Shopping for the holidays can be acutely stressful, and most of us don't have the time to go around hunting for intel on consumer trends and all the other stuff that makes the holiday retail world go.
The holiday shopping season is cruising toward Black Friday and Cyber Monday with several big sales already in the books. The consensus opinion seems to be that neither event will deliver as many.
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//]]>// >By Jack M. Germain
Oct 21, 2020 12:17 PM PT
Amazon reported recently that online grocery sales tripled during the pandemic. The company also saw a 160 percent increase in delivery capacity and tripled the number of Whole Foods pickup spots.
This is all great news if you live in a city with Whole Foods or where grocery delivery services are easily accessible. But if your food and home supplies depend on local pickup and delivery, and you live in rural strongholds, you might be in for some shortages. E-commerce is not every rural community s Holy Grail for shopping.
Many local rural retailers are strangers to e-commerce. If stores in rural America want to keep customers happy and healthy, transitioning to e-commerce is key, according to Mark William Lewis, CTO of Netalico Commerce.
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//]]>// >By Jack M. Germain
Nov 16, 2020 6:00 AM PT
The grocery industry seems to have a foot in two worlds as it faces unique challenges of an accelerated transition to online retail during the pandemic.
One is the realm of the traditional grocery marketplace in pre-COVID times, when the majority of consumers shopped in stores for groceries. The other is today s marketplace where shoppers flock online, away from brick-and-mortar shopping. As customers opt to help socially distance, they now increasingly leverage online grocery platforms for delivery or curbside pickup.
With restaurants and bars closed or at limited capacity, consumers are spending more on groceries than ever before. Online food and beverage sales are forecast to grow by 60 percent in 2020.