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Commentary and Discussion From the Retail Community
Obama: A Foodie Figurehead?
The pending inauguration of Barack Obama has many food advocates hoping he somehow leads a radical makeover of the way food is grown, sold and eaten in America, according to…
Secret Shopping Takes On a New Meaning
Not long ago, Tesco was asked to use plain vans when delivering to wealthy customers reluctant to be seen buying from such a low-priced supermarket. Soon, it may be more…
Turning Points 2008: Small Format Stores
Only a few years ago, any food store less than 40,000 square feet was considered a mom & pop grocery, not a real supermarket. During the last 18 months, the…
Wal-Mart Walks Away from PRISM
While Wal-Mart supplied shopper data for the pilot, the retail giant will not participate in the expected launch next year of the P.R.I.S.M. national retail data syndication service from The…
Retailers Seeks National Tax-Free Holidays
The National Retail Federation last week urged President-elect Barack Obama to incorporate three national tax-free shopping holidays in 2009 as part of his administration’s overall economic stimulus legislation. What do…
Turning Points 2008: Shining Apple
In a brutal year for any company attempting to grab a piece of the consumer’s dollar, Apple’s performance clearly stood out in 2008. Seemingly a perennial candidate for Brand of…
Trade Shows Exhibiting Some Strain
With companies in cost-cutting mode, trade show attendance is expected to take a major hit in 2009. Some evidence came last week when news arrived that Apple was pulling out…
Retail Touchpoints: Mid-Season Report Card For the Holiday Season Shows Missed Opportunities
Consumers did flock to the stores on Black Friday 2008, but mostly to deep discounters and at those stores they were looking for unusually large markdowns. Have retailers been…
Turning Points 2008: Creating Store Transformation by Earning Trust
It was a banner year for in-store digital media (ISDM), as spending ramped up significantly and helped secure the “marketing at retail” opportunity as real. Can we earn the…
Sport Chek Takes Store Associates Off Commission
Sport Chek, Canada’s leading sporting goods chain, has eliminated commission for its store associates in favor of salaries in a bid to improve customer service. What are the pros…
CPGmatters: Fisher-Price Leverages POS Data as Single Source of Truth
Toy maker Fisher-Price has found a way to leverage point-of-sale (POS) data as a single source of truth for retail activity. Since opting for a demand signal repository (DSR), the…
Turning Points 2008: Walmart Stays on Message
It could be us, but it seems that we don’t hear Walmart being accused of being the evil empire quite as much these days. We thought of a few reasons…
Retailers Get Emotional, Drive Sales
Advertisers that ran heart string-tugging ads were particularly popular with consumers this holiday season. That is the conclusion of a survey conducted by BIGresearch for the Retail Advertising and Marketing…
Wal-Mart CEO Meets the Press
On last Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Lee Scott, Wal-Mart’s CEO and president, said his company had “reached out” to President-Elect Obama’s team to work on the U.S. health care and…
Turning Points 2008: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year
There’s no doubt that the past year has been one of the most tumultuous times in modern retailing history. No, it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad -…
Few Americans Visiting In-Store Clinics
Perhaps it is because in-store health clinics are still largely a new phenomena, but few Americans are visiting the facilities to seek treatment for common ailments, according to a new…
Cheating in the U.S.A.
Members of the RetailWire community were understandably outraged in a recent discussion about a study that found many high school students had cheated or stolen something from a store. Now,…
Turning Points 2008: Digital Media Evolution
While digital media at retail hasn’t arrived in full, the hype around it certainly did in 2008. Rarely a week went by without the arrival of some innovative campaign to…
Really Bad Line Extensions Get Their Due
Forget about innovative new products. Think line extensions, and pretty bad ones at that. It’s not hard to see that there are plenty of products that fit the bill, but…
Out-of-Stocks Continue to Hurt Retailers
It’s been pretty well established over the years that you can’t sell something you don’t have on the shelf. That fundamental principle is reinforced by new research from IHL Group,…
Turning Point 2008: Cocooning Makes a Comeback
Cocooning first gained prominence after the 9/11 terrorist attacks when families began entertaining at home more as a way of bonding and saving money. But first due to rising gas…
