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Commentary and Discussion From the Retail Community
Inability to Tap Online’s Potential Frustrates CMOs
According to a survey by Heidrick & Struggles International and Digital Scientists last December, chief marketing officers are extremely intrigued by the amount of information available online about consumers. They…
Jack Mitchell: Hug Your Customers and Employees
Jack Mitchell, chief executive officer of Mitchells, the high-end clothier of Westport, CT, believes the key to success for store owners is to “hug” their customers and their workers. To…
Retail Customer Experience: Microsoft’s Retail Experience Center – It’s all about connectedness
The Microsoft Retail Experience Center near the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington is a faux electronics store, replete with big-screen TVs, laptops, Xbox games and boxed software. But beneath the…
Virtual Shopping Shows Advances
Vision reality shopping research is increasingly being adopted by CPG companies and retailers as an efficient way to test new products and store layouts. What are the merits as well…
Profiting with a Purpose
Rick Warren, Jim Collins and others have made the case quite successfully, based on book sales alone, that a purpose in life and business is essential to achieve true success…
From Customer-Segmentation to Self-Segmentation
Writing in Advertising Age, Michael Fassnacht claims traditional customer segmentation techniques are either antiquated or have never been efficient enough in the first place. What have you thought about the…
Coca-Cola Buy Stake in U.K.’s Innocent Drinks
To some, Coca-Cola’s move in early April to acquire a minority stake in British smoothie maker Innocent Drinks is a way to take a small stake in an innovative company…
R&FF Retailer: Under Five Percent of Shoppers Buy More Than 50 Percent of Frozen Seafood
According to Catalina Marketing, only 2.6 percent of shoppers account for 54.3 percent of dollar sales of all frozen breaded seafood? So, it certainly makes sense to identify your heavy…
Is Best Buy Doing a Circuit City?
Best Buy has been known as the anti-Circuit City for valuing its staff and empowering them to serve shoppers in the chain’s customer centricity efforts. So what gives with the…
Record Stores Get Their Day
While the big box and online music sellers have only gotten bigger, there still remain independent record stores around the country that are in many cases not only holding their…
Luxury Sector Shifts Focus to Outlet Malls
With their palatial boutiques struggling at regional malls, luxury chains and many of their vendors are plowing money into their outlet mall locations that are seeing better traffic. Are outlet…
JTTP: Global TPM Practices Study Finds That We Talk Better Than We Act
The results of a study on trade promotion management implementation practices on a global basis finds that some much-discussed topics, such as predictive analytics and promotion optimization, are not being…
Advertisers Tout Stability
Brands such as Allstate, Post and Lowe’s have fallen back on touting their longevity in an attempt to give them an air of stability in a period where consumers are…
Kentucky Grilled Chicken
Kentucky Fried Chicken, which became KFC, in part because the company was looking to present a public image that did not so clearly identify with fried (see unhealthy) foods, is…
PL Buyer: A Frugal Force
One particularly intriguing success story of this tough economic period is that of Aldi Inc., a retailer that, steadily and quietly, has been winning over a growing base of value-minded…
CPG Brands Pay the Freight…Usually
Virtually every retailer in the grocery business today is talking about the need to push private label. But the truth is that for private label to really gain the types…
Macy’s CEO Seeks to Avoid Ivory Tower Syndrome
Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren doesn’t want to lose touch with what’s going on in his business and the best way for him to achieve that is to spend as much…
CSD: Convenience Concerns
On a recent visit to his local c-store, the author encountered a sign that read, “No Cell Phones in Line.” The store owner had insisted that “the customers always come…
Grocery Chains Test RFID-based Electronic Shelf Labels
Two U.S. grocery-store chains are trialing an electronic shelf label (ESL) system, developed by Altierre, to help stores avoid using millions of paper labels annually and gain many operational benefits…
CompUSA Comes Back with Retail 2.0 Strategy
CompUSA, which was left for dead after filing for bankruptcy in 2007, is attempting a brick & mortar comeback with a strategy featuring steep discounts, remodeled stores, and in-store web…
Retail TouchPoints: Which Retailers Are Winning in the Blogosphere?
Value retailers such as Costco and BJ’s Wholesale Club with reputations for selling quality merchandise at low prices are benefiting from positive buzz in the blogosphere, whereas some traditional department…
