The safety and stay-at-home trends with respect to the coronavirus pandemic have been resulting in a huge number of e-commerce transactions even when stores are now reopened. Accordingly, retailers are also taking actions, focusing more on digital initiatives to make the most of this festive season. Likewise, renowned department retailer Macy's (NYSE:M), Inc. M has come up with a host of initiatives to deliver customers a seamless shopping experience this holiday season.
Macy’s recent actions include its collaboration with Swedish buy-now, pay-later group Klarna, enabling the company to offer shoppers financial ease and payment flexibility with their online purchases. Here, shoppers can choose to pay in four equal and interest-free installments at the online checkout. Per media reports, Macy’s and Klarna inked a five-year partnership deal, with the former becoming one of the first department-store companies to provide the latter’s buy-now, pay-later service.
We note that Klarna offers online financial services, including payments for online store-fronts, direct payments and after-purchase payments, among others. Klarna Checkout allows companies to provide shoppers with all the payment methods under one payment solution. We expect Macy’s online sales to get a solid boost from the recent launch of this payment solution on macys.com. Impressively, Macy’s digital sales surged 53% year over year and represented 54% of total owned comparable sales during second-quarter fiscal 2020.
In the latest release, Macy’s also informed about its tie-up with DoorDash for expediting delivery service. This collaboration will enable the retailer to offer on-demand and same-day delivery service at roughly 500 Macy’s stores throughout the nation. This is powered through the Drive – DoorDash’s white-label fulfillment platform, which is committed to direct-business delivery. Shoppers can avail the same-day delivery via macys.com and its mobile app. The company also has convenient shipping options and curbside-pickup facility. These apart, Macy’s has a lot more for its guests in the form of Macy’s Star Rewards, Macy’s Gift Cards, experts’ help and other gifting options.
Meanwhile, Macy's three-year Polaris (NYSE:PII) Strategy to adapt better to the new retail ecosystem is quite encouraging. This includes strengthening customer relationships, expansion of assortments, acceleration of digital growth, optimizing store portfolio and reducing costs. The company plans to continue investing in its digital platform, which is likely to fuel growth. The Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company’s shares dipped 3.3% in the past six months, compared to the industry’s 10.2% rally. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Wrapping Up
Owing to the unusual holiday season this time due to the coronavirus stress, retailers have to travel the extra mile to make most of this busiest period of the year. They are mostly focusing on the e-commerce platform due to mounting online deals.
The Minneapolis, MN-based retailer Target TGT recently announced that it will hire roughly 130,000 seasonal staff for the holiday period with the intention to focus more on contactless services and safety. Further, the supermarket giant Walmart (NYSE:WMT) WMT unveiled plans to deploy more than 20,000 seasonal associates at its countrywide e-commerce fulfillment centers to cater to the expected surge in online shopping. Last month, e-commerce bellwether Amazon AMZN announced plans to recruit around 100,000 employees to efficiently meet the surging online demand.
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