Trends

Cash flow concerns and fraud are going to be a menace to both retailers and consumers this holiday shopping season. One of the biggest shopping headaches this year will be a much earlier start to the chargeback cycles. Jeff Wixted, vice president of marketing and client solutions at Accertify, discu...

A survey of 1,050 U.S. adult consumers found that 16 percent of the participants in the research took no action after receiving notice of a data breach affecting their accounts. Information from breached accounts can be used for identity fraud or to make employers vulnerable to cyberattacks, includi...

Research from technology and business solutions firm NTT finds that business leaders are significantly more satisfied with how they have adjusted to new working norms than their employees. The study points to the need for clearer organizational insight into how employees have reevaluated what they n...

Marketing and business communications company R.R. Donnelley & Sons has released a study which reveals that traditional marketing channels, including word of mouth, direct mail, and in-store signage, are largely untapped and underestimated by marketers. The research uncovers significant differen...

Industrial robots are hot, with North American orders for the first nine months of 2021 valued at US$1.48 billion, breaking a record set in 2017. While increased sales of robots and use of automation is good news to robot makers and corporations, it could be a mixed bag for workers, according to the...

Holiday shoppers can expect to see a lot of out-of-stock warnings online this year, but that won't discourage them for opening their wallets to buy gifts for loved ones. According to retail sales watchers, consumers have launched their holiday shopping earlier than ever, spending US$72.4 billion onl...

Entrepreneurs might well be the latest heroes in cyberwarfare. Despite increasing odds of malicious attacks, SMB owners are forging ahead with a newfound sense of security. Untangle's fourth annual SMB IT Security Report shows that SMBs have adapted to a changing work environment, addressed an influ...

Sales managers and their managers have had to make peace with the reality that they might not be able to get reps to use technology. But methodology alone or with technology is a more-or-less lost cause. Fortunately, the technology has improved consistently over the last two decades. Even more fortu...

Closing physical storefronts in favor of internet-based direct-to-consumer selling options is not necessarily the best approach for typical store owners, according to Mark Delaney, retail industry consultant at Zebra Technologies. The E-Commerce Times heard more from Delaney in a wide-ranging conver...

Microsoft's announcement of its two new metaverse apps comes on the heels of Facebook announcing a name change to Meta, a sign that it sees building out the metaverse as the key to its future success. "It's a hot topic, so Microsoft jumped on the attention that Meta-the-company has been getting," ob...

For those born after the mini-computer era (co-terminus with the original Star Trek), dilithium is the fuel used to power a warp core propulsion system needed for interstellar travel. Dilithium is both naturally occurring and rare, and when it melts, from overuse of the warp core, the starship is ba...

A proposed law barring high-tech companies from favoring their own products over those of their competitors -- a practice called self-preferencing -- would harm consumers, competition and innovation, according to a report released Monday by The Schumpeter Project on Competition Policy at the Informa...

Supply chain chaos has sellers and shoppers on edge, with no relief in sight anytime soon. To better understand how marketers should navigate this unusual holiday shopping season, we spoke with a variety of experts to get tips on what makes for successful holiday e-commerce marketing -- and why plan...

Apple's strategy is all about status and making you stand out as an Apple user, while Google's strategy is more about features and what you can do with its phones. In effect, Apple is more about form, appearance, and ease of use, while Google is more about function. Let's contrast Apple and Google s...