Marshalls joins a pretty long list of retailers, from Walmart to Pier 1 to TJMaxx, that were slow to fully embrace online shopping. Misunderstanding the customer journey. Many retailers established their online business as a separate entity with its own profit and loss statement. The only issue was the way they accounted for revenue and expenses guaranteed they would systemically under invest in all things digital. This is merely a recognition of increasingly high online customer acquisition costs, downward pricing pressures and growing fulfillment costs, often attributed to online return rates in excess of 30%.

Source: Forbes October 08, 2019 14:14 UTC