Fragrance is a fast-growing and profitable category in cross-border global e-commerce, but shipping these products internationally comes with unique challenges. Alcohol-based ingredients, fragile packaging, and regulatory requirements add complexity to the shipping process, which can affect both delivery reliability and customer satisfaction.

Understanding these common shipping pain points can help e-commerce brands reduce disruptions and optimize international deliveries.

Dangerous Goods Compliance

Many perfumes contain alcohol, classifying them as flammable liquids under international shipping regulations. Online retailers shipping fragrances should work with a cross-border shipping provider that is experienced in shipping fragrances so they can help ensure these products meet all dangerous goods requirements, from correct classification to proper packaging. Fragrances are commonly classified as UN1266 – Perfume Products (Hazard Class 3).

Improperly classified shipments can face delays, rejection by carriers, or customs issues. Shippers must also ensure proper documentation, training certification, and carrier approval for dangerous goods shipments. Following dangerous goods protocol ensures smoother transit and fewer disruptions.

Packaging and Leakage Risks

Fragrance products are often packaged in glass bottles, making them vulnerable to breakage or leakage. It’s recommended that e-tailers use durable, protective packaging solutions to safeguard shipments during international transport.

Dangerous goods shipments may require UN-certified packaging with absorbent material, leak-proof inner containers, and tested outer cartons designed for hazardous materials transport.

This reduces the risk of product damage, protects other shipments in the same consignment, and maintains a high standard of delivery reliability.

Documentation Errors

Accurate documentation is critical for international shipping. Errors in classification codes, customs paperwork, or product details can delay shipments at the border.

Dangerous goods shipments must also follow specific labeling requirements, including flammable liquid hazard labels, proper UN number markings, and orientation arrows for liquid shipments.

It’s recommended that e-commerce brands partner with a global shipping provider that provides guidance on proper documentation and customs compliance, helping shipments clear quickly and reducing costly delays.

Higher Shipping Costs

Fragrance shipments often require specialized packaging, compliance measures, and extra handling. These factors can increase costs compared to standard e-commerce products.

Many e-commerce fragrance shipments operate under “Limited Quantity” programs, which can simplify labeling and documentation when bottle sizes and shipment weight fall within regulatory thresholds.

Planning ahead with the right global shipping partner allows businesses to account for these expenses while maintaining reliable operations and avoiding unexpected reshipping costs.

Impact on Customer Experience

Shipping delays, damaged products, or unexpected fees directly affect customer satisfaction and brand trust. Delivery disruptions can also lead to customer credits, reshipping costs, and reduced customer loyalty or repurchase rates.

By partnering with a global shipping provider that can address these challenges early, e-commerce brands can build a dependable international shipping strategy that delights customers and supports long-term growth.

Key Takeaways

By proactively addressing these shipping challenges, e-commerce brands can minimize delays, reduce product damage, and control costs, all while delivering a seamless experience to their customers.

Asendia USA’s trade compliance expertise, including support for Canada-bound shipments, helps ensure regulatory requirements are met and cross-border deliveries move smoothly.

Partnering with Asendia USA provides expert guidance, reliable logistics solutions, and compliance support to help brands confidently ship fragrances internationally and grow their global presence.

Douglas Longobardi is Chief Revenue Officer at Asendia USA, a global leader in international e-commerce and mail delivery across 220+ destinations. He joined Asendia following its acquisition of Globegistics, a company he co-founded in 2011 and scaled to $75 million in revenue. Prior to that, he spent 11 years as Sales Director at WorldNet Shipping. With over 25 years of experience, he brings deep expertise in cross-border e-commerce and global logistics strategy.

The post How to Tackle Key Fragrance Shipping Pain Points for e-Commerce Brands appeared first on RetailToday.

Retail has spent the past decade investing heavily in data, adding platforms, expanding digital touchpoints, and implementing systems to capture nearly every customer interaction. Yet as 2026 begins, many retailers are facing a sobering reality: a significant portion of valuable information remains unseen, unused, or disconnected from day-to-day decision-making.

This challenge is described as “dark data”—customer, operational, and behavioral information that exists within an organization but cannot be easily accessed or applied. Research from SAP Emarsys highlights how widespread this issue has become, showing that while brands collect large volumes of transactional and behavioral data, more than half struggle to use it effectively because it is spread across marketing, service, commerce, and revenue systems. According to industry analysts including Gartner and IDC, 70-80% of a CIO’s budget is spent maintaining and integrating siloed legacy systems rather than unlocking the insight those systems were meant to provide. From an operational standpoint, this fragmentation and budget constraint limits agility at a time when speed and precision matter more than ever.

As a COO, I see dark data not as a technical inconvenience but as an execution risk. When insight is delayed or incomplete, decisions slow down. Teams work with partial context. Problems are addressed only after they surface in lagging indicators such as declining revenue or customer churn. By then, the cost of inaction is already embedded in the business.

Retailers don’t suffer from a lack of data; they suffer from a lack of connected insight, leaving early warning signals buried across systems until churn, lost revenue, and operational inefficiencies surface too late.

Customer loyalty is where this risk is most visible. SAP Emarsys’ latest Customer Loyalty Index shows that trust alone does not secure long-term commitment. While 67 percent of consumers say they trust a favorite brand, 61 percent will switch for a better price, and nearly half will leave after a single poor experience. What makes this difficult is that dissatisfaction is rarely explicit. Customers do not usually announce their intent to leave. Instead, they disengage gradually—opening fewer emails, visiting less often, or reducing spend incrementally. This quiet erosion often goes unnoticed until the relationship is already lost.

Retail teams frequently acknowledge that the problem is not customer volatility, but visibility. The early indicators of disengagement exist, yet they are scattered across systems that they have been unable to connect. Commerce platforms may show declining order values, marketing tools reflect reduced engagement, and service systems hold unresolved issues. Without a unified view, no one sees the full progression of the customer relationship, and opportunities to intervene early are missed.

Looking ahead to 2026, broader industry trends are intensifying this challenge. AI tools became widespread across retail operations in 2025 and will continue to scale. While these technologies deliver efficiency and personalization, they also introduce new complexity with the volumes of data they generate. At the same time, consumers are demanding greater transparency around automated decisions, placing pressure on retailers to understand not just outcomes, but the data foundations behind them.

Customer journeys themselves are also at risk of becoming more fragmented. Shoppers expect consistent experiences across channels, whether browsing online, purchasing in-store, or engaging with customer support. Each interaction generates additional data, yet many retailers still struggle to structure and integrate this information in ways that enable timely action. Collecting more data without improving its organization only deepens operational friction.

There are, however, clear examples of progress. Molton Brown’s consolidation of systems through SAP Commerce Cloud and SAP Emarsys allowed the company to connect engagement across channels more effectively. The result was a 20 percent increase in repeat purchases, a fivefold increase in email-driven revenue, and stronger omnichannel performance overall. Notably, these gains did not come from acquiring new datasets, but from making existing information accessible and usable across teams. This is a powerful reminder: operational leverage often lies in simplification rather than expansion.

Technology providers like SAP CX increasingly emphasize the importance of an intelligence layer that connects insights across marketing, service, commerce, and revenue functions. From an operational perspective, this approach reflects how decisions are actually made. Advanced analytics and automation only deliver value when built on consistent, high-quality data. Without that foundation, even sophisticated tools risk amplifying noise rather than clarity.

Emerging trends such as smart consumer agents further raise the stakes. As automated systems assist with purchasing and reordering, the accuracy and structure of product and customer data become critical. These tools depend on clean information to function effectively. Once again, success hinges on data readiness rather than volume.

In discussions with retail leaders across the U.S., several priorities are consistently emerging for the year ahead. Many organizations are reducing the number of disconnected systems that house critical customer and product data. Others are narrowing their focus to the metrics that most reliably indicate intent or disengagement, while deprioritizing those that add little operational value. There is also a growing effort to ensure service insights are visible to marketing and commerce teams, breaking down silos that delay action. Finally, explainability has become essential, as customers increasingly expect clarity around automated decisions.

The opportunity for 2026 is not to gather more information, but to make better use of what retailers already have. Many of the signals that predict customer behavior and operational risk already exist within their systems. What is missing is alignment—shared visibility, common definitions, and integrated pathways that allow insight to move quickly across the organization.

Dark data is not an abstract concept. It is the gap between information and action. Retailers that succeed in closing that gap will be better positioned to strengthen customer relationships, manage demand, and navigate an increasingly complex environment with confidence in the year ahead.

The post Bringing Dark Data into the Light: Why Retail Operations Must Act in 2026 appeared first on RetailToday.

Peak commerce moments have a way of telling the truth. When demand spikes and pressure rises, the hidden cracks start to show—just as there is no room for error. Maybe it’s weak product data that turns into wasted clicks, or inventory mismatches that turn into disappointed customers. It used to be bad enough as a peak-season pressure test problem. But now it’s constant, because peak isn’t a season anymore.

Instead, commerce is moving toward an always-on peak “season,” with a steady cadence of surges, promos, trends, and channel shifts to meet changing buyer behavior. You used to have most of the year to prepare for big sale surges, to control when those surges happened, and how your buyers found you. Now, the moments can come from viral videos or surprising cultural shifts outside your control.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is a big change. You can’t treat peak readiness as a project to revisit every year. It has to be the backbone under all you do. When you can’t predict every spike, you have to be able to adapt fast. Or you’ll pay for it quickly.

Scaling digital commerce is no longer about adding channels, but about orchestrating them with shared data and control.

High confidence, low accuracy

The Rithum 2026 commerce readiness index, which is based on a Wakefield Research survey of 200 retail and brand executives in the U.S. and U.K., puts numbers behind a simple reality: staying ready for an always-on peak season is nearly impossible when teams can’t trust what they’re seeing. Almost 75% of respondents to that survey said that data quality issues sometimes affect business decisions, and more than one third said it happened “often” or “all the time.” Meanwhile, 100% of retailers and 99% of brands say they feel confident measuring performance across marketing and commerce channels.

That gap between data quality and data confidence is the problem. Agility depends on signal quality. If the inputs are inconsistent, teams either hesitate and miss the moment, or move fast on the wrong information and pay for it.

The best fix for this gap is to focus on cleaning up three data sources of truth:

1. Product truth

2. Connectivity truth

3. Spending truth

One product truth across every channel

One of the best ways to adapt to always-on peak is to start with product truth and enforce it as a basic infrastructure. If shoppers click an ad and land on the wrong selection, trust collapses in seconds. If listings disagree across partners, returns rise and service teams absorb the damage. These are all product-feed fixable issues. Choose the product fields that cannot vary across priority channels and lock them down: titles, primary images, core attributes, and variant mapping. Run a daily check on your top promoted SKUs across your top partners and fix mismatches before you scale spend.

Stop running commerce at spreadsheet speed

When your product feed is reconciled, next attack manual work. Nearly half of retailers and brands say 26% to 50% of workflow still relies on spreadsheets, manual data entry, and manual approvals. Poor data quality impacts are felt across the org: 91% of retailers and 78% of brands call it a challenge. And data quality matters even more now because AI and automation scale whatever you feed them. Manual steps and messy data don’t just slow work; they multiply errors across channels.

Don’t try to transform everything at once. Pick one handoff that creates repeat errors or delays, such as catalog updates, inventory sync, order exceptions, or returns disposition. Replace one manual step with a rule based on current data so the same update lands everywhere it needs to land. Then move to the next handoff.

Put a reality gate in front of spend

In the last year, 91% of retail leaders and 84% of brands changed their marketing channel mix. Before you put paid support behind a SKU, confirm three basics: mapping is correct, inventory is real, and the delivery promise is one you can keep. If any one of those fails, pause spend until reality matches the message. Make the gate shared across marketing, ecommerce, and operations.

Then, stop scaling unprofitable demand. Know what an order costs to fulfill before you chase more of them. Margin leaks through channel fees, fulfillment choices, returns volume, and service contacts. Promotions can worsen the leak by shifting demand into the least profitable shipping option. External volatility adds pressure, too. In the survey, 46% of retailers and 59% of brands say they are at least somewhat concerned that tariff and trade policy uncertainty will disrupt sourcing strategies. When costs vary, you need to know which orders stay profitable. You cannot control that volatility, but you can prevent internal breakdowns from magnifying it.

Beware of how AI amplifies the inputs you give it

AI raises the stakes because it scales whatever you feed it. In the survey, 41% of retailers and 29% of brands already use AI based automation across areas like pricing, inventory, and marketing. Another 41% of retailers and 57% of brands have concrete plans and are preparing to implement soon.

You can’t fix bad data with more AI. Instead, go back to that infrastructure layer: get cleaner inputs such as product attributes, inventory signals, fees, shipping costs, and return rates. Standardize what true looks like for the data the system touches and block bad data before it reaches customers. When inputs fail, stop the automation. Do not let it keep spending, routing, or repricing using bad inputs.

Commerce will continue to be volatile. You can’t fix the market. But you can build in agility, so that no matter what comes, you can serve customers without breaking your promises. Close the execution gap by keeping product truth, data connectivity truth, and cost-to-serve truth aligned across channels. Then and only then will your growth hold up under pressure, because your fundamentals will be unbreakable.

The post Closing the Commerce Execution Gap: Retail’s 2026 Imperative appeared first on RetailToday.

As retailers look ahead to 2026, many of the familiar pressures remain firmly in place: margin compression, rising operating costs, workforce challenges, and consumers who are increasingly price sensitive. What has changed, and what can no longer be treated as a background issue, is the scale, frequency, and normalization of theft across retail environments.

Shrink is no longer a rounding error on the P&L. It is a strategic risk.

According to the National Retail Federation’s most recent retail theft and crime study, retailers continue to report a meaningful rise in organized retail crime, repeat offenders, and increasingly brazen theft behaviors. While ORC remains highly visible, many retailers are also seeing growth in pushout theft and opportunistic theft at self-checkout and store exits. These incidents are not isolated or episodic; they reflect broader economic and social pressures that are reshaping retail risk and straining traditional loss-prevention models.

Economic Pressure Is Fueling Rationalized Theft

Recent consumer research helps explain why theft is accelerating. A LendingTree survey found that a growing percentage of shoppers admit to stealing at self-checkout, and many cite higher prices and financial stress as justification. This matters because it signals a shift in mindset. When theft becomes rationalized rather than hidden, it scales.

Retailers see this play out in stores every day. Full shopping carts pushed past points of payment. Known offenders returning repeatedly, sometimes multiple times per week. Associates operating under non-confrontational policies that rightly prioritize safety—yet leave them watching losses exit the store with little ability to intervene. The result is not just higher shrink; it’s increased strain on employees, erosion of the customer experience, and mounting pressure on already thin margins. In this environment, hoping theft will stabilize on its own is not a strategy.

Theft is no longer background shrink—it’s a strategic risk: in 2026, retailers must deter at exits, secure self-checkout, and treat loss prevention as business continuity.

Why Traditional Loss Prevention Models Are Falling Short

Many retailers are still relying on loss prevention approaches designed for a different era: one where theft was episodic, less brazen, and easier to absorb. Cameras that document losses after the fact. Alarms that activate too late. Processes that depend heavily on manual review and stretched investigative teams.

The problem is not effort; it is scale.

When the same offenders return repeatedly, when ORC groups test store defenses across locations, and when associates are asked to do more with less, reactive models simply cannot keep up. Retailers end up documenting loss rather than preventing it, and investigators spend disproportionate time piecing together incidents instead of stopping patterns early.

As we move into 2026, retailers must rethink loss prevention as an operational discipline supported by technology, not a downstream function.

Prevention, Intelligence, and Safety Must Work Together

The most forward-looking retailers we work with are shifting their approach in three important ways.

First, they are prioritizing prevention over recovery. Technologies that can stop theft before merchandise leaves the store—without escalating confrontation—are becoming essential. This includes exit-based interventions that focus on the cart or transaction, not the individual, reducing both shrink and the risk of violence.

Second, they are investing in investigative efficiency. When incidents do occur, retailers need tools that help teams quickly identify repeated behavior, link related events across locations, and focus resources where they will have the greatest impact. Responsible, retail-purpose-built face-matching technology, used with strong governance and human oversight, is enabling investigators to identify repeat offenders more quickly and with greater confidence, freeing teams to focus on organized activity rather than isolated incidents.

Third, retailers are elevating employee and shopper safety as a core outcome of loss prevention strategy. Theft prevention cannot come at the expense of the customer experience or associate well-being. The right technologies support calm, consistent interventions and reduce the need for staff to engage directly in high-risk situations.

Importantly, these shifts are not about surveillance for its own sake. They are about using technology thoughtfully and responsibly to protect people, products, and profits at the same time.

Technology Is Becoming a Strategic Necessity, Not a Nice-to-Have

What stands out in conversations with retail leaders today is how quickly technology adoption is moving from “optional” to “essential.” Retailers are no longer asking whether they can afford to invest in modern loss prevention technology, they are asking whether they can afford not to.

Solutions that combine real-time prevention with post-event intelligence are delivering measurable ROI, often with payback periods well under a year. Just as importantly, they provide executives with visibility into patterns of loss that were previously hidden—repeat offenders, store-to-store activity, and operational gaps that invite exploitation.

In 2026, competitive advantage will increasingly belong to retailers who treat loss prevention technology as an enabler of operational excellence, not simply a security expense.

Preparing for What Comes Next

The retail industry has always been resilient. But resilience in 2026 will require a clear-eyed view of risk and a willingness to adapt.

Theft is rising. The tactics are evolving. The consequences, for margins, safety, and brand trust, are too significant to ignore. Retailers who take a proactive, technology-enabled approach will be better positioned not only to reduce shrink, but to create safer stores, support their teams, and protect the shopping experience customers expect.

Those who delay may find that theft is no longer a manageable cost of doing business, but a defining challenge of the year ahead.

The post State of the Retail Industry 2026: Why Theft Is No Longer a Manageable Cost of Doing Business appeared first on RetailToday.

As we step into 2026, the retail industry stands at a pivotal crossroads. The pace of change is accelerating, and the decisions we make now will matter more than ever. Retailers are navigating a landscape shaped by economic uncertainty, shifting consumer expectations, and the ambitious advancements of technology. Yet, amid this complexity, one thing is clear: the future belongs to those who can harness intelligence—both human and artificial—and build open, adaptable ecosystems that put the customer at the center.

Agentic Commerce: From Hype to Impact

Last year, we talked about the promise of agentic AI—intelligent agents that don’t just automate tasks but actively participate in the retail value chain. In 2026, that promise is becoming reality. Retailers are moving beyond pilots and proofs of concept, to deploying AI agents that anticipate needs, personalize experiences, and drive operational efficiency at scale.

Consider how conversational commerce is evolving. AI-powered agents are guiding shoppers from discovery to purchase, answering questions, surfacing recommendations, and tracking the best deals on their behalf. This isn’t just about convenience; it’s about fundamentally reimagining the shopping journey. The most successful retailers are who see agentic commerce not as a tacked-on capability, but as a strategic platform. One that connects merchandising, marketing, store operations, and fulfillment in real time.

The numbers back this up. McKinsey predicts that agentic commerce could account for up to $1 trillion in orchestrated revenue by 2030, with global projections reaching as high as $3 trillion to $5 trillion. Retailers who prepare now by structuring their data, building open APIs, and embracing compliance-ready integrations will be best positioned to capture this new demand.

Agentic commerce is rapidly advancing, with new tools reshaping how shoppers interact and transact. One recent example is Copilot Checkout, which uses AI to help customers complete purchases more smoothly and intuitively. By partnering with payment providers like PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe, and retailers such as Etsy, Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, KEEN, and Ashley Furniture, Copilot Checkout integrates secure payments and checkout experiences directly into the shopping journey. This approach aims to reduce friction for both retailers and consumers.

Retail’s next advantage will not come from more AI experiments, but from enterprise-grade platforms that make intelligence reliable, secure, and operational at scale.

Human + Artificial Intelligence: The Differentiator

But as AI becomes ubiquitous, the question shifts from “Can you deploy AI?” to “How do you differentiate?” The answer lies in the synergy between human and artificial intelligence.

We’re seeing this play out in the real world. Levi Strauss & Co., for example, is using a Microsoft-powered super-agent to automate routine tasks and surface insights, so employees can focus on delivering authentic customer experiences.

At Microsoft, we believe technology should amplify, not replace, human ingenuity. The retailers who win in 2026 will be those who empower their people with intelligent tools, freeing up store associates to focus on what matters most: building relationships, solving problems, and delivering authentic experiences.

At Microsoft, we believe that technology should amplify, not replace, human ingenuity. To ensure AI truly works for people, Microsoft grounds its agentic AI in a shared intelligence layer powered by Work IQ, Fabric IQ, and Foundry IQ. Together, these IQs help agents understand how people work, how data connects across the business, and how knowledge is securely grounded, bringing context, meaning, and trust to every interaction across the enterprise.

The lesson? AI is a force multiplier, but it’s the human touch—creativity, empathy, and expertise—that builds trust and loyalty. The future of retail is not AI versus people; it’s AI and people, working together to deliver a return on intelligence.

Open Ecosystems: Breaking Down the Walls

Another defining trend for 2026 is the shift from walled gardens to open ecosystems. For years, retailers have grappled with closed platforms that limit flexibility and lock away data. Today, the momentum is moving toward openness. Think interoperable systems, open standards, and collaborative innovation.

Why does this matter? In an agentic world, value flows to those who can connect, integrate, and orchestrate across the ecosystem. Open platforms enable retailers to plug in best-of-breed solutions, leverage community-driven innovation, and avoid the risks of vendor lock-in. They foster transparency and trust—critical ingredients in an era where consumers are more discerning than ever about how their data is used.

At Microsoft, our commitment to openness is foundational. We’re building tools and protocols that allow retailers to own their data, customize their AI agents, and participate fully in a vibrant, interconnected retail landscape.

As 2026 unfolds, the real test for retailers will be their ability to turn possibility into progress. Those who move beyond incremental change and commit to reimagining the customer experience, the workforce, and the business model itself will set the pace for the industry. The opportunity is here to build a retail landscape that is more connected, resilient, and ready for whatever comes next.

The post The State of Retail in 2026: Powering People, Platforms, and Possibility appeared first on RetailToday.

AI is reshaping how retailers serve customers, manage operations, and compete in an increasingly digital marketplace. However, as retailers embrace these powerful technologies, the importance of robust AI security and governance cannot be overstated.

Exceeding Changing Customer Expectations

Instead of navigating disconnected systems or waiting for manager approval, associates can ask natural language questions like “Is this item in stock in another location?” or “What are the return options for an online purchase?” and receive immediate, accurate responses. This capability enables faster service resolution, reduces customer wait times, and empowers frontline employees to deliver more personalized interactions.

Streamlining Operations Across All Touchpoints

AI systems unify customer data from e-commerce platforms, point-of-sale systems, CRM databases, and loyalty programs, enabling real-time personalization across all channels. Store associates can instantly access a customer’s complete purchase history, recommend complementary products, and maintain consistent service quality whether the interaction happens online, in-store, or through customer support.

Accelerating Employee Productivity and Training

Retail faces constant challenges with employee turnover and seasonal hiring cycles. AI agents significantly reduce onboarding time by enabling new employees to self-serve answers to common questions.

Rather than relying on managers or flipping through training manuals, new hires can ask questions in natural language and receive instant, reliable guidance on policies, procedures, and product details. Some retailers report reducing onboarding time through AI-powered training systems, allowing seasonal employees to become productive faster without increasing training overhead.

AI agents can dramatically improve retail productivity and customer experience, but without strong governance they also introduce significant security, compliance, and brand risks.

The Security and Governance Imperative

While the benefits of AI agents in retail are substantial, implementing these systems without proper security and governance frameworks creates significant risks. As AI agents gain access to sensitive customer data, inventory information, and operational procedures, retailers must ensure these systems operate within clearly defined security boundaries.

Effective AI governance requires three critical components:

1. Data Leakage Prevention: AI agents must handle customer information in compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA, with built-in controls that prevent unauthorized access or data breaches.
   
2. Role-Based Access Controls and Authentication: Not all employees need access to all information. Robust governance frameworks ensure AI agents respect existing permission structures and provide information only to authorized personnel.
   
3. Audit Trails and Monitoring: Every AI agent interaction should be logged and monitored to detect anomalies, track system usage, and ensure compliance with company policies and regulatory requirements.

Strategic Implementation for Sustainable Success

Retailers cannot afford to implement AI systems without safeguards unless they want to risk damaging the brand reputation they spent years building.

The most successful AI implementations in retail share common characteristics: they integrate with existing infrastructure, respect current security protocols, and provide clear oversight mechanisms for business leaders. Organizations must embed security and governance considerations from the design phase rather than treating them as afterthoughts.

Retailers who prioritize AI security and governance alongside orchestration functionality will build sustainable competitive advantages while maintaining customer trust.

The future of retail belongs to organizations that can harness AI’s transformative power while maintaining the highest standards of security and operational integrity. Those who act decisively—with governance at the forefront of their AI strategy—will lead the next era of retail innovation.

The post How AI Agents Are Transforming Retail: Maximum Innovation or Maximum Risk appeared first on RetailToday.

Emerging from the constant flux in trade policy and unexpected cost pressures that marked 2025, retailers are spending more to carry less inventory in 2026.

Though U.S. trade deals with China and other key manufacturing locations such as Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand brought a certain amount of stability, that still leaves retailers and retail suppliers with higher tariffs. U.S. tariffs on key materials in consumer goods and electronics – like wood, aluminum and copper – have also created financial stress. Meanwhile, warehouse and labor costs are rising, and trucking rates that have been highly favorable for shippers for more than three years are forecast to increase in 2026.

From the perspective of a logistics company that serves 7,500 retail customers, here are four key strategies for success in today’s environment.

1. Minimize total landed costs in your supply chain

Cost control starts with where you source your goods but doesn’t end there. The smartest sourcing decisions include evaluating the downstream impacts on your logistics.

One trend that has accelerated as a result of the global trade war is retailers and retail suppliers establishing sourcing hierarchies. While diversification isn’t new, it has evolved beyond a simple China +1 strategy. Now we advise a more intentional, tiered approach to sourcing that prioritizes geopolitical stability, business continuity and cost efficiency. Tiers in the hierarchy beyond China include countries adjacent to China, friendshoring partners, nearshoring to the Americas and reshoring to the United States.

Each choice affects your purchase price and tariffs, with cascading effects on the costs associated with port selection, ocean carrier, shipment timing, inland transportation by rail vs. trucking and even last-mile delivery. If you shift some production to Europe, can you avoid shipping through a congested gateway that delays your inventory and costs you sales? If you stick to your manufacturer in India, are there ways to offset the higher tariffs you’re paying?

Retailers are learning that carrying less inventory doesn’t mean slower service—when sourcing, transportation, agentic supply chains, and logistics intelligence work together, efficiency becomes a competitive advantage in 2026.

For imports, you can lower your total landed costs with options like transloading. We serve a small business that imports for mom-and-pop pet stores around the country and a few chains. Instead of bringing containers to one port and sending them to distribution centers, we use five ports closest to his end customers, break down the freight when it arrives and send individual pallets directly where they need to go. He has zero warehouse overhead. Without investing in buildings or people, transloading arguably gives him a more efficient distribution model than some of the world’s largest retailers.

For domestically sourced inventory, expanding your drop trailer program can keep storage and labor costs down. Empty trailers dropped at your manufacturing site can be filled as goods come off the line, replacing the need for local storage until your merchandise is ready to ship. Full trailers dropped at your warehouses can be unloaded during downtime, optimizing your labor and potentially requiring fewer shifts. New drop trailer innovations incorporating data streams from an Asset Management System even allow for real-time tracking of the inventory on board.

2. Offer great service even with less stock

Keeping delivery times fast while holding less safety stock is possible with an Agentic Supply Chain – an intelligent ecosystem that continuously thinks, learns, adapts and acts. With the latest advancements in agentic AI, every step in the shipping process is an opportunity for greater speed to market. AI agents are knocking hours off of getting a price quote, processing orders, setting appointments for pickup and securing trucks. C.H. Robinson’s fleet of more than 30 AI agents perform these shipping tasks and more 24/7, giving retail suppliers and retailers an edge over slower competitors.

3. Replenish with greater precision

Centralizing your purchase orders and tying them to your freight transportation is a great way to keep inventory to a minimum. You know where everything is located in your supply chain – down to the item level – and a new order is triggered only when and where it’s needed and only in the quantity needed. It allows you to redistribute inventory instead of ordering more and prevents over-ordering when it does come time to replenish.

4. Invest in a digital twin for inventory planning

You might think of conducting simulations in a digital twin of your supply chain for purposes of risk management or testing out the implications of different economic trends. It can also help you manage seasonal inventory. Take pool noodles, for example. There’s not a lot of price elasticity in a pool noodle and the sales window is narrow, so there’s no room for waste.

By modeling various procurement approaches and different combinations of suppliers, inventory positions and routing, you can make sure you buy the right amount of pool noodles at the right frequency. Come pool noodle season, you’ll also have optimized how they fit on trailers and get transported.

As 2026 progresses, watch C.H. Robinson’s monthly Edge Report for timely insights on air, ocean, rail and truck shipping.

The post Inside Retail’s Shift Toward Leaner Inventory and Smarter Logistics appeared first on RetailToday.

For much of the past two years, retail strategy has revolved around a single assumption: as wallets tighten, price becomes the only thing that matters. That assumption isn’t wrong, but it is incomplete. In conversations with retailers across markets, a more uncomfortable truth is emerging. Shoppers aren’t just reacting to how low prices are. They are responding to whether a retailer’s pricing feels fair, consistent, and credible over time. Increasingly, retailers aren’t losing shoppers purely on price. They are losing the trust required to earn long-term loyalty.

This shift isn’t theoretical. Heading into 2026, large retailers across North America, Europe, and Asia are explicitly pairing price investment with language around trust, fairness, and consistency in their earnings calls and investor communications. The message is clear: competing on price alone is no longer sufficient if shoppers do not believe in the value story behind it.

Consumers Are More Aware Than Ever

Today’s shoppers are not passively encountering prices at the shelf. They are highly informed, digitally enabled, and constantly benchmarking experiences across retailers. They don’t just know whether an item is on promotion. They know where it is usually cheaper, how prices have moved over time, and whether a deal feels genuine.

As a result, consumers are no longer evaluating retailers item by item. They are evaluating patterns. Does this retailer feel consistently fair? Are prices predictable? Or does shopping there require constant vigilance?

Once shoppers feel a retailer is opportunistic or inconsistent, that perception tends to stick. Consumers remember who “did them wrong” on pricing, whether through sudden price spikes, volatile promotions, or value promises that failed to hold up across the basket. Price sensitivity may prompt the first comparison, but trust determines whether shoppers return.

Price is no longer the only story; trust is: if shoppers sense inconsistency or engineered promotions, they abandon the basket—and your brand—regardless of the headline discount.

Why Massive Price Investments Aren’t Paying Off

In response to sustained pressure, many large retailers have invested heavily in price, cutting thousands of items, expanding promotions, and matching competitors more aggressively than ever. Yet a common frustration we hear is that these investments are not delivering the loyalty or perception gains leaders expect.

The reason is straightforward: retailers are investing millions in price moves without fully understanding how those moves are actually perceived relative to competitors.

From a shopper’s perspective, pricing is never experienced in isolation. It is experienced holistically. A retailer that is sharp on a handful of headline items but uncompetitive across the rest of the basket doesn’t feel affordable. It feels inconsistent. A banner that alternates between deep discounts and sudden price jumps doesn’t feel dynamic. It feels unreliable.

In the United States, one of the largest national mass merchants has reinforced its everyday low-price positioning by rolling back prices on tens of thousands of items and explicitly tying low prices to trust as a core part of its brand promise. At the same time, a major big-box retailer has cut prices across thousands of everyday items in an effort to win back traffic after a period of volatility. Both approaches reflect a growing recognition that broad, sustained price action, rather than isolated promotions, is required to rebuild credibility. But without clear visibility into how those moves land competitively, even large investments can fail to meaningfully shift perception.

Price Image Has Become a Reputation Issuea

This is where Price Image moves beyond pricing mechanics and into brand reputation. Shoppers develop a mental model of each retailer: who is fair, who is consistent, and who requires constant price-checking. Once a retailer earns a reputation for being “hit-or-miss,” no single promotion can undo it.

Trust also erodes before trips decline. Early warning signs often appear as:

• Shoppers cherry-picking promotions rather than completing full baskets

• Increased cross-shopping for everyday essentials

• Growing skepticism toward advertised value claims

In Canada, this dynamic has been especially visible. Several large grocery players entered the inflationary period under heightened public scrutiny for perceived price opportunism. Trust declined sharply, even before meaningful traffic loss occurred. By contrast, retailers with simple, transparent value models and strong private brands retained loyalty despite the same macro pressures. The lesson is clear: when trust falters, shoppers quietly hedge their behavior long before they walk away.

Consistency Beats Intensity

Across global markets, the most successful retailers are converging on the same realization: consistency matters more than intensity.

In the UK, two of the top five conventional grocery players have recently leaned heavily into stable value programs, matching discounter prices on hundreds of everyday items and embedding loyalty pricing into the core shopping experience. The result has not only been market share gains or stabilization, but a meaningful shift in shopper behavior. When customers trust that a retailer is broadly competitive, they are more willing to buy premium items alongside value staples and complete full baskets instead of deal-hunting elsewhere.

A global membership-based warehouse retailer offers the clearest expression of this principle at scale. Its strict margin discipline and limited assortment send a simple, credible signal to shoppers: prices are fair by design, not by promotion. That consistency has produced some of the highest loyalty and renewal rates in global retail, even as consumers become more price-conscious.

Meanwhile, in continental Europe, a leading multinational grocer has gone so far as to publicly challenge manufacturers over price increases and call out shrinkflation. These actions explicitly position the retailer as a consumer advocate. They are not about winning individual price checks. They are about strengthening credibility and rebuilding trust in the value equation over time.

The Limits of Reactive Pricing

Despite these examples, many retailers still manage pricing reactively, responding to competitor moves week by week, chasing visible gaps, and measuring success primarily through item-level benchmarks. While necessary, this approach rarely adds up to a coherent value narrative.

Reactive pricing without a cohesive strategy creates noise, not clarity. Without understanding how prices are perceived across categories and over time, retailers risk sending conflicting signals that undermine trust. Winning a price check today does little good if shoppers do not believe the retailer will be competitive tomorrow.

What’s missing is not effort. It is feedback. Specifically, insight into how pricing decisions shape Price Image relative to competitors, and how those perceptions influence shopper behavior across the basket.

From Price Wars to Price Confidence

The retailers best positioned for 2026 are making a strategic shift. They are moving from reacting to competitors to actively managing Price Image as part of their brand promise.

That shift includes:

• Evaluating competitiveness at the basket level, not just item by item

• Prioritizing consistency over short-term promotional wins

• Using competitive data to determine where price truly matters, and where it does not

In this context, competitive data becomes more than a benchmarking exercise. It becomes a tool for decision-making, internal alignment, and narrative control, ensuring that price investments reinforce trust rather than dilute it.

What Lies Ahead

As consumer pressure persists, the instinct will be to keep cutting prices. But the retailers that emerge stronger will be those that recognize a harder truth: shoppers do not need retailers to be the cheapest everywhere. They need to give shoppers a real seat at the pricing table, shaping decisions around how value is actually experienced, not just how it looks on paper.

Trust is now the battleground of price competition. And trust, once lost, is far more expensive to rebuild than margin ever was. Retailers that manage Price Image with discipline, clarity, and competitive context will earn something increasingly rare in today’s market: long-term loyalty, even when wallets remain tight.

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2026 will mark a new era for retail. Much like the introduction of ecommerce, AI-driven commerce (aka, conversational commerce) is emerging as the next retail pivot. In addition to AI-empowered technology across retail systems, AI-consumer facing functionality is headlining nearly every conversation.

At Columbus Consulting, we are seeing our clients looking to leverage artificial intelligence for a variety of business needs. Brands are seeking to enhance productivity and build streamlined efficiencies through AI applications. Specifically, AI is able to use large language models to assess scenarios, provide real-time end-to-end visibility and elevate accuracy and speed across the business enterprise.

Many platforms, software services and tech companies are already introducing AI into their solutions, the big movement will be for end-user adoption and a shift in organizational structures, processes and roles/responsibilities.

Other dominating themes for 2026 revolve around changing consumer behaviors and consumption patterns. Weight loss drugs will continue to skew the size scale impacting historical sizing and allocation plans in the apparel industry. Similarly, portions and meal assortments will continue to adjust to respond to reduced consumption demand in the food industry.

New tax laws/credits that eliminate taxes on tips, social security and other consumer-favorable rates will infuse more discretionary income into the market the first half of the year, off-setting the more immediate higher energy costs. Overall, affordability will dominate the news cycle, as will tariff resolutions and, by year-end, consumers will have a more level outlook on their financial situations. All benefiting Q3 and Q4.

AI-driven commerce, robotics, and product-centric data now define how retailers compete, scale operations, and remain relevant in an increasingly autonomous retail landscape.

Another key theme for 2026 is the more visible use of robots both on the operational sides and consumer-facing sides of the business. Retailers will become more autonomous with fully-enabled robotic resources for fulfillment and inventory/stocking, checkout functions and delivery. Robotics will not be limited to manufacturing, but will be immersed into the front-end retail environments.

Lastly, one of the biggest key pivots for 2026 is around data. Retailers, with the emergence of conversational commerce (chat/AI/large language), are becoming more product data centric rather than just consumer-centric. Consistent, accurate and enhanced product data will be of foremost importance as shoppers shift from keywords (yellow, sweater, cotton, fitted) to phrase search and engagement (what should I wear to a business brunch in April). Open AI is enabling broader use and adoption of product search as a solution outcome vs an item outcome. Retailers are already using AI agents to help solve for web chats and will need to expand to broader search engines to help consumers find their brands/products.

With over 200 projects a year and 25+years in retail, Columbus Consulting has its finger on the pulse of the industry. From roadmap design to technology selections and implementations, our team of retail experts know what our clients are looking to solve for and what challenges they are facing. Managing increased costs, creating value for consumers and building a sustainable working organization balancing human+AI will all be driving conversations/resources/investments in 2026.

Top Ten Retailer Themes for 2026:

1. Agentic AI is here and is being leveraged across enterprise systems–especially in MP&A and Inventory Management.
   
2. Retailers will need to reassess their organizational structures, roles/responsibilities and leverage formalized change management to leverage AI enabled technology.
   
3. Consumer spending will be driven by higher income consumer segments, but new tax policies will generate discretionary income across all income levels.
   
4. Affordability and value will stay in the news cycle and, with the tariff dust still unsettled, retailers will be looking to optimize margins through smarter sourcing, pricing and promotions.
   
5. Conversational commerce will be driving a greater share of consumer engagement as shoppers adopt large language over keyword search.
   
6. GLP1 drug use will continue to skew the sizing scale, impacting assortments, food industry portions and consumable selection.
7. Personalization at scale is now achievable.
   
8. Frictionless shopping both on and off line will reach new levels from search to shelf.
   
9. Data remains king but will pivot from just a single view of the customer to a single view of the product across channels and platforms.
   
10. Robots will become more human and more visible as the industry evolves into a Human+ experience.

The post The Top 10 Consumer-Focused Retail Themes for 2026: Hint, AI Is at the Top of the List. appeared first on RetailToday.

Customers have more options than ever before. Just think – if you want a chicken sandwich, you can easily go to no less than 10 limited-service restaurant brands; if you want automotive insurance, you can probably name several brands you might reach out to without doing any additional research. With nearly endless options, regardless of service or product, how do customers choose?

In an increasingly crowded marketplace, the key to differentiation is clear: delivering a great experience is the great brand unlock.

Delivering a great experience is not as simple as it once was. It now requires brands to provide several great experiences across their customer touchpoints – every time, for every customer. Pulling that off is easier said than done.

When brands are successful, they see increased market share and overall better financial performance, with evidence in abundance. But what’s the roadmap for brands to see this kind of success? It starts with measuring and managing the full experience journey.

Digital Experience

As more brands invest in their digital channels, customer expectations for how their websites, apps, and chatbots function continue to rise. Competitive benchmarking can be a great starting point for improving digital experiences. It offers insight across five key dimensions:

• Operability – this app / website works well

• Learnability – this app / website is easy to understand

• Product fit – this app / website has what I need

• Inspiration – this app / website inspires me to connect or transact with this brand

• Design appeal – this app / website looks good

A great user experience audit can identify the current pain points along your digital journey, identify how your competitors are addressing those challenges and set a clear path for how to reduce friction and build trust with your customers.

Employee Engagement

Employees are the face of your brand – it’s impossible to deliver great experiences without them. Understanding how your people feel about the business and what might be done to build their advocacy is foundational to enabling them to deliver on your brand promise.

These are the two areas critical to understanding employee experience:

Employee Engagement. What does your brand mean to your employees? Are they connected to your brand mission? What can be done to increase their sense of loyalty and belonging within the business?

Employee Enablement. Do your team members have the tools, training, resources and flexibility to deliver on your brand promise and take immediate action to convert a bad customer interaction into an excellent one?

Winning choice today is less about louder messaging and more about earning relevance, trust, and emotional permission in decisive moments.

Operational Execution

How do you “inspect what you expect” across every aspect of your operation? Both operational audits and mystery shops allow brands to objectively assess if brand standards are consistently met. These services can enable real-time measurement and management of:

People – how do your team members engage customers? Do they smile? Make eye contact? Use customer’s names? Are they wearing the right apparel?

Process – do your front-line team members follow prescribed steps of sales and service?

Pricing – are your products or services priced the way that you have intended? Are those prices evident and clear to the customer?

Promotion – are your promotions run effectively? Does the customer know that there is a sale? Is the discounted offer clearly conveyed?

Customer Experience

While measuring actual execution is important, it is equally important to understand how those levels of consistent delivery (or lack of performance) make the customer feel. For that insight, brands turn to customer experience measurement programs. There are two core modes of customer feedback – solicited and unsolicited.

Solicited – these are customer satisfaction / experience surveys that can be offered in your stores, on your website, in your apps, and emailed or texted to your customers. This subjective feedback offers insight into how customers feel: how overall satisfied they are with you, how likely they are to return to you, and how likely they are to recommend you to others.

Unsolicited – What do customers have to say when you aren’t asking them for feedback? This is where social media monitoring comes in. Star ratings, comments and reviews clearly identify pain points and offer rich customer recovery opportunities.

Data, Data, Data

It will come as no surprise that implementing these various measures produces a lot of raw data – data on your people, data on their performance, and data from your customers. Data is powerful, but it has to be:

Organized: Are your data streams connected and speaking to one another, or are they siloed?

Democratized: Can everyone in the organization access the data, and are they empowered to act upon it?

Actionable: Are you able to translate that data into next steps for your organization? When changes are implemented, are you equipped to measure the ROI of the corrective actions taken to improve experience?

Understanding how investments in experience contribute to the overall business success allows brands to refine strategies and allocate resources more effectively. Ipsos’ ROXI (Return on Experience Investment) analytics and insights solution provides a comprehensive approach to understanding and quantifying this impact. By integrating experience measurement data with financial performance metrics, ROXI empowers brands to precisely calculate the value that experience investments and improvements bring to their business. This evidence-based approach enables decision-makers to justify investments in customer experience initiatives and demonstrate their tangible returns.

Ipsos stands out as a unique partner in the landscape of experience design, measurement, and management. By offering end-to-end solutions built on robust methodologies like ROXI, Ipsos equips brands with the strategic insights and actionable recommendations to create and sustain exceptional customer experiences. These tailored services ensure that every step, from strategy development to execution, is informed by data-driven insights that maximize business outcomes.

The post Standing Out: The Key to Winning Customers in a Sea of Choices appeared first on RetailToday.