Improve the Store Experience Category by Category WSL Has an Index to Help!

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WSL recently asked thousands of shoppers what they value most in a brick-store shopping trip and what makes a good shopping experience. The answers, we learned, vary by category. So we measured how well various retailers deliver what shoppers want, by category, and reported the results in our Retailer Performance Index. Here’s how we do ... Read more

Is This Latest Pharmacy Trend an Opportunity, or a Threat?

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As pharmacists became distracted by other tasks that took them out-of-sight from behind the counter, shoppers increasingly turned to more accessible sources for advice. Our How America Shops® research explores the growing acceptance of online pharmacies, which challenge retailers to find their way back to their Rx shoppers. Shoppers Want Wellness Advice, But They Won’t ... Read more

Retail Health Care Can Be The Center of WELLness

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During the pandemic, shoppers started turning to retail health clinics to meet rising demand for quick-and-easy WELLness services. Now, their retail expectations have evolved to include convenient health care treatment. This is especially opportunistic for retail clinics and pharmacies, but is the store missing the script? Are You Treating Your Shoppers to the WELLness They ... Read more

Livestreaming in the U.S.A.? Learnings from China

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From Nordstrom to Petco, a blend of merchants hosted livestream shopping events in 2021, and the U.S. livestream sales were estimated to reach $11 billion by year’s end. Yet just 16% of U.S. shoppers purchased from livestreams in 2021, our How America Shops® research shows. In China, two-thirds of consumers said they bought something via ... Read more

You Want to Follow the Shopper Into 2022? Here Are Four Paths

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As 2021 passed the baton to 2022, we at WSL reflected on all the behaviors being passed along as well, and the directions these unfolding paths to purchase will take in 2022. Then we combed through our How America Shops® research and narrowed these paths down to four practices that we deem as Retail Safari® ... Read more

Gen Z is Waiting for You. Are You Coming?

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If retailers and brands want to keep the lucrative, tech-raised shoppers of Gen Z, they need to come all the way to them. Due to technological imprinting, Gen Z’s innate expectations as shoppers far exceed those of other generations, and it presents new challenges, our How America Shops® research shows. So, here are the opportunities.  ... Read more

What’s On Trend For Retail In 2022? Here Are 5 Predictions

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By Bryan Pearson on December 3, 2021  ||  Forbes If the past two years have taught the retail industry anything, it’s to meet the unexpected, eye-to-eye, with more of the unexpected.  Unexpected as in surprising channels, unpredictable brand partnerships and even a dose of the expected. Because consumer desires have not changed; they still want shopping to ... Read more

The Human Store: How Hy-Vee, Nordstrom, Victoria’s Secret and Camp Do it

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Among the reinvented retail formats we have seen that meet post-pandemic shopper expectations, few resonate as deeply as the efforts by some retailers and brands to create authentic, human experiences. What does this mean? From our recent Future Shop® podcast, WSL leaders explain what makes a “human store,” with boots-on-the-ground, Retail Safari® examples.  Your Store ... Read more

Beauty’s Retail Reckoning: Specialty and Mass Retail Poised for Further Gains

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By Allison Collins on October 29, 2021  ||  WWD The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have specialty retailers including Sephora and Ulta Beauty poised to gain even more market share in the U.S., experts said. How many brick-and-mortar retail stores does the beauty industry actually need? That’s the question those in the industry are asking themselves in ... Read more

Powerful Partnerships: What Makes Retail Alliances Work

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More big retailers are exploring alliances, with the anticipation that doubling up will double the cachet, more than double the size of the shopper basket – and create a second reason to come into the store. WSL sent its Retail Safari® scouts out to see what works and does not toward this bigger-basket goal, and ... Read more

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