Last week, in sunny Palm Springs, California, retailers, buyers, and a slew of other executives gathered for four days of discussions, panels, and events centered around strengthening e-commerce businesses.

One particular discussion moderated by yours truly (hi, it’s Jeena!) focused on a topic that has really never stopped being important for brands: personalized product merchandising strategies to get shoppers to convert.

On the panel were execs from Harley Davidson, Kendra Scott, ThriftBooks, Hiya Health, and Genee who shared their thoughts on strategies to capture and retain the attention of online shoppers.

We all know it’s important, but how do retailers approach it and what’s the nitty-gritty of it all? Turns out everyone had a slightly different interpretation of the word “personalization.”

John Trippe, e-commerce product manager and technical director at kids’ multivitamin brand Hiya Health, for instance, said for his company, it’s all about aligning with marketing and acquisition partners to determine what experiences consumers respond to.

Keep reading here.—JS

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This week, Whole Foods Market announced plans to open small format stores called Daily Shop, in an effort to offer urban customers a convenient shopping experience. Its first location will be on New York City’s Upper East Side, and four others will follow in the city.

The stores will range from 7,000 to 14,000 square feet (about the size of a typical Trader Joe’s store) compared to its typical 40,000 square feet, with a curated offering of fresh and packaged foods.

Christina Minardi, executive vice president of growth and development for Whole Foods Market and Amazon, told Retail Brew she oversees Whole Foods’s evolution and growth team, which is tasked with developing innovative new retail concepts.

“We’ve been talking about this for a while, and the time is now because we really feel that convenience is something that our customers really want,” Minardi said.

Keep reading here.—EC

A reliable non-sales revenue stream for retailers could be under threat as a combination of regulatory changes and macroeconomic headwinds hit home.

This week, the Biden administration and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule reducing the typical credit card late fee from $32 to $8, and while this change is potentially a bigger deal for banks and card issuers, retailers could also see an impact to their bottom lines.

Many major retailers have profit-sharing agreements with banks that issue and fund their in-store credit cards. But the potential financial impact of the rule change on them is still unclear, as retailers have different arrangements with issuers—which could explain why over the past two weeks, several analysts pressed retailers about the topic during earnings calls.

Keep reading here.—AV

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