In late September 2026, a pilot deployment of 100 humanoid robots as sales assistants across 100 offline kitchenware stores in China produced a measurable commercial result: average sales across the …
For decades, the paper price tag has been a fixture of the grocery shopping experience: static, silent and offering no help to a shopper struggling to locate a specific item …
For decades, the planogram, the detailed diagram specifying exactly where each product should sit on a shelf has been one of retail’s most labour-intensive artefacts. A single complex layout can …
In September 2026, a Global Retail Alliance Tour across the United States and Canada concluded, taking participants from Chicago to Detroit and on to Toronto. Organised in partnership with a …
In September 2026, a UK-licensed bank launched what it described as the UK’s first in-store facial recognition checkout system, allowing customers to pay for goods with a glance rather than …
In September 2026, new research revealed that for the first time, a majority of American consumers have used artificial intelligence to assist with shopping. The finding marks a significant threshold …
In September 2026, a Chinese omnichannel retailer opened its first Store Digital Twin-enabled supermarket in Shenzhen, deploying more than 17,000 IoT devices across the trading floor. The project, developed in …
For decades, the verification of in-store marketing execution has been one of retail’s most stubborn operational blind spots. Consumer packaged goods brands and retailers invest billions annually in trade spend …
In September 2026, a global travel retail operator launched the first direct wallet-to-wallet stablecoin payment pilot at Zurich Airport, marking one of the first live deployments of blockchain-based settlement in …
In September 2026, licensed retailers and venues across England and Wales began accepting certified phone-based proof that a shopper is over 18 without collecting name or address. The changes to …
Shopping agents are easy to demo. Safe delegation across cards, wallets, QR schemes and merchants is the harder scaling problem. In September 2026, the payments industry moved decisively to solve …
On September 10, 2026, one of the world’s largest e-commerce and advertising platforms confirmed a partnership with a leading conversational AI assistant to carry advertising inside its chat interface. Select …