Best Buy Beta is being piloted at select stores in Iowa, Oklahoma and eastern Pennsylvania, expanding to Minnesota, North Carolina and Tennessee. Members will get discounts, unlimited Geek Squad tech support, up to two years of protection, free standard shipping and delivery and free installation on most products.
Target, one of the clear retail winners in the pandemic era, posted another impressive quarter, with Q4 revenue, earnings and comparable sales outpacing projections and its omnichannel strategy firing on all cylinders as it reported a $9 billion gain in market share based on internal and market research.
Buoyed by the promise of new stimulus spending and the release of pent-up demand, retail posted impressive sales growth of 9.2% in January, excluding auto, gasoline, travel and lodging, according to the latest figures from MasterCard SpendingPulse. Not surprisingly, ecommerce continued to skyrocket, gaining 62% vs. January 2019.
Walmart is taking another huge leap forward in its attempt to dominate grocery sales, launching an aggressive plan to increase the number of stores using micro fulfillment via automation and robotics to speed orders to local customers as it builds on the digital legacy of the departing Marc Lore. Dozens of such locations are planned.
After the explosion in holiday ecommerce, comes the flood of holiday returns, expected to cost retailers $1.1 billion, twice what it did in 2020, according to data from Narvar. goTRG and Returnly both said Dec. 26 was the peak day for consumers to initiate returns. UPS traditionally lists Jan. 2 as peak returns day for transit of returns.
As expected, Black Friday 2020 saw tremendous success online but was a bust in stores, as shopper behavior has been altered irrevocably by the ongoing pandemic. Adobe Analytics reported $9 billion in ecommerce sales on Black Friday, up 21.6% from $7.4 billion in 2019. Store traffic meanwhile was down 48% to 52%.
Boding well for the holiday spend here, the U.S. was the top seller of goods during Alibaba’s Singles Day 2020, which raked in $116 billion combined on Alibaba and JD.com. Alibaba itself reported $75.28 billion yuan in GMV, while JD.com said its Singles Day GMV was $40.72 billion. Sales from U.S. retailers topped $5 billion.
Warehouse employment is up 3.8% since the coronavirus lockdowns began in mid-March, one of the few bright spots in an economy that has seen an overall dip of 7% in payrolls during that period, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Issues with sizing and color conventions have probably been an issue since the invention of clothes. And with so much shopping now driven online by the pandemic, combined with generally liberal return policies, apparel returns have exploded. New technology solutions and industry standards are both working to solve the problem.
Continuing a growing trend toward making ecommerce returns more convenient and safer for shoppers in the contactless pandemic era, Staples has struck a partnership with Optoro in which the office supply giant will accept unboxed returns from other retailers that will be processed by Optoro. More retailers will come online in January.