During Target’s Q3 earnings call earlier this fall, one word was on the tip of every executive’s tongue: affordability.

To give just a few examples, CEO Brian Cornell said recent investments were aimed at “providing an affordable, easy, and joyful guest experience,” while Chief Growth Officer Christina Hennington coined what may be a new corporate neologism.

“With a combination of everyday low prices, compelling promotions, and exciting savings events all season long, we aim to be the holiday destination for affordable joy,” she said.

Other retailers were similarly focused on how they plan to lure price-sensitive customers this holiday season, and their reasoning was fairly consistent. Consumers are still willing to spend, but they are being more cautious or “choiceful,” to use another popular industry term.

Evidence for this prognosis mounted during the Black Friday–Cyber Monday period with those sales events seeing sizable annual gains amid record discounts of up to 31% off listed prices. This tracks with a recent Deloitte survey showing that consumers are concentrating their shopping around the sales events in order to stretch their budget.

But with those discounts coming to an end, retailers are faced with a fresh challenge: how to keep bargain-hungry customers coming.

Keep reading here.—AV

The only consistent thing about e-commerce consumer expectations is that they’re always changing. Of course, that can complicate clear, decisive plans of action for retailers.

Luckily, if you’ve got Rokt’s latest report in hand, the future can look clearer. Rokt commissioned The Harris Poll to conduct research with 6k consumers across the US, Australia, the UK, Germany, France, and Japan about their online shopping expectations. That’s right, folks—we’re goin’ global.

Key areas explored include:

• the paradox of choice and the rise of relevance
• AI shopping and young consumers
• business blindspots with missed contextualization

Stay relevant to the modern consumer by taking a peek at Rokt x The Harris Poll’s timely findings—and evolve your e-comm for the better.

Welcome back, everyone. We’re officially in the home stretch of this year, and make no mistake, there’s plenty of stuff that can’t “wait until after the New Year,” so let’s dive into what’s going on in retail this week.

In events: Yesterday, industry leaders and professors in CPG descended upon Marina del Rey, California, for BevNet Live Winter 2023, a three-day conference offering demonstrations, presentations, and networking events.

In earnings: Stitch Fix reports its earnings Tuesday, which will put a bow on what has been an interesting year for the company. In January, former CEO Elizabeth Spaulding left her post as the company announced it would cut 20% of salaried roles.

Dollar General reports earnings Thursday, and is still very much looking to bounce back after a grim Q1 report that found the company’s core customers had dramatically cut back on spending. It was alarming for the company, since dollar and discount stores are typically able to weather tougher macroeconomic conditions.

Keep reading here.—KM

Turn on the news or tune in to an earnings call and you’ll probably hear the same two-word culprit tottered out for falling profits and sales dips. Starts with R, ends with…well, it’s retail theft.

It’s reached such a fever pitch, however, that some retail executives are backtracking. At the start of this year, Walgreens CFO James Kehoe said the pharmacy chain had “cried too much” about retail theft in 2022, and overdid it with private security guards in stores.

“We’ve started seeing [retail theft] being used as an excuse: an excuse for falling profits, an excuse for closing stores,” Neil Saunders, retail analyst and managing director of retail research agency GlobalData, told CFO Brew. “Now, it may be a legitimate excuse, but nevertheless it’s being used as a talking point around why certain things are happening to retailers.”

That timing makes sense, Saunders continued. “We’re seeing a lot more pressure on retailers,” he said, citing sluggish sales and an erosion of profitability. “The problem is that when performance comes under pressure, people do start rolling out more excuses.”

But that’s also what makes the current moment so nebulous, because retail theft isn’t just a catch-all scapegoat.

Keep reading here on CFO Brew.—NP

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