A SAMPLING of my recent commentary on RetailWire:

• Tuft & Needle and Native knew their first products fell short

  

  This story raises a provocative question for me. Where was the real "innovation" for each of these companies: in the attributes of the products themselves or in the alternative ways they were brought to market? In the case of Native, the positioning of its products as free of unwante...

• Walmart expands test of giant automated grocery kiosk

  

  You have the right idea. Many click & carry grocers in Europe are set up like drive-ins. Shoppers pull into a covered space, pop the trunk and an associate loads the packages. Our local Walmart has a similar thing going -- drivers pull up to a side entrance (no awning) and an associate br...

• Are grocers shortchanging flexitarians?

  

  Grocers should always adjust assortments to demand. If vegan sandwich patties are what your shoppers want, then you sure enough should be offering them. The same goes for organic strawberries or buckwheat (gluten-free) pancake mix. If adding popular items such as almond milk creates space mana...

• Should the outdoor industry welcome selling on walmart.com?

  

  I can well imagine the push-back from traditional outdoor retailers when they saw their vendors' products appear on walmart.com. If I were in their boots, I'd bring pressure too, even if I knew it was only a temporary holding action. If minimum advertised prices are indeed being respected, the...

• Which market research tasks are likely to be taken over by AI?

  

  AI has great potential for tracking behaviors en masse and mining the data flows for insights. Social sentiment analysis comes to mind. So would conversational commerce interactions. Machine learning is already a foundation for price optimization systems -- aren't they really a form of behavioral...

• What should retailers do to ensure seafood sustainability?

  

  One likely way retailers might weigh in on the "sustainable" seafood issue could be by spotlighting products from responsible aquaculture and pressing all suppliers to document their practices. I've read that much shrimp from Asia, most Atlantic salmon, many oysters and pretty much ...

• ‘Jittery’ prices will come back to hurt Amazon

  

  A key lesson learned from my interactions with several "price optimization" software firms is that a retailer's price image depends on shoppers' perception of trustworthiness. Trust depends largely (but not entirely) on stability. Too many price changes can tend to undermine the valu...