Retail Technology Blog

Some Retail Email Marketing Stats

2012-03-11T19:55:00.001-07:00

Wall Street Journal quotes research by marketing-technology company Responsys Inc on the Emails being sent by Retailers. Some great facts in there:

In 2011, the nation's top 100 retailers by e-commerce revenue sent recipients an average of 177 emails apiece, up 87% from 2007
Neiman Marcus Group Inc. sent each recipient more than 500 emails apiece in 2011 which is 30% more than what they sent in 2007.
The rates at which recipients open retail emails and click on links have declined, in the first six months of 2007, consumers opened 19% of the retail emails they received and clicked through to the website 3.9% of the time. By the first half of 2011, those numbers shrank to 12.5% and 2.8%, respectively.
Sending fewer emails have paid off for some retailers, Nicole Miller has seen the rate at which customers "unsubscribe"—or request to stop receiving emails—drop, and the percentage of recipients who open the emails has grown from 15% to 40%, according to Andrea Marron, director of digital strategy at the company. Meanwhile, the percentage of online sales that began with an email has grown to 17% from 10%.
Loyalty program members tend to open more emails then general subscribers. Members of the rewards program typically open more than 30% of the Gamestop emails they get, compared with less than 10% for general subscribers.

2 second rule does not apply anymore

2012-03-04T21:39:00.001-08:00

Gone are the days when online shoppers would wait for 2 seconds for your website to load, now they will switch at the blink of an eye.

For Impatient Web Users, an Eye Blink Is Just Too Long to Wait

People will visit a Web site less often if it is slower than a close competitor by more than 250 milliseconds (a millisecond is a thousandth of a second).

“Two hundred fifty milliseconds, either slower or faster, is close to the magic number now for competitive advantage on the Web,” said Harry Shum, a computer scientist and speed specialist at Microsoft.

The performance of Web sites varies, and so do user expectations. A person will be more patient waiting for a video clip to load than for a search result. And Web sites constantly face trade-offs between visual richness and snappy response times. As entertainment and news sites, like The New York Times Web site, offer more video clips and interactive graphics, that can slow things down.

But speed matters in every context, research shows. Four out of five online users will click away if a video stalls while loading.

Sears Plans to Sell Stores

2012-02-24T22:50:00.001-08:00

Sears is planning to sell stores to raise around $800 million this year but the problem lies in the fact, they will be forced to part ways with their most profitable stores. Tough times ahead.

In a Gamble for Cash, Sears Plans to Sell Stores

Sears Holdings moved on Thursday to allay fears that it could run low on cash this year, announcing plans to sell stores in transactions that the company says could raise nearly $800 million.

But the deals also highlight the major challenges that Sears faces as it tries to stop a multiyear slump in its operations, analysts said.

Sears may be giving up its most profitable stores in exchange for a quick cash infusion today. In one of the transactions, Sears also expects current shareholders to foot the bill, potentially leaving them more exposed to the troubled retailer.

Starbucks enters India with a 50:50 JV with Tata group

2012-01-31T00:58:00.001-08:00

Starbucks is set to enter India with its 50:50 joint venture with Tata Global Beverages, a part of Indian conglomerate Tata Group. The plan is to open outlets in New Delhi and Mumbai by as early as August/September timeframe. It will be interesting to see how this JV fares in a country where Tea (or chai as Indians call it) rules supreme.

Tata Global Beverages and Starbucks Form Joint Venture to Open Starbucks Cafés across India

Tata Global Beverages Limited and Starbucks Coffee Company (Nasdaq: SBUX) today announced a joint venture between the iconic international coffee brand and the 2nd largest branded tea company in the world. The 50/50 joint venture, named TATA Starbucks Limited, will own and operate Starbucks cafés which will be branded as Starbucks Coffee “A Tata Alliance.”

The retail stores will be developed in cities across the country, beginning with stores in Delhi and Mumbai in calendar 2012.

In a separate sourcing and roasting agreement between Starbucks Coffee Company and Tata Coffee Limited, Tata Coffee Limited will roast coffee to supply TATA Starbucks Limited, and to export to Starbucks Coffee Company. This agreement paves the way for consumers in India to enjoy the premium Starbucks Experience, while further discovering the unique taste of high-quality Indian arabica coffee worldwide. TATA Starbucks Limited brings together two companies with a rich heritage in and passion for coffee, tea and innovative beverages. Together, the JV will enable an expanded range of beverage offerings for Indian consumers. As an example, the companies have agreed to jointly leverage assets and innovation to offer a premium tea product branded Tata Tazo.

“The joint venture with Starbucks is in line with Tata Global Beverages’ strategy of growing through strategic alliances in addition to organic and inorganic growth,” stated Mr. R K Krishnakumar, Vice Chairman, Tata Global Beverages. “It opens up exciting business opportunities and new formats for Tata Global Beverages. Starbucks brings unique retail expertise as well as a shared sense of business values. We are excited about the opportunities the alliance presents to innovate in the retail space and bring new beverage experiences to more consumers in India, leveraging the global in-home expertise of Tata Global Beverages and the global out-of-home expertise of Starbucks.”

“We’re very pleased to have found the best partner for Starbucks in Tata – a company that shares so many of the same values for conducting business in a way that earns the trust and respect of our customers and partners (employees),” said John Culver, president, Starbucks China and Asia Pacific. “We look forward to bringing the Starbucks Experience to customers in India by offering high quality arabica coffee, handcrafted beverages, locally relevant food, and legendary service.”

What JCPenney needs?

2012-01-29T18:33:00.001-08:00

There was a lot of song and dance by Ron Johnson, the new CEO of JCPenney and his crew in New York announcing the new JC Penney or JCpenney as it would be called now. Read “The 6 Ways Ron Johnson Plans To Transform JC Penney Into 'America's Favorite Store” to get a dope on what was discussed. This has generated a lot of good discussion on what Ron should do. Some of the views below:

Sucharita Mulpuru, a Forrester Analyst has the following advice for JCPenney.

So, is there anything JCPenney could do to turn around its fortunes? Sure, it could try closing down underperforming or “brand wrong” stores, it could acquire a growing, hot retailer like Francesca’s Collection, or it could spin off its new deal with Martha Stewart into smaller, Martha-branded stores. Notice that all these options are addressing the real estate albatross, which requires either unloading bad real estate or investing in new locations. It’s unclear whether the company has the appetite or resources to do either. I always thought Ron Johnson was a curious choice for JCPenney. He’s a visionary leader with a track record of success generating growth by building new stores. Target was underpenetrated in the US when he was there, and the Apple Stores didn’t exist before he launched them. He’s not a turnaround expert who has experience with tired real estate locations located in B and C quality malls. I’m reminded of an old quote from Warren Buffett: When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

Forbes cites Retailwire.com discussion on this move by JCPenney.

“‘Radical’ is hardly the word I’d choose to describe JCP’s plan to step back from constant price discounting,” wrote James Tenser, principal, VSN Strategies. “Even ‘innovative’ would be a stretch. If it tries to stake out a ‘we’re the cheapest’ position in the apparel/home goods market under Mr. Johnson, I think JCPenney will not fare too well. But if it uses its pricing to reinforce an image of consistently good deals on consistently good quality goods, it can win and keep some fans.”

David Slavick, a retail consultant who formerly headed up Sears Holdings’ loyalty marketing, sees potential in moving to EDLP if coupled with a frequent shopper program that rewards the chain’s best customers.

“JCP is the most aggressive coupon retailer next to Bed Bath & Beyond. Every day, the store is on sale with 20% off coupons, incremental savings for credit cardholders and ‘private’ savings events,” wrote Mr. Slavick on RetailWire. “I don’t see how EDLP will change the dynamic and help them move more apparel or make the store a more compelling place to shop than Kohl’s or Macy’s.

“Buying St. John’s Bay or other private label clothing at JCP with a strong price/value relationship is what causes me to shop the store — plus incremental savings with deep discounts exclusive to me through my credit relationship. The JCP Points program is a bore. What you get for what you spend is not compelling. Personalized benefits for best customers is what ‘should’ be next. Time will tell.”

Gene Hoffman, former president of Kroger and former president of Supervalu, quipped that Penney will be weathering the marketplace now with a “good but leaky unbrella.”

“The ‘best’ is the enemy of ‘good’ … and the best EDLP model already exists. Give me some energized excitement, JCP!” he wrote.

My 2 cents for JCPenney:

1. Think Local – Support locally owned businesses, this will give you a visibility of building local communities while on the same hand give you a differentiator over your national competitors.

2. Exclusive Brands – Look around, spend some time understanding what adults and kids are buying and make that exclusive to JCPenney.

3. Transform internally – This will be the key with all the changes being planned and the rate of transformation will have to be much faster than educating buyers of the transformation.

Microsoft's vision for intelligent systems in retail

2012-01-29T02:02:00.001-08:00

In the recently concluded 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and National Retail Federation conference in New York, Microsoft demonstrated their vision for Smartstore. The demo included a socially enabled virtual dressing room application called Swivel by FaceCake which is powered by Kinect device. Swivel used Kinect camera to custom fit selected items for the person trying on and overlay them on their body. The demo also includes applications by other partners and shows great use of Microsoft Surface, Windows 7 based tablets and Windows Phone. Here’s a video.

Silicon Valley startup eliminates paper receipts and helps retailers increase customer loyalty

2012-01-16T11:59:00.001-08:00

Proximiant, a provider of tap and go digital receipts, launched today, introducing a private and secure way for retailers and shoppers to track purchases and earn loyalty rewards, cash rebates and coupons without paper receipts, time-consuming signup requirements or membership cards.

Retailers of any size are now able to provide customers immediate access to a variety of programs using a phone-sized USB interface transceiver from Proximiant. The free transceiver easily plugs into a store’s computerized point-of-sale system (POS) and launches within two minutes.

The transceiver’s built-in technology allows it to communicate directly with mobile phones having a Near Field Communication (NFC) chip. When consumers shop at participating stores, they can tap their NFC-enabled phones on the transceiver devices to directly collect a digital copy of their receipt and loyalty rewards.

Much attention in the NFC space has been on mobile payment applications. Proximiant focuses on enhancing the shopping experience by providing itemized receipts for easy tracking of purchases, loyalty programs and coupons, regardless how they pay.

Until the NFC-enabled phones are widely available, Proximiant is offering a bridge solution via a small tag that can be carried in a wallet or put on a key chain to allow shoppers the same tap-and-go capability.

Customers also serve to benefit from this technology through the secure “Digital Receipts” mobile app, which records all their purchases at the time of sale, so they can manage their personal spending, collect loyalty points, cash back as well as the convenience of not having to carry around paper receipts. In addition, they won’t need to provide stores with any personal information, thereby safeguarding their privacy. All loyalty points and offers can be directly redeemed at participating stores using their mobile phones.

Other benefits for consumers include:

Rewards, refunds and exchanges without a special loyalty card or paper receipt since images with necessary data and bar codes show up on their app.
Ability to quickly access old receipts by inputting the store name or product keywords.
Receipts that remain completely private and secure.
Access to Proximiant’s Web interface for receipts on their computer when they register their Poximiant account.
Help the environment go green by no longer using paper receipts.

“The product is a win-win for both retailers and consumers,” said Proximiant co-founder and CEO Fang Cheng. “Proximiant is the most efficient and secure way for retailers to extend their existing point of sale to an array of mobile loyalty and marketing programs without any IT overhead or customer signup process. For consumers, it makes shopping much more enjoyable and less of a hassle. The device saves companies an overhead investment and it saves customers from the time-consuming and expensive signup process.”

Cheng and co-founders Edwin Evans and Thomas Ahn, both Vice Presidents of Engineering, gave Proximiant its name to transmit the message that merchants and customers are now in much closer proximity to one another.

To date, Proximiant has signed up a dozen stores in the San Francisco area and expects the number to increase as it rolls out more trials later this month and throughout December.

“We’ve gone with a small trial launch to ensure everything is running smoothly,” Cheng said. “We expect to have about 50 retailers by year’s end, mostly in the Bay area. By spring of 2012, we envision the device being in multiple metropolitan areas.”

Consumers can download the “Digital Receipts” app in the Apple iTunes Store or Android Market. Here’s a brief video of how Proximiant works.

Big Data and Retailers

2012-01-16T00:45:00.001-08:00

Over the last few months, there has been a lot of coverage on how Retailers are using Big Data. Wal-mart with its recent acquisition of Kosmix is one Retailer which is in the forefront of this wave. Here is a collection of articles which discusses how Wal-mart is using Big Data.

How Walmart plans to use Big Data

Kosmix stands out for its ability to search and analyze connections in real-time data streams to deliver highly personalized insights to users. The platform powers TweetBeat, a real-time social media filter for live events. By using this intelligence, Kosmix is building a giant knowledge base called the‘Social Genome.’ This giant knowledge base captures information and relationships about entities such as people, events, topics, products, locations and organizations.

…

By analyzing their social media activity, Social Genome can make recommendations about products, events or any other activity that the user is interested in. For example, by using publically available social media data, the Walmart product store can suggest product recommendations, based on recent tweets or Facebook wall posts.

…

While the idea sounds great, doing this in reality is a huge problem — especially since there are thousands of data pieces flowing in a torrent from live data sources such as tweets, Facebook posts and blogs. The data flow was so fast that Kosmix could not rely on the traditional Map-Reduce or Hadoop framework that is typically used to solve Big Data problems.

“Social Media data is the fastest growing source of Big Data today. In addition to being Big Data, social media data such as Twitter also has a real-time nature — it’s not just Big Data, but also Fast Data. With mobile devices, location data is now a new source of both Big and Fast data,” explains Rajaraman, on the technical challenges faced by his firm while building the platform.

To address this Big Data and Fast Data problem, Kosmix developed its own in-house solution called Muppet, which processes streaming fast data in a lightening fashion, over large clusters of machines. Today, Muppet can manage and track data streams with billions of updates a day.

Getting a Handle on Big Data with Hadoop

Wal-Mart Stores, struggling to translate its brick-and-mortar success to the Web, is using free software named after a stuffed elephant to help it gain an edge on Amazon.com in the $165.4 billion U.S. e-commerce market.

As customers flock to social media, Wal-Mart expects sites such as Facebook and Twitter to play a bigger role in online shopping. By analyzing what social network users say about products on those sites, the world’s largest retailer aims to glean insights into what consumers want.

With its online sales less than a fifth of Amazon’s last year, Wal-Mart executives have turned to software called Hadoop that helps businesses quickly and cheaply sift through terabytes or even petabytes of Twitter posts, Facebook updates, and other so-called unstructured data. Hadoop, which is customizable and available free online, was created to analyze raw information better than traditional databases like those from Oracle.

“When the amount of data in the world increases at an exponential rate, analyzing that data and producing intelligence from it becomes very important,” says Anand Rajaraman, senior vice-president of global e-commerce at Wal-Mart and head of @WalmartLabs, the retailer’s division charged with improving its use of the Web.

Big data and the disruption curve

Big data projects are aimed at revenue growth, many efforts are being funded by business units and not the IT department and money is increasingly being diverted from large enterprise vendors.

Nordstrom sees more e-commerce, mobile commerce in its future

2012-01-14T22:15:00.001-08:00

Nordstrom sees more e-commerce, mobile commerce in its future

The Internet is Nordstrom's fastest-growing channel and, with $1.5 billion in cash on hand, it's spending heavily to support that growth, meaning more jobs at its Seattle headquarters.

The 111-year-old company is working on new mobile shopping options and personalization features, so that visitors to its website might soon receive recommendations based on their online and in-store buying habits.

It's also testing a local same-day delivery service for a possible broader rollout, and it's expanding its merchandise assortment online to give customers more selection. "If you're listening to customers, they're telling you that their expectations around how they want to shop are evolving," Jamie Nordstrom, who oversees the company's website as president of its direct division, said in a recent interview at his corporate offices.

"Many customers today don't have several hours to shop like maybe previous generations did," he said. "They're looking to be efficient, and they're looking for help."

Biggest week in Online Shopping ever

2011-12-20T07:46:00.001-08:00

Heaviest Week in U.S. Online Holiday Shopping History Pushes Season-to-Date Total to $32 Billion, Up 15 Percent vs. Year Ago

For the holiday season-to-date, nearly $32 billion has been spent online, marking a 15-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. The most recent week (week ending Dec. 18), led by four individual days surpassing $1 billion in sales, reached an all-time record of $6.3 billion in online retail spending, up 14 percent from the corresponding week last year. The final shopping weekend before Christmas reached $1.04 billion to rank as the second heaviest weekend of online spending on record.

Electronics products returns to cost $17B to US retailers & manufacturers

2011-12-14T00:34:00.001-08:00

Customers returning electronic devices will cost U.S. electronics retailers and manufacturers about $17 billion this year, an increase of about 21% from 2007, consulting company Accenture said in a new report. These costs include receiving, assessing, repairing, reboxing, restocking and reselling returned products.

U.S. Consumer Electronics Industry Faces a Projected $17 Billion Product Returns Bill This Year, Accenture Research Finds

The research is based in part on a survey of executives from communications carriers, consumer electronics retailing and consumer electronics manufacturing companies, which revealed that product return rates over the past three to five years have increased for more than half of the retailers (57 percent) and nearly half (43 percent) of the manufacturers surveyed. Only 13 percent of the retailers and 12 percent of the manufacturers surveyed indicated that return rates are trending downward.

However, the Accenture research also revealed a significant opportunity for the industry to cut costs and reduce the level of product returns, given that only 5 percent of returns are related to actual product defects. While 27 percent reflect “buyer’s remorse,” 68 percent of returned products ultimately are characterized as “No Trouble Found.” This means that, despite the customer perceiving a fault, no problem was detected when the item was tested against specifications set by retailers or manufacturers, according to Accenture’s new published report, titled “A Returning Problem: Reducing the Quantity and Cost of Product Returns in Consumer Electronics,” which captures key findings and insights based on the survey (www.accenture.com/product-returns-electronics).

The report also concludes that solving this No Trouble Found problem – or even reducing it slightly – could have a significant impact on the cost of returns. Accenture has calculated that a 1 percent reduction in the number of No Trouble Found cases could translate to annual savings of 4 percent in return and repair costs, or $21 million for a typical large consumer electronics manufacturer and $16 million for the average consumer electronics retailer.

Science of Lines

2011-12-08T17:03:00.001-08:00

Dynamics and Science behind the long queues you see at the registers.

Find the Best Checkout Line

Much of the work grows from more nuanced understandings of how people perceive waiting in line. Shoppers tend to become impatient quickly and fail to take into account key indicators of what may slow down a line. They experience remorse when they feel they've chosen the wrong (i.e. slower) line. And they prefer to choose their own line rather than wait in a single-file line for the next available register—even though that set-up has proven to be faster, research on queuing shows.

Retail e-Commerce Spending sets new weekly record propelled by free shipping

2011-12-04T17:28:00.001-08:00

$6 Billion in 'Cyber Week' U.S. Online Spending Sets New Weekly Record as Three Individual Days Surpass $1 Billion Threshold.

comScore a leader in measuring the digital world, today reported holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 32 days of the November – December 2011 holiday season. For the holiday season-to-date, $18.7 billion has been spent online, marking a 15-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. The most recent week saw three individual days eclipse $1 billion in spending, led by Cyber Monday, which became the heaviest online spending day on record at $1.25 billion. Tuesday, November 29 reached $1.12 billion, while Wednesday, November 30 reached $1.03 billion. These three billion dollar spending days currently rank as three of the four heaviest online spending days in history (with Cyber Monday 2010 being the other).

2011 Holiday Season To Date vs. Corresponding Days* in 2010

Non-Travel (Retail) Spending

Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases

Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations

Source: comScore, Inc.

Millions ($)

2010

2011

Percent

Change

November 1 – December 2

$16,257

$18,697

15%

Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 24)

$407

$479

18%

Black Friday (Nov. 25)

$648

$816

26%

Thanksgiving Weekend (Nov. 26-27)

$886

$1,031

16%

Cyber Monday (Nov. 28)

$1,028

$1,251

22%

Week Ending Dec. 2

$5,164

$5,959

15%

*Corresponding days based on corresponding shopping days (November 2 thru December 3, 2010)

Free shiping is a big factor in this surge in e-commerce spending.

comScore's analysis of the incidence of free shipping used for online retail transactions shows that this incentive is being used at record levels over the first few weeks of the holiday season. Throughout the 2011 holiday season, more than half of all transactions have included free shipping with rates increasing later into the season. The week of Thanksgiving (week ending Nov. 27) saw free shipping occur on 64.4 percent of transactions, while Cyber Week has maintained a similar level at 63.2 percent.

Infographic - World of seasonal employment

2011-11-26T14:19:00.001-08:00

Mindflash has released a great infographic which examines the world of seasonal employment, what other companies are doing and how you can successfully hire employees for your business.

Infographic: ‘Tis The Seasonal Worker: A Glimpse At The Temporary Employee Workforce This Holiday Season

(click image to enlarge)

Online Sales Jumped 24% on Black Friday, 39% on Thanksgiving day

2011-11-26T13:57:00.001-08:00

IBM’s data unit Coremetrics has released its real time online retail benchmark study which shows online sales jumped 24.3% this Black Friday. This follows the growth of 39.3% increase in online sales on Thanksgiving day. Mobile traffic increased to 14.3 percent on Black Friday 2011 compared to 5.6 percent in 2010. The sales on mobile devices surged to 9.8 percent from 3.2 percent year over year.

Record Online Thanksgiving Day Shopping Paves Way for Strong Black Friday Retail Sales, Reports IBM

U.S. shoppers took advantage of early sales this holiday driving a 39.3 percent increase in online Thanksgiving day spending while setting the stage for 24.3 percent online growth on Black Friday compared to the same period last year, according to cloud-based analytics findings by IBM.

As part of IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative, IBM's online retail benchmark study reveals the following trends as of 12:00 am PST:

Consumer Spending Increases: Strong Thanksgiving shopping carried over into Black Friday with online sales increasing 24.3 percent annually.
The Mobile Bargain Hunter: Black Friday witnessed the arrival of the mobile deal seeker who embraced their devices as a research tool for in-store and online bargains. Mobile traffic increased to 14.3 percent on Black Friday 2011 compared to 5.6 percent in 2010.
Mobile Sales: Sales on mobile devices surged to 9.8 percent from 3.2 percent year over year.
The Apple Shopper: Mobile shopping was led by Apple, with the iPhone and iPad ranking one and two for consumers shopping on mobile devices (5.4 percent and 4.8 percent respectively). Android came in third at 4.1 percent. Collectively iPhone and iPad accounted for 10.2 percent of all online retail traffic on Black Friday.
The iPad Factor: Shoppers using the iPad led to more retail purchases more often per visit than other mobile devices with conversion rates reaching 4.6 percent compared to 2.8 percent for overall mobile devices.
Surgical Shopping Goes Mobile: Mobile shoppers demonstrated a laser focus that surpassed that of other online shoppers with a 41.3 percent bounce rate on mobile devices versus online shopping rates of 33.1 percent.
The Social Influence: Shoppers referred from Social Networks generated 0.53 percent of all online sales on Black Friday. Facebook led the pack, accounting for 75 percent of all traffic from social networks.
Social Media Chatter: Boosted by a 110 percent increase in discussion volume compared to 2010, top discussion topics on social media sites immediately before Friday showed a focus on the part of consumers to share tips on how to avoid the rush. Topics included out-of-stock concerns, waiting times and parking, and a spike in positive sentiment around Cyber-Monday sales.

"This year marked Thanksgiving's emergence as the first big spending day of the 2011 holiday season with a record number of consumers shifting their focus from turkey to tablets and the search for the best deals," said John Squire, Chief Strategy Officer, IBM Smarter Commerce. "This momentum continued into Black Friday where the big winners were those retailers that delivered a smarter commerce experience with compelling, relevant deals that people could easily access from their channel of choice."

Online Retail Categories

Department stores once again offered a vast array of compelling deals and promotions that caught the attention of consumers. As a result, department stores sales were up 59.0 percent from this time last year.
Home goods also reported a 48.8 percent increase in sales from Black Friday 2010, an indication that many consumers are shifting their attention toward the home this holiday season.
Apparel sales were also strong this holiday with Black Friday numbers showing an increase of 47.2 percent over 2010.
Health and Beauty sales were strong as consumers showed a desire to pamper themselves this year. On Black Friday, online sales were up 34.2 percent year over year.

Today's news is based on finding from the IBM Coremetrics fourth annual Black Friday Benchmark which tracks more than a million transactions a day, analyzing terabytes of raw data from 500 retailers nationwide. With this data IBM helps retailers better understand and respond to their customers – across the organization – improving sourcing, inventory management, marketing, sales, and services programs.

Get the detailed report here.

US holiday season online retail sales to grow 15% year over year

2011-11-11T11:28:00.001-08:00

Won’t you like this retailers? But are you ready?

U.S. Online Holiday Spending Will Grow 15 Percent To Nearly $60 Billion

After Q3 2011 brought a 13 percent increase in e-commerce sales, Forrester is estimating that U.S. online holiday sales will grow 15 percent this year to nearly $60 billion. The study reports that this increase will take place because of the increase in consumer-use of tablet computers for shopping combined with a growth in online holiday deals.

The report shows that 58 percent of Americans say they are more price-conscious today than they were a year ago and nearly half believe they find better values online. And 50 percent of Americans who own a tablet use the device to research products for purchase with 30 percent of smartphone owners using their mobile device to research products for purchase at least monthly (which is a 30 percent increase in just the past year). And more and more online retailers will be offering better shopping experiences on mobile and tablet devices t take advantage of these trends.

World's largest study of online behavior

2011-11-11T10:07:00.001-08:00

TNS has launched the world’s largest study of digital behavior Digital Life based on responses from 72,000 consumers in 60 countries. The study’s size, scale and detail makes it the most comprehensive view of how consumers behave online and why they do what they do.

Key findings:

Many brands are wasting time and money trying to reach people online even though many resent big brands invading their social networks
57% of people in developed markets don’t want to engage with brands online
Misguided digital strategies are generating mountains of costly ‘digital waste’, from friendless Facebook accounts to blogs no one reads, because companies are acting without understanding consumer attitudes

You can explore the data and generate your own data visualizations at www.tnsdigitallife.com.

Walmart.com opens Test Stores

2011-11-09T20:21:00.001-08:00

Wal-Mart has opened two shops in California malls which will test the concept of showcasing online merchandize. When shoppers visit these stores, they can Shoppers sit down with a laptop and shop a vast array of products on the chain's website.

Walmart.com test stores hint at Web shopping fight

Two tiny Walmart.com stores are making Southern California malls their home for the holidays, launching the latest salvo in the war for online retail dominance.
The temporary stores are a first for Wal-Mart Stores Inc, which experiments with store concepts in various markets hoping they will drive shoppers to its website.
The world's biggest retailer already operates stores within miles of the temporary Walmart.com locations, where shoppers can purchase items from the shelves or sit down with a laptop and shop a vast array of products on the chain's website.

Daily Deal Sites Popular for Young, Affluent But Not for Everyone

2011-10-25T08:32:00.001-07:00

A new survey by Accenture shows that many more people are using tricks to save money, but that the young and wealthier are most likely to use daily deal sites such as GroupOn or Living Social to save money on purchases.

Interestingly, in spite of the amount of attention that these sites receive, most Americans (56 percent) do not subscribe to a deal site, and a full 43 percent of Americans say they do not like "anything" about them.

That said, for those who use the sites, there are some interesting findings:

Nearly four in 10 daily deal site subscribers say they are using the sites more often now than a year ago
One in four (26 percent) say the deals entice them to purchase things they ordinarily wouldn’t
Most members don’t redeem purchases right away with 25 percent redeeming in one to three months, and more than one third (36 percent) in one to four weeks
The chief complaint with daily deal sites for respondents is the lack of items or services they want to use or try (37 percent) and lack of localized offers (24 percent).

Cloud and Warehouse Theft

2011-10-20T18:52:00.001-07:00

Who knew Cloud computing can combat Warehouse Theft.

How Amazon uses big data to prevent warehouse theft

According to Henry, Amazon has more than 1.5 billion items in its retail catalog and more than 200 fulfillment centers around the world. That’s a lot of objects in a lot of places for the online retailer to keep track of. Keeping the most valuable items protected isn’t as easy as just putting the highest-priced products under lock and key. As Henry said, sometimes, due to limited availability or other factors, a lower-priced product might actually be more highly sought-after by criminals. There’s also the question of how big the cage is, how big the item is, how many items can be fit in each cage, and so on.

To determine which items are most likely to be stolen, Amazon stores the product catalog data in S3, which ends up having more than 50 million updates a week. The team spins up Amazon compute clusters every 30 minutes, crunch the data, and the data is fed back to the warehouse and website. At the center of the service is the new Elastic Map Reduce, a new hosted Hadoop framework running on AWS that lets customers spin up the equivalent of a supercomputer for processing big data.

Tablet Commerce Evaluation of Top Online Retailers

2011-10-12T00:04:00.001-07:00

Alexander Interactive, a leading New York-based e-commerce consultancy has released a new report on Tablet-commerce which provides best practices for tablet-based UX design and t-commerce review of the ten largest retailers on the web.

The report goes into depth on how the top-selling sites on the internet (including Amazon, Staples, Apple, Dell, Wall Mart and Sears, among others) are adapting to a tablet-based future. The analysis found that all of the top e-retailers suffered from usability problems and offered limited tablet shopping experiences in comparison to those retailers with dedicated tablet site experiences, such as Nike. Accordingly, the authors suggest that retailers seriously evaluate their investments for T-commerce web infrastructure, due to the explosion of tablet computer usage forecast in the coming years.

You can download the comprehensive report here.

10 steps to retail success

2011-10-01T12:39:00.001-07:00

Keep an eye on Clare Rayner’s blog as she introduces the 10 steps to retail success over the next few weeks. The 10 steps are as below:

10-steps to retail success…

Your personal and business goals, your business mission
Your business positioning
Your ideal customer
Your product strategy and range planning
Your pricing and promotional strategy
Your channel and location strategy
Your customer engagement strategy
Your sourcing and supply chain strategy
How you plan and control your business
Your back office functions – taking care of HR, Legal, Finance and IT

Grocery Tweets

2011-09-29T09:37:00.001-07:00

Chris Brogan takes a look at grocery shelf products and their presence on Twitter and has some great advice.

Help! My Groceries Are Tweeting And They’re TERRIBLE!

Don’t let your account die. Delete it, if you’ve abandoned the project.
Make it about your audience.
Engagement is not the same as bragging about yourself.
The brands that act like humans get the most engagement.
Spam people at your peril (the non-meat kind, Hormel. Simmer down).

There’s no reason to just throw up a Twitter account if you’re not going to make it about connecting on a different level than an ad campaign. There can’t possibly be enough clicks and activity to justify doing the job poorly. Perhaps it’s a matter of the advice you’ve been given. Maybe it’s just some checkbox on the systematized approach you’ve been told equals social engagement. That’s not how most folks will see it on the receiving end.

Wal-Mart Loses Two Top Executives

2011-09-28T00:59:00.001-07:00

Change in E-Commerce Strategy for Wal-Mart??

Wal-Mart Loses Two Top Executives

Two top executives announced today that they are leaving Walmart (WMT).
Eduardo Castro-Wright, the CEO of Global E-Commerce and Global Sourcing and the former CEO of Walmart Mexico, said he is retiring on July 1, 2012. Wan Ling Martello, EVP of Global E-Commerce for Emerging Markets, he will also be leaving on April 1, 2012.

Retail “Brand Ambassadors”

2011-09-11T22:03:00.001-07:00

Retailers are hiring college students to represent brands on campuses across the nation.

On Campus, It’s One Big Commercial

IT’S move-in day here at the University of North Carolina, and Leila Ismail, stuffed animals in tow, is feeling some freshman angst.

A few friendly upperclassmen spring into action.
But wait: there is something odd, or at least oddly corporate, about this welcome wagon. These U.N.C. students are all wearing identical T-shirts from American Eagle Outfitters.
Turns out three of them are working for that youth clothing chain on this late August morning, as what are known in the trade as “brand ambassadors” or “campus evangelists” — and they have recruited several dozen friends as a volunteer move-in crew. Even before Ms. Ismail can find her dorm or meet her roommate, they cheerily unload her family’s car. Then they lug her belongings to her dorm. Along the way, they dole out American Eagle coupons, American Eagle water canisters and American Eagle pens.

*2011 Holiday Season To Date vs. Corresponding Days in 2010 Non-Travel (Retail) Spending Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore, Inc.**
	Millions ($)
	2010	2011	Percent Change
November 1 – December 2	$16,257	$18,697	15%
Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 24)	$407	$479	18%
Black Friday (Nov. 25)	$648	$816	26%
Thanksgiving Weekend (Nov. 26-27)	$886	$1,031	16%
Cyber Monday (Nov. 28)	$1,028	$1,251	22%
Week Ending Dec. 2	$5,164	$5,959	15%