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Commentary and Discussion From the Retail Community
Discounters to Change Everything Online
While participants in the September discussion on this site saw a modest opportunity online for Dollar General and others in its channel, a recent RetailSails blog concludes that the number…
Finance Guy Takes Helm of Dominick’s
It strikes us as odd that while it’s common in retail conversations to hear that we need to get back to being merchants again, companies quite often seem to turn…
BrainTrust Query: The Future is Temporary – Retailing in A Pop-Up World
The concept of pop-up retail has been around for more than a decade. Until 2007, however, pop-up shops were regarded largely as a novelty. The economic collapse of 2008 brought…
Consumer Satisfaction Survey Fatigue?
In one of his “New Rules” segments on his hit HBO show, comedian Bill Maher took on the practice of companies asking consumers to take a “short survey” to rate…
Misleading Brand Names: Marketing Genius or Scam
A U.K. watchdog group is charging that grocers are duping customers by making up names for their private label food products to sound more upscale and authentic, like Marks &…
Sears’s Chairman Makes a Real Estate Play After All
Rumblings that Sears Holdings is facing some liquidity issues makes yesterday’s announcement that the company plans to spin off roughly 1,000 hometown and outlet stores and sell 11 full-line mall…
BrainTrust Query: Let’s Get Visual – Marketing in a Post-Text World
As you read this post, you are digesting a form of content that represents a quickly diminishing proportion of the total web content you consume each day. The written web…
White House, Web Giants Address Consumer Privacy Online
Yesterday, President Obama and his administration unveiled the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, which looks to protect the unauthorized tracking or use of any data related to a specific individual…
CSD: Healthy Options Mean Healthy Business
While some c-store operators are gingerly testing the waters of healthy lunch and dinner solutions, others have plunged right in toward fresher fare. But Michael Davis, vice president of member…
Wawa Expands in Wrong Direction: One Man’s Perspective
The closest Wawa to where George Anderson lives in New Jersey is 14.3 miles south. To him, that’s an inconvenient distance to travel to what has become his family’s favorite…
Tax Time: The Retail Opportunity
According to a survey conducted by BIGinsight for NRF, roughly two-thirds of taxpayers expect to get a refund this year. Of those, 43.8 percent plan to put some of their…
Retailers Hoping to Get Pinned on Social Media Site
Depending on whom you listen to, Pinterest, the social scrapbooking site is either “a gift from the social media gods for style-conscious retailers” or “digital crack for women.” According to…
You’ve Got to Love This Weather (But Some Retailers Don’t)
It’s February 22 and it’s going to be nearly 60 degrees today in New Jersey. Many of us here in the Northeast are loving it. But on to the purpose…
FDBuyer: Unleashing DSD Efficiencies
“Pioneers get the arrows,” the saying goes. We’ve seen this with scan-based trading (SBT). The basic ideas have been widely accepted for decades, but there’s that nagging fear of arrows…
RSR Research: The ‘P’ Ron Johnson Forgot
In revealing his “fair and square pricing” program to the world, Apple’s former retail chief Ron Johnson presented J.C. Penney’s (JCP) future in the context of six P’s: Price, Promotion,…
F-Commerce Faces Questions as Facebook Stores Close
The decision by high-profile merchants Gamestop, Gap Inc., J.C. Penney and Nordstrom to close Facebook storefronts has some questioning whether so-called f-commerce sites have a future. Is there a place…
Consensus Advisors: Should Barneys Survive?
While rumors of Barneys’ imminent restructuring began swirling in early February, it was not the first time such chatter made the rounds in recent years. What factors should guide whether…
Customer Engagement High on Retailers’ 2012 To-Do List
Retailers plan to get all customer-centric this year by focusing on customer service initiatives, upping investments in IT, e-commerce and mobile. That’s the conclusion of a new report, Benchmarks for…
BrainTruest Query: Mobile “C.L.A.M.P.” – The Great Convergence
Fueled by the unprecedented power and portability of today’s smartphones, we are seeing a rapid evolution of a number of major disciplines, one that can be called “The Great Convergence.”…
Clothing Retailers Hang Hopes on Item-Level RFID
The question of a “tipping point” for the use of item-level radio frequency identification in apparel retailing has been around for years as prominent merchants have used the technology to…
BrainTrust Query: Forget New Shoppers. Talk to Best Customers
Retailers still spend much too much time, money and newsprint chasing new and highly unsustainable shoppers. At the least, stores should make sure such efforts are not alienating their best…
