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Commentary and Discussion From the Retail Community
Americans Choose Healthy or Wealthy in Unwise System
A new study conducted by Harvard University researchers and published in the Health Affairs medical journal says nearly half of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. may be the result of…
Shoppers Give Grocer The Finger
Shoppers at Thriftway Stores in the Seattle, Wash.-area have been giving the supermarket the finger for years and the grocer wouldn’t have it any other way. Since 2002, Thriftway has…
The Great Spanglish Controversy
At the 11th SRI Hispanic Marketing Conference, there was a striking shift in the content of the program and the attitudes of the attendees. This generation of marketers are using…
S&P Says Pathmark Has Tough Climb
If you’re a stakeholder in Pathmark, it would be easy to get down after reading the latest evaluation of the company’s prospects by Standard & Poor’s. According to the credit…
Name That Retailer’s Tune
A report in the National Retail Federation’s Stores magazine said retailers, such as J.C. Penney, are finding that old time rock and roll is not only good for the soul…
Feeding Friends and Influencing People
Milton ‘Milti’ Parker, owner of the famous Carnegie Deli in New York said he and his then partner, Leo Steiner, had a simple criterion for determining how things were going…
Family Dollar To Clean Up Its Act
Memories of the old five and dime stores may include dirty; unopened boxes, fallen merchandise, and workers with some combination of personality and personal hygiene issues. Today’s version of the…
7-Eleven – Listening to Customers 24/7
A $500 million investment in technology over ten years doesn’t always deliver results. It has, it appears, changed 7-Eleven for the better. According to David Podeschi, 7-Eleven’s SVP of merchandising,…
The Sad State of Customer Service
According to a report in The Christian Science Monitor, customer complaints about retail stores were up 104 percent between 2000 and 2003. Many of those complaints originated from problems with…
Wal-Mart: Immediate Family Includes Same-Sex Partners
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier in the week, Wal-Mart acknowledged as much when it expanded the company’s definition of “immediate family” to include civil unions…
‘It’s the employees, Stupid’
One of the things Stuart Silverman was impressed with at NRF this year was the number of companies selling solutions to improve or “optimize” employee productivity. Are retailers beginning to…
Real Money: P&G to Buy Gillette for $57 Billion
Yesterday, the boards of Procter & Gamble and Gillette unanimously agreed to a deal that, if approved by regulators, would result in P&G acquiring Gillette to form the largest consumer…
Excitement To Keep Stores Open
Kathleen Lavey, a columnist with the Lansing State Journal, like many others has found that she shopped online more often last year than in the past. She thinks that is…
Number Two and Liking It
Caribou Coffee vice president of marketing Chris Toal would be the first to tell you his company is no Starbucks. The Seattle-based chain has over 6,000 stores. Caribou has 306…
Blue-Light Still Flickers
Kmart’s blue-light special was the brainchild of a store manager in 1965. Forty years later, the blue-light has become a symbol for many of Kmart’s problems. Plenty of people inside…
Hispanic Event Marketing – Hitting Community Hot Buttons
A recent article on HispanicAd.com presents tips on how to “hit the mark” through Hispanic event marketing. An increasing number of marketers have been jumping on the event bandwagon to…
Laffer: Corporate Social Responsibility Is Voodoo
Arthur Laffer, the so-called father of supply-side economics — or voodoo economics if you happen to be a former President of the United States — says if you’re looking for…
No McJoke: Judges Reopen Obesity Suit
Just when you thought it was safe to assume that the courts had decided how fat a person gets is a matter of genetics and/or personal responsibility, the U.S. Court…
Jack Brown Opens Pandora’s Box
Okay, we’ve got a bone to pick with Jack Brown, the chairman, chief executive and bottle washer at the Stater Bros. grocery store chain. What could he have said or…
The Cell Phone Diet
Atkins Nutritionals was looking for an innovative means to gets its brand’s benefits message out to new consumers while building a stronger connection to those following a low-carb diet regimen…
A Fresh Opportunity for Niche Retailing?
It’s no surprise to anyone in the retailing industry that traditional grocery store market share dropped from 44 percent in 1993 to 35 percent in 2004. What is more surprising…
