The consumer of the future will be more mobile, social and self-sufficient, willing to share details on themselves and their preferences in exchange for highly personalized relationships with their favorite stores, according to a new IBM consumer survey. The study also found that consumers' willingness to advocate for a particular retailer is becoming multifaceted, with consumers looking for a flawless experience, whether it's when they're researching, purchasing, or receiving delivery.

Aldata, a vendor of applications for the retail and distribution industries, has created Aldata Shopper Relationship Management (SRM), part of its new Aldata Omni-Shopper Suite.

Import cargo volume at the nation's major retail container ports is expected to increase 3.9 percent in December despite a strike that closed the nation's largest port complex for the first few days of the month, but retailers are keeping a close watch on a possible strike on the East Coast and Gulf Coast, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released today by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

Two industry groups have joined to fill the need for a globally harmonized approach to measure and communicate product lifecycles. The Consumer Goods Forum, a global network of more than 400 retailers, manufacturers, service providers and other stakeholders, has partnered with The Sustainability Consortium, which is dedicated to developing science and integrated tools to support informed decision making for product sustainability across the consumer goods industry.

Retail is in a dramatic transformative phase. Consumers' multichannel access and shopping make multi/merged channel fulfillment the focus for retail. No more relegating supply chain to the backwaters of retail management!

A new innovation study by Latitude, Next-Gen Retail: Mobile + Beyond, finds that smartphones and tablets are fundamentally changing how people think about shopping and, by extension, their everyday lives. The research reveals that mobile shopping makes people feel more relaxed, productive and informed, as well as more open-minded and receptive to discovering new things.

In the run up to Christmas, UK retailers are frustrating shoppers with distinctly average customer service. Top UK merchants are failing to answer questions asked online or sent via email, according to the 2012 Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Study. The research found that just 48 percent of retailers could successfully answer basic questions sent via email, while websites could answer just over half (53 percent) of questions asked online.

The experience of a Houston-area couple indicates that maddeningly frustrating experiences with online shopping continue, and to the detriment of retailers.

As the holiday buying season continues to gather steam, the Consumer Fraud Center has warned about a fast-growing trend: the sale of goods at bargain-basement prices through so-called "daily deal" sites, which can mask the sale of counterfeit or illicit goods.