Here’s another month and another quarter. As always, our monthly roundup is here to help you to get easily caught up with the current news in Retail and eCommerce. From pricing automation and trends in luxury retail to customer loyalty programs and the most talked about topic in world economy this month (if not this year), Brexit…and its effects in the industry.

How pricing automation is impacting e-Commerce

In spite of the extreme examples of when pricing software (with a clear lack of manual control) allowed prices to plunge to where items were sold on Amazon for as little as a penny, Dana Propescu at Forbes India explains that the repricing software market continues to expand rapidly. Truly, when managing hundreds of thousands of stock-keeping units, one must surrender to automation tools. Propescu brings to light the findings of her study on Repricing Algorithms in E-Commerce, which found that optimistic results for simple rules (as opposed to complex algorithms) helped the market find its own equilibrium. She concluded that retailers who used simple rules were doing as well as competitors with more robust rules and processes.

Sales here have escaped the luxury goods slowdown

According to this article by CNBC, the silver lining in a struggling luxury-retail sector is the flourishing of online sales. In numbers, twenty-seven percent of consumers purchased a luxury item on the web in the past 12 months. That's up 17 percentage points from 2015, and 21 points over 2014. Naturally, millennials play a great role in the progress (especially those between the ages of 18 and 25). What’s to add, one-third of millennials purchased a luxury item online over the past year. Meanwhile, only six percent of those aged 61 and older purchased similar good.

A second positive attribute for retailers (other than Amazon) is brought to light here. A recent study has confirmed that more shoppers are open to making a luxury purchase on a label's own website than through Amazon or another third party.

Looking for the lowest prices on Amazon? You may have to dig a little

A recent study concluded that Amazon is significantly more likely to give its “top” spots to sellers who use real-time pricing. Under such circumstances, “the software is used to automatically optimize prices on the fly based on what competitors are charging.” And it appears that the majority of sellers using that kind of pricing model don’t have the lowest prices on the site. In fact, 60 percent of those that use real-time pricing have higher prices than other sellers of the same item on Amazon.

Perhaps to thrive, retailers selling on Amazon should adopt an algorithmic approach.

Cultivating Brand Loyalty in Even the Toughest Customer

A recent survey showed that 80 percent of roughly 19,000 consumers in the United States and Canada are more likely to continue doing business with brands that offered loyalty programs. That said, as more and more businesses offer loyalty programs, retailers are required to walk a few extra miles… Special offers delivered only to shoppers that are part of a loyalty program is no longer enough, they expect offers (or more experiences) that are not available even to others within the LPs.

The word here (in neon caps) is personalization. Only then will retailers achieve not only loyal following, but the ultimate (and highly dreamed of) customer advocate.

How retailers can fashion their way through Brexit

In June, retailers all across the UK echoed together: “Brexit: so, what happens now?” (as they certainly will during the next months or even year to come). At times, when around 84 percent of national fashion retailers are running promotions to shift stock, the uncertainties caused by the country’s leaving the block could not arrive at a worse time. The fashion segment of retail is especially at risk as they buy a significant amount of goods overseas, paying in dollars. Thusly, the devaluation of the pound will hit them directly. On top of that, they are about to face tariffs with the EU.

The article offers three recommendations:

1. Retailers should reassure their personnel about their future.
2. They should take into consideration that trade negotiations will take around two years to work be finalized.
3. Look for opportunities: sourcing within the country will benefit from the national currency’s weakness – “buying British could be a fashionable way out.”

This concludes another of our monthly round-ups. Check back next month for a newly curated collection of headlines that will get you up-to-date with the retail industry’s latest buzz… Additionally, we invite you to stay tuned to our blog page and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn for all of our musings.