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Commentary and Discussion From the Retail Community
BrainTrust Query: Driving Market Share
When marketers look at how to drive business or volume to their business, they often consider two different paths. The first is to get someone to switch their purchases from…
Starbucks to Let Customers Pay By Android Phone
The semi-long awaited introduction of a mobile payment app for Android phones at Starbucks is finally here. The coffee chain said the new Android app would be available July 15…
BrainTrust Query: How the Rapid Rise of Social Media and Social CRM Impacts Customer Loyalty
According to the 2010 Colloquy/DMA survey, two-thirds of respondents were unable to express what the most important measure of social media success would be. All new media seems “promising,” but…
Amazon Can Do Without Affiliates
Legislators considering laws that seek to compel e-tailers to collect their state’s sale tax because they have local affiliates should probably start by asking themselves a question: Are those companies…
What About Dad?
With recent research finding men playing a bigger role in decisions around the family shopping budget, a new segmentation study has defined five categories of dads. Does any one of…
BrainTrust Query: Heritage vs. Innovations vs. Relevance
Heritage vs. innovations vs. relevance. This is something that almost all retailers will face at one time or another. This is true whether the heritage comes from being a multi-generation…
Truck Turns Food Desert Into Oasis
If you can’t build it, drive it. That appears to be the philosophy of MoGro, a new mobile, food truck-like grocery in the Southwest designed to overcome barriers to affordability…
Don’t Pay Kids to Promote Brands
Earlier this month, The Daily Telegraph headlined the recommendation that companies should not pay kids to promote products contained in a U.K. government-commissioned report on the commercialization of childhood. Should…
BrainTrust Query: Breaking the Concept Testing Habit
Much of consumer and shopping behavior is based on habits and rituals. But with most concept testing and choice experiments we throw all of that insight about habit out the…
P&G Explores F-Commerce Opportunity
Back in October of last year, RetailWire reported on Procter & Gamble adding a “Shop Now” button in Facebook pages, allowing visitors to make a purchase using Amazon Webstore. Now…
Apple’s Success May Lead to Cheaper Leases
A piece in The Wall Street Journal suggests Apple should be paying less for space it occupies in malls around the country. Will Apple’s success change the way mall operators…
BrainTrust Query: Independent Retail Critical Mass
There isn’t a retailer out there that isn’t trying to grow their business. There isn’t a retailer that’s not looking for sales increases. But to what end? It’s not a…
Is Target on the Right Path?
It wasn’t that long ago that retail industry experts were saying Target needed to do something to stem the numbers of shoppers heading to Walmart to buy everyday staples. Today,…
CEO: Future of Tesco is Bricks & Clicks
New Tesco CEO Philip Clark has a vision of the future for the world’s third largest retailer and it involves a solid dose of clicks to go with all those…
BrainTrust Query: Note to Macy’s – You Are the Company You Keep
In late May Macy’s announced that it will be opening a new store outside Chicago. What makes this particular store newsworthy is that it will be located in a discount/outlet…
Diapers.com Parent Goes to the Dogs, Cats, Etc.
Quidsi, the division of Amazon.com that operates Diapers.com and Soap.com, is getting ready to open a new site, Wag.com, that promises to change “the way you shop for your pet.”…
It Bears Repeating: Customer Service Stinks
There is nothing unusual about a research study showing that Americans are unhappy with the service they receive from a wide variety of businesses. What is surprising is that little…
Groupon Goes Grocery Customer Shopping
In yesterday’s discussion on Groupon’s initial public offering, Max Goldberg, founding partner of The Radical Clarity Group, wrote, “I look forward to seeing how they fine-tune the service and enhance…
Overstock.com Markets Name Change
Way back in the dark ages it became fashionable to shorten names as a branding exercise. Today, the desire to be more memorable in shorter bursts for an attention divided…
Nutrition in the Round
Most of the early responses to the new nutritional food plate graphic replacing the longstanding MyPyramid food icon have been positive. Some of the usual suspects were critical, of course…
BrainTrust Query: In a Deep Discount World, Is 10 Percent Enough?
The daily deluge of “deal of the day” offers with Groupon, Living Social and others assembling collective buying discounts continues to flood our e-mail inboxes. Is the effectiveness of promotions…
