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Commentary and Discussion From the Retail Community
Time to Tax Online Sales
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, 18 states have joined together in an effort to remove the basis for the 1992 Supreme Court decision to not require…
You’ve Got Chili Cheese Mail
Have you been chili-cheesified today? If you haven’t (and no one here is saying you should) then perhaps you should follow the email message that came our way recently. Chili-Cheesification,…
Self-Checkout Becomes the Rule at Tesco Store
With 60 percent of the checkouts being self-checkouts, Tesco has made those lanes manned by employees the exception to the company’s self-serve rule in one of its Metro stores in…
Drugstore.com’s Plan
Drugstore.com CEO Dawn Lepore knows exactly what the company needs to do to become profitable. It has been successful in attracting new shoppers to the site. Now, it needs to…
The Nordstrom Formula: Service x 3
The secret to Nordstrom’s success is service, service, service. The retailer, more than any of its current rivals many would argue, has turned the art of customer care into a…
How to Talk and Sell to Men
News flash (please hold your groans): Men are different than women. Communicating with men has become more of a focus for consumer marketers and retailers, and the result, some say,…
Retailers Forced to Pay Benefits by New Law
Suffolk County on New York’s Long Island has passed a bill that intends to make large employers that sell groceries, primarily non-union businesses, pay a greater share of their employees…
Consumer Confidence Reeling; Retailers Feeling Concern
Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of U.S. economic activity so, when Americans say they are less confident about where the economy is headed and how that might affect their personal…
Private Label: The Global View
A new report released by ACNielsen, The Power of Private Label 2005, shows store brands are capturing a greater share of sales worldwide. Between 2003 and 2005, private label brands…
Whole Foods Sans the Food
Whole Foods’ new lifestyle concept store will have lots of natural and organic products. None of them, however, will be food. The natural foods store chain announced it is opening…
NACS, NACDS, NCPA, NCGA File Suit Against Credit Card Companies
NACS, NACDS, NCPA and NCGA have filed a class-action, antitrust lawsuit against Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America, Citibank, Bank One, Chase Manhattan Bank, J.P. Morgan, Chase, Fleet Bank, Capital One…
Wal-Mart Purchase of Hilfiger Discounted
The rumor that Wal-Mart had approached one of the banks representing Tommy Hilfiger Corp. to possibly acquire the apparel manufacturer was shot down by many analysts almost as quickly as…
Dominick’s and UFCW Play Let’s Make a Deal
Employees at Dominick’s Finer Foods have been working under contract extensions since 2003. That may finally come to an end as Locals 1546 and 881 of the United Food and…
Wal-Mart Doing Remix on Logistics
A program going by the name “Remix” is focused on putting an end to empty shelves of fast moving grocery products in Wal-Mart. The company has embarked on this program…
Target Books Loyalty
Target recently launched a reading club supported by a Web site. The club is intended to get American families hooked on reading. Parents and children who register online will receive…
Gap.com Going Offline Sparks Consumer Interest
Taking its Old Navy (www.oldnavy.com), Gap (www.gap.com), and Banana Republic (www.bananarepublic.com) online stores offline for several days to complete repairs and upgrades to the sites may have been one of…
Talent Wars to Heat Up
Gloria Johnson Goins, vice president of diversity and inclusiveness for The Home Depot, says one of the biggest challenges businesses will face in the very near future is finding people…
Boomers Calling Shots and Setting Trends
Many of the trends that have developed in recent years and have been credited to the influence of Generations X and Y would never have happened without the consent of…
From Sweden with Love and Style
The same thing happens every time H&M opens a store in the states. Long lines of people queue up waiting for the doors to open and the shopping and saving…
New CEO on the Way, Nash Finch Execs Guaranteed Pay
As David Livingston of DJL Research points out: “It’s pretty standard for a new CEO to clean house.” That would seem to explain why Nash Finch’s compensation committee signed deals…
What’s In-Store for Brands? Retailer Marketing
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal front page trumpeted the shift from out of store advertising to in-store marketing as the way to reach consumers suffering from message overload as they make…
