Building a Strong Loyalty Program with Emotional Bonds

| Samir Palnitkar

Today loyalty is a fusion of emotional engagement, trust and the ability to engage, meeting or exceeding customer expectations. Brand love reinforces trust, long-term relationships and faith in the future of a brand. See how leading brands like Sephora, Nike and TOMS have created emotional bonds that drive loyalty and CLV.

Late to the Game, Target Launches Ecommerce Marketplace

| Daniela Forte

Going the way of main rivals Walmart and Amazon, Target is launching its own third-party ecommerce marketplace, Target+, including a curated list of products from merchants that complement its own offerings in categories like home, toys, electronics and sporting goods.

Microservices, A Solution to Omnichannel Enterprise Sprawl

| Jon Feldman

Designed for web-first, monolithic commerce platforms are generally hardwired to their desktop and mobile front ends, and are not designed for contextual device or use case specific experiences now expected of them. Enter microservices architecture, solving the pain of legacy architecture and siloed systems. Here’s how it works.

Can Toys R Us Make Another Comeback?

| Daniela Forte

Several former Toys R Us executives are planning to launch a new company called Tru Kids as comeback for the toy retailer that filed for bankruptcy in late 2017. Some of its lenders had taken control of its brand names and other intellectual property and Tru Kids now manages those brands.

Study Finds Disconnect Between What Retailers Offer and What Consumers Expect

| Daniela Forte

There’s a disconnect between what retailers offer customers and what they want in terms of new technologies in the shopping experience, according to a study by Oracle + Netsuite, The Retail Doctor and Wakefield Research. The global study of 1,200 consumers and 400 retail executives across the U.S., UK and Australia found the disconnect spans retail, social media, personalization and the use of advanced technologies such as chatbots, AI and VR.