Heather Bowman

Earlier this month, Amazon announced they were going to have a “Black Friday” sale on July 15th for their Amazon Prime members. Their announcement caused other retailers to quickly whip up potentially matching sales to push consumers to start their spending habits a bit earlier. As a prime member, I was definitely excited to see […]

Back-to-school shopping season struggled in 2014 with the slowest sales growth since 2009 and with retail sales dipping .3% last month (Commerce Department report), the industry is off to a challenging start for 2015.  With families spending about 5.8% less on BTS items this year, NRF projects that 2015 BTS spending will drop from last […]

Its hard to believe that the summer is almost over! The BTS (back-to-school) season begins in about a week as shoppers tend to prepare about three weeks to one month prior to the first day of school. To maximize conversions, retail marketing campaigns need to begin early to address schools all across the country, with […]

With graduation parties coming to a close and the 4th of July has come and gone, we are halfway through the summer and school is right around the corner. Cue the boos and wahs now from kids and young adults but parents are excited to get them back into a regular schedule and retailers are […]

The food and beverage category is the largest retail category in the United States at $600 billion per year, Business Insider reports[1] and technology has transformed the way consumers purchase things in many industries. iTunes allows consumers to gather music and purchase music from wherever they are, Amazon gives shoppers the ability to view, select and […]

Over the past decade, social media has been utilized by retail and brand marketers to engage with customers, market products and sometimes even to make merchandising decisions. Social promotions, content marketing, sponsored posts and customer reviews are carefully engineered to build consideration, awareness and intent to gain and retain customers. However, now merchants are adding […]

In the past year, we have seen a lot of online stores expand into the offline realm. As everything seems to be going digital, why are ecommerce sites developing brick-and-mortar stores? For starters, 90% of all sales occur in a brick-and-mortar setting.  AND 95% of all retail sales occur amongst retailers that have some sort […]

From commerce to personalization to cybersecurity to the customer experience, the consumer markets industry is experiencing a huge transformation this year driven by these types of trends. Organizations must transform complex data into seamless and simple operations all while gaining customer insights and services responses. Consumers are more connected than ever due to mobile, social […]

Today’s B2B commerce world is drastically different than a decade ago, much less a couple of years ago. With the dawn of the digital age and change of customer demands and expectations, many B2B organizations are now focusing on how to grow online customers and sales to maximize their revenue.  In recent blog posts, we […]

We have talked a lot this year in the importance of the Experience in the consumer markets industry.  In one of 2015’s top trends, we discussed how important different aspects of the experience influence the consumer.  Experiential marketing has allowed consumers to interact with brands, products and retailers in a unique experience intending to drive […]

Consumer shopping habits have bled over to B2B buyer expectations, which forces B2B sellers to rethink multichannel commerce capabilities.  Buyers are looking for more than just to be served online. They expect services such as next-day delivery, inventory visibility, and enhanced fulfillment capabilities.  Many B2B sellers are beginning to upgrade their ecommerce platforms and pull those resources […]

The days of talking to a B2B sales company, working with a call-center and flipping through a catalog are over. B2B buying behavior has drastically changed and are expecting the same customer experience they receive as B2C consumers.  B2B companies are seeing the need to rethink and transform their sales channels and models to incorporate […]