, rather than flatlining or falling, for the first time since August 2023.
Dynamic pricing is taking hold in restaurants: Adoption is rising as operators look to offset delivery costs and match prices to demand.
Import cargo returning to normal despite Red Sea disruptions: While several signs suggest the retail industry continues trending in a positive direction, there are some potential pitfalls ahead.
Retailers need to take note—not having a customer’s preferred payment method can increase cart abandonment
On today's podcast episode, we discuss what the hell happened—and is happening—to online ads, whether the video streaming boom is officially over, the next big wearable category, what happens when the First Amendment collides with social media, what the world would look like if there were only 100 people, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our forecasting writer Ethan Cramer-Flood and analysts Ross Benes and Blake Droesch.
Consumers care about sustainability, but often aren’t willing to buy environmentally friendly products if they’re deemed lower quality, especially if it costs more. One solution for retailers and consumers is resale, an industry worth $108.64 billion in 2024, per our December 2023 forecast. Not all environmental initiatives have to be at the consumer level, though.
Old Navy returns to growth: That momentum, along with Gap’s overall gross margin growth of 5.3 percentage points, are signs that the company’s turnaround plan is bearing fruit.
Meta, Google rake in ad dollars from Temu’s spending spree: Wall Street loves to see tech giants grow their ad revenue, but not all funding streams are sustainable.
Brands put a lot of thought into how to get consumers to discover and buy their products, but not as much into what happens after a purchase is made. However, data suggests that the post-purchase experience, which includes everything from shipping to customer feedback surveys, may have more of an impact than retailers think.
Consumers appreciate AI-driven innovation but are wary