Articles by Gary Hawkins

As the COVID-19 crisis continues to hammer the supermarket industry, we must ask ourselves if bigger is necessarily better. Panic buying...

Published by Winsight Grocery Business, April 22, 2022 Life on earth developed over millions of years, rising from the primordial soup:...

I have spent many years of my life as a retailer so I hopefully have more empathy than most for what retailers are going through during...

Mindsteps, a construct created by astronomer Gerald Hawkins (no relation) several decades ago, refer to irreversible shifts in thinking...

Identity management is set to explode as archaic state laws governing age-restricted sales of alcohol and other products play catch-up as...

The transformation of brick-and-mortar retail to the new digital world is not without its trials and tribulations. Walmart has recently...

As we begin a new decade, I’d like to offer up a handful of resolutions retail industry executives may want to adopt: Resolve to reflect...

Eighteen months ago, I wrote a piece about why retailers’ first-generation efforts to move online were not enough, that many retailers...

We are entering the age of "I"—a time when the world is increasingly tailored to each of us individually. We’ve come to regard this...

As anyone who attended CES or NRF in the opening weeks of this year can attest, tech-fueled innovation is speeding up. We see robots...

Many regional retailers are (at last!) intent on becoming customer-centric, more than a decade after The Kroger Co. led the way and more...

It’s been a year since Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market, triggering a grocery industry innovation war and a stampede online. While...

When Amazon acquired Whole Foods a year or so ago, many industry pundits speculated that Amazon would extend its Prime loyalty program to...

I was visiting someone in the hospital the other day and, looking about the room, noticed an Amazon Echo installed on the wall opposite...

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has long understood the value of being out in front as technology innovation fundamentally alters the rules of...

Multidimensional shopper data is the new primordial ooze giving rise to powerful insights leading to increased retail performance. Novel...

Primed by studies projecting 20% of industry sales moving online within the next few years and triggered by Amazon’s aggressive moves to...

Every retailer is looking to increase sales, and there is no better way to do that than by providing savings on products each customer...

Food represents an estimated $5 trillion a year industry in the United States. Nearly everywhere we look in the physical world—and...

Data has long powered modern retail, helping Walmart become a master of supply chain logistics and fueling Kroger’s customer-centric...

Everyone in the retail industry, from the cashier to the CEO, knows that transformation and disruption are changing the way we shop. But...

The personalized wellness vision aligns managed care organizations, healthcare providers, employers, food manufacturers and retailers to...

Healthcare has made valiant efforts to guide consumers to beneficial foods, only to find the information quickly forgotten within hours...

As a nation, we spend over $5 trillion a year to feed our bodies. That’s the value of food sold each year in the United States through...

Years ago, I remember some retailers boasting that they had no advertising expense. These retailers were charging brands for ad placement...

Amazon’s business serves one master: the customer. Everything the company does is focused on securing a growing portion of each...

There is no better example of how a traditional supermarket retailer must change to remain competitive in today’s world than that...

Amazon, the nemesis of brick & mortar retailers, is a master at helping shoppers discover relevant products the shopper may be interested...

As physical brick-and-mortar shopping melds with the digital world, customer experience is the defining battleground since shoppers can...