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Product Substitution: How Savvy Retailers and Manufacturers can Build Supply Chain Resiliency, Reduce Costs and Improve Customer Experiences

Retail TouchPoints

Shipping delays and stockouts lead to frustration and disappointment, especially when logistical problems impact time-sensitive purchases, such as special occasion gifts, event tickets or prescription medications. Furthermore, product substitution allows businesses to diversify their sourcing to mitigate supply chain risks.

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Building Loyalty Without Breaking the Bottom Line: the Dual Shipping Dilemma for Ecommerce Merchants

Retail TouchPoints

While this is good news for many ecommerce retailers, it has also become more and more expensive to deliver those goods to customers. This presents a dual shipping dilemma for businesses: how can they keep shipping costs on the business low, while also offering customer-friendly return policies? of total retail sales.

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Shipping Hacks For E-commerce Businesses To Reduce Costs

lateshipment

Shipping is one of the top expenses for e-commerce businesses. In fact, it can account for up to 25% of the total cost of an online order (only next to production at 30%). But most of the factors associated with production costs are under your control and can be easily cut down to see profits.

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Digitalization Can Help Mitigate Climate-Related Supply Chain Disruptions

Retail TouchPoints

The cost of sugar has surged by more than 40% globally since the previous year, due largely to poor harvest conditions caused by dry conditions across India, China and Thailand and an unusually cold and wet spring in Europe. The cost increases are expected to increase the prices of soda, candy and baked goods, among others.

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Alibaba Supply Chain Exec Recommends Futureproofing with AI, Blockchain and Crowdsourcing

Retail TouchPoints

But the supply chain disruptions that it exacerbated have not fallen by the wayside as easily as disposable masks did, with the global movement of goods continuing to be impacted by one challenge after another — from war and terrorist attacks to drought. The COVID-19 pandemic has, for all intents and purposes, ended.

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Can Nearshoring Prevent the Next Supply Chain Crisis?

Retail TouchPoints

Just as you don’t start worrying about your hot water heater’s performance until you get shocked by an icy-cold shower, most of us — even inside the retail industry — don’t think about supply chains until they stop working. This is excepting, of course, the professionals tasked with maintaining and operating those supply chains.)

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Want to Cut the Cost of Fast Fulfillment? It All Starts with Inventory Placement

Retail TouchPoints

The problems with getting products to people quickly and cheaply are well-known: consumers want fast fulfillment, which is costly to provide, but they don’t want to pay high (or really any) shipping fees. Even Amazon , the trendsetter in fast fulfillment, isn’t immune to higher labor costs. Unemployment is at 3.5%