Buy With Prime, the program that lets retailers not named Amazon offer shoppers the Prime experience and promise, is rolling out for all U.S. merchants as of Jan. 31, the company announced, ten months after a beta launch by invitation only for select users of Fulfillment By Amazon.
Bed Bath & Beyond as expected posted a tough third-quarter report, with net sales and same-store sales down a third from last year and a net loss of $393 million as it considers a range of options up to and including a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. CEO Sue Gove said the company is listening to customers, but it may be too little, too late.
Boxed, the once high-flying online warehouse club that set out to be the ecommerce equivalent of brick-and-click competitors like Costco, Sam’s Club and BJ’s, is now exploring strategic alternatives, which euphemistically means looking for a buyer. And Amazon acknowledged an expansion of its corporate layoffs from 10,000 to 18,000.
Depending on who you believe, domestic holiday retail sales were up 6% to 8%, which should cause retailers to do backflips, considering the state of the economy. But the rate of ecommerce growth was slower, reversing a trend from past years, with online sales up 3.5%, as the stores became the story.
Taking advantage of a growing preference for boxless returns, FedEx is rolling out a consolidated returns program early this year aimed at providing the service for small-to-medium-sized merchants in addition to major retailers. While FedEx has a relationship with Happy Returns, it provides all the logistics for this new offering.
SMS marketing shows zero signs of slowing down. Once an up-and-coming channel, it’s now a must-have for ecommerce brands. Even with the growth, there’s still plenty of opportunity to capitalize on it, especially when combined with email marketing. Here are 5 takeaways from the 2023 holidays you can apply in the New Year.
Amazon is raising the fees it charges sellers for its Multichannel Fulfillment (MCF) program, saying the hike comes with enhancements like app integrations with BigCommerce, Adobe/Magento and Wix — not Shopify — but sellers are complaining, saying they’ll be priced out of the offering.
TikTok, the hugely popular short-form video site owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, had quite a year in 2022, surpassing 1 billion users globally and making itself a force to be reckoned with in advertising, ecommerce and fulfillment, becoming the latest competitor to Amazon’s dominance. But government bans are applying heat.
How can you ensure your holiday campaigns don’t just churn out one-time conversions but create loyal customers? By designing a high-quality purchase experience that make shopping easy, rewarding and enjoyable; crafting engaging content; and cultivating an identity-driven connection with gate loyalty offers.
James Carville famously told Clinton campaign workers in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid,” and that mantra dominated again 30 years later, as high inflation and recession fears dogged the retail industry this year, leading to massive discounting to drive sales, often at the expense of profits.