Year-over-year import cargo volume at the nation's major retail container ports is expected to continue to rise during most of the first half of 2015 despite significant congestion still impacting West Coast ports, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

Epicor Software Corp. has completed its acquisition of ShopVisible LLC, a provider of cloud-based software for retail order management and digital commerce.

For years, marketers have had two goals. They wanted to truly be able to engage with customers uniquely, based on both their interests and their value to the retail brand. They have also wanted to manage that conversation across every digital marketing channel, unifying email, web/mobile sites, display ad, and social efforts. While widely viewed as two separate goals, they were innately connected – how can you have cross-channel marketing without knowing who, specifically, you are communicating with? 2015 is the year when the promise of cross-channel marketing nirvana is fulfilled, finally.

You think you've had bad customer service buying products online - how about the guy in India who ordered his wife a Samsung smartphone, and the package arrived with only a brick and a bar of soap in it!