Marketing: Direct & Personalization

Articles on CRM, Loyalty and Personalization.

  1. Data & Insights

Drive-Thru Under Pressure: Why Fast Food’s Core Profit Engine Is Stalling

  The drive-thru remains the dominant revenue engine for quick-service restaurants (QSRs), generating 60%–75% of total sales at many brands. Yet today, operators are confronting a convergence of pressures: elevated labor costs, persistent food inflation, declining traffic, and slower service times according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® this is […]
5 min read
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  1. Shopper & Customer

FaceTime with the Content Guy: Customer Service That Gets Personal

Today, a great example of personalized customer service – from an e-commerce company that shows exactly how to effectively use data to create an enduring and even intimate connection to the shopper. The post FaceTime with the Content Guy: Customer Service That Gets Personal appeared first on MNB.
< 1 min read
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  1. Shopper & Customer

Stitch Fix CEO Matt Baer, Nike’s Identify Crisis, Grocery’s Looming Collapse of the Middle, and Pets.Com: The Sequel

This week on The Remarkable Retail Podcast, Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc break down the forces reshaping retail before sitting down live at Shoptalk in Las Vegas with Matt Baer, CEO of Stitch Fix. The episode opens with a wide-ranging look at the macro pressures bearing down on the industry—geopolitical conflict, rising tariffs, and supply […]
2 min read
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  1. Technology & Innovation

Guest Column:  Thom Blischok on “Retail Restructured”

Content Guy’s Note:  I don’t run a lot of guest columns on MNB, but when I read this LinkedIn posting from Thom Blischok, of The Dialogic Group, I decided that it was exactly the kind of piece that should be featured here – it focuses on how three major retailers are engaging in fundamental rethinking […]
3 min read
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  1. Shopper & Customer

Why Wellness is Becoming a Winning Retail Strategy    

Four major retailers are betting big on wellness this year: Ulta, Target, Amazon and Boots have all made significant forays into wellness in 2026. These moves align closely with signals we’ve identified across consumer behavior, category convergence and wellness-led spending.   Consumers are dedicating more of their time, energy and dollars to their own wellness routines. Mintel has been tracking this shift for several years, identifying wellness as one of the most durable, cross-category […]
4 min read
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  1. Data & Insights

Is AI Retail’s New Front Door? with Bret Taylor (OpenAI Board Chair & Sierra CEO) and Guest Co-Host Neil Saunders

Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc are joined by guest co-host Neil Saunders, Managing Director and retail analyst at GlobalData, bringing his signature analytical rigour and on-the-ground store insights to a wide-ranging discussion of the week’s biggest retail developments and the future of AI-powered commerce. For our feature interview, Steve sits down live at ShopTalk with […]
2 min read
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  1. Data & Insights

Merchandising a Marketplace: The Magician Behind Etsy’s Curatorial Magic

With more than 120 million listings and millions of active sellers, Etsy operates one of the most unique marketplaces in retail. But surfacing the right products for the right buyers requires more than algorithms alone. In this episode of Retail Remix, host Nicole Silberstein speaks with Mary Andrews, Head of Global Merchandising at Etsy, about […]
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  1. Media & Marketing

The Rare Journey Needs a Special Pharmacy Partner

Today’s guest post is from Bansi Nagji, Chief Executive Officer at PANTHERx Rare. Bansi argues that rare disease pharmacy is a fundamentally different model built around precision, speed, and hyper-personalized care. He suggests how manufacturers and stakeholders must rethink their assumptions to effectively support the unique demands of rare disease patient journeys. Hear from PANTHERx […]
2 min read
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  1. Department & Category

RoFo Sauce, Tender Fest, and the Playbook of Food Identity: Why Royal Farms Is Quietly Learning from Fast Food Giants

  In today’s hyper-competitive food retail ecosystem, success rarely comes from simply selling food. It comes from creating menu item identity, delivering portable value, and building loyalty ecosystems that keep customers returning day after day. That’s exactly what Baltimore-based convenience retailer Royal Farms is doing with the debut of its proprietary RoFo Sauce as the […]
5 min read
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  1. Stores & Formats

Moves To Drive Food Industry Back To The Past Gain New Momentum

The New York State Attorney General has come out in favor of a bill that would ban electronic shelf labels, calling them an “exploitive practice” resulting in higher prices. From The Gothamist: “New York Attorney General Letitia James is throwing her support behind state legislation to curtail retailers and grocers from setting prices using algorithms […]
3 min read
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  1. Data & Insights

The Iron Man Suit of Fashion: Stitch Fix’s Human + AI Formula

AI may be everywhere right now, but for Stitch Fix, it’s been foundational for 15 years. In this episode of Retail Remix, Nicole Silberstein sits down with Tony Bacos, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Stitch Fix, to explore how the brand blends data science and human instinct to power personalized styling at scale — […]
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  1. Department & Category

Amazon’s Grocery Gambit: Tech, Fresh Food, and the Cost of Ignoring the Consumer

Amazon’s two-decade quest to dominate grocery has become one of the most expensive and publicly scrutinized case studies in modern food retail. The pattern is unmistakable: every time Amazon tries to drag grocery into its comfort zone—automation, algorithmic efficiency, and frictionless checkout—it stumbles. Every time it leans into what consumers actually want—fresh food, prepared meals, […]
5 min read
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  1. Department & Category

Walk-In Restaurants, Drive-Thru Dominance, Grocery Prepared Foods, and the Rise of the Meal Platform Economy

  The U.S. food industry has evolved into a nearly $4 trillion annual consumer marketplace, spanning restaurants, grocery retail, convenience stores, digital ordering platforms, and institutional foodservice. Now, wonder no longer what Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® thinks about the ‘State of the Foodservice Industry’: Despite its size and complexity, […]
5 min read
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  1. Department & Category

Can Fast Food Restaurants Keep Pace with the Fresh Food Success of Convenience Stores?

  When Wawa committed more than $650 million to enter and expand across Florida, the strategy was not centered on gasoline. The real focus was fresh prepared food designed to drive customer frequency. That bet has paid off. Wawa has evolved into one of the most successful food-forward convenience retailers in the United States, generating […]
6 min read
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  1. Shopper & Customer

Braggability Bites Back: Why Restaurants That Give Customers Something to Talk About Are Winning the Food Wars

For decades the restaurant industry operated under a simple formula: standardize the menu, control costs, replicate the model, and scale the brand. It worked beautifully for nearly half a century. But today the restaurant business is no longer competing only against restaurants. Restaurants now compete with grocery stores, convenience stores, meal kit companies, ghost kitchens, […]
6 min read
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  1. Technology & Innovation

SXSW AI Preview, Oracle’s Cuts Foreshadow Others?, AI Consciousness Debate

SXSW 2026 kicks off on Thursday and AI news should be pouring out of Austin. This year’s “Tech & AI” track features about two dozen sessions, making up about a third of the festival’s total featured talks. AI-related sessions will feature a mix of researchers, media executives, and technologists including Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström, Cloudflare […]
6 min read
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  1. Data & Insights

What’s next for retail: Technology, transparency and total opportunity

​[[“value”:” Much has been said about retail’s recent transformation into a more data-driven, digital-first industry. Retailers and technology leaders have lauded the returns on digitalization initiatives, touting analytics and connected systems’ potential to provide roadmaps for waste reduction, retail crime mitigation and customer experience enhancements All of this is true; retailers’ investments in digital transformation […]
3 min read
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  1. Department & Category

Where Is the Food, Value, Service, Equilibrium Today?

  Are the food industry’s traditional measuring metrics still adequate? In today’s dynamic food ecosystem, Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials are simultaneously resetting the equilibrium between price, value, and service across the entire retail foodservice landscape. A quote often attributed to Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard captures the moment perfectly: “Life can only be understood backwards; […]
5 min read
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  1. Shopper & Customer

The dark side of personalization

​[[{“value”:” This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. While personalization has become table stakes in customer experience, the risks associated with it are becoming harder to manage. “When we first started seeing personalization, people often described it as creepy — like, how do you know this much about me?” said […]
3 min read
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  1. Data & Insights

The End of the Endless Aisle: The Paradox of Choice in Ecommerce

For years, ecommerce has succeeded on an assumption that the more a marketplace offers, the more users are to spend. Digital shelves seem to be infinite, unlike physical ones, and this “endless aisle” was long seen as a competitive advantage. Now, shoppers spend more time browsing, comparing, filtering— and increasingly leave without buying anything. According […]
4 min read
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  1. Department: Nonfood

How to Get Your Product into Staples or Office Depot: A Step-by-Step Guide for Product Manufacturers

If you’re a product manufacturer looking to scale beyond DTC and online marketplaces, landing on the shelves of major office supply retailers like Staples or Office Depot can be a game-changing move. Getting into Staples or Office Depot provides: National brand exposure Instant credibility Access to both brick-and-mortar and eCommerce distribution Large-volume purchase orders But […]
4 min read
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  1. Shopper & Customer

7-Eleven’s Big Bite in the Age of Time-Starved Consumers: Legacy Icon or Launchpad for Fresh Fast?

  No brand in the convenience ecosystem has historically leveraged a proprietary food item like the 7-Eleven with its Big Bite. The roller grill once symbolized immediacy, affordability, and accessibility. It was hot, ready, and under $2—an edible billboard for frictionless consumption. From the Grocerant Guru® perspective, the question is no longer whether the Big […]
4 min read
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  1. Data & Insights

“There is no room for small dreams”

For the past five years I have been the host of a podcast called What Next? speaking to leaders, pioneers, authors, artists, scientists and many others on what is coming next in their fields and what we should prepare for. We have recorded over 168 episodes, and it is ranked among the top one hundred […]
4 min read
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  1. Trends & External Forces
  2. Shopper & Customer
  3. Technology & Innovation
  4. Trends & External Forces
  5. Associates & Employees
  6. Merchandising
  7. Stores & Formats

Walmart to Expand Digital Shelf Labels Chainwide

Walmart will deploy digital shelf labels (DSLs) chainwide this year, doubling the approximately 2,300 U.S. locations currently using the technology (Walmart U.S. operates more than 4,600 stores). With more than 120,000 items in a typical Walmart store, managing price changes manually requires significant associate hours. Additionally, these DSLs are equipped with LED lights that make […]
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