Author Archive: Tom Caporaso

After conducting indoor tests for several months, Walmart recently asked U.S. regulators if it could test drones (a.k.a. “unmanned aircraft systems” or UAS) for home delivery, curbside pickup and checking warehouse inventories. The news came as no surprise to anyone. Walmart’s been investing heavily in its e-commerce capabilities — too heavily for some investors’ tastes, in fact — in an effort to make up ground on Amazon and Google, both of which are already deep into the drone development process.

With the 2015 holiday shopping season now upon us, it’s “go time” for retailers across the country — an opportunity to put their carefully crafted holiday plans into action and deliver on their bottom-line expectations. That includes e-commerce retailers, which continue to claim a growing slice of overall retail sales. Last year alone, online holiday sales rose 15% over 2013 figures, including increases of 32% on Thanksgiving, 26% on Black Friday, and 17% on Cyber Monday.

The considerable hype that Jet.com received prior to its launch created high hopes for the subscription shopping program. In the months and days leading up to its debut, Jet CEO and founder Marc Lore tried again and again to downplay the notion that his company would compete head-to-head with Amazon. Those efforts failed, but now that it’s live, consumers and analysts can and will decide on their own whether it fulfills their expectations — not to mention Lore’s recurring promises.

On July 15, Amazon’s Prime Day, an ostensible celebration of the online retailer’s 20th birthday, will offer members “more deals than Black Friday,” including seven Deals of the Day, thousands of lightning offers, and flash sales every 10 minutes. While only Prime members can take advantage of these savings, non-members will be encouraged to join Prime so they can get in on the deals. As is the case the rest of the year, they’ll also receive a free 30-day Prime trial when signing up.