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Commentary and Discussion From the Retail Community
The Shrinking Center Store
According the Willard Bishop, the arrival of smaller formats emphasizing freshness and the associated lifestyle (e.g. Tesco’s new U.S. chain) will cause the center store to shrink significantly, and force…
Wal-Mart Looks at Suppliers’ Greenhouse Gasses
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Monday announced it is partnering with the climate group, Carbon Disclosure Project, to measure the amount of energy used to create products throughout its supply chain…
MySpace for the Older Crowd
With names such as Eons, Rezoom, Multiply, Maya’s Mom, Boomj, and Boomertown, a host of social networking sites have been launched targeting baby boomers and graying computer users. The good…
A Different Kind of Pharmacy
Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy may be heralding a new way of providing healthcare to customers at retail. The chain clearly differentiates from most conventional pharmacies with a spa-like ambience and a…
Mattel Apologizes to China
On Friday, Mattel Inc. made a public apology to China for damaging the country’s reputation stemming from a spate of toy recalls over the summer. The surprising move – which…
CPGmatters: Integrate Demand Indexing with Loyalty Card Data
Integrating loyalty card data with demand indexing is not a widespread practice in mass market retailing. But that doesn’t mean it won’t become commonplace in the future. Demand indexing is…
Food Additives: Is less more even when more is the whole idea?
It looks as if food manufacturers really are listening and acting. According to research from the MINTEL Global New Products Database (GNPD), one in every four (24 percent) new food…
Web Ads That Consumers May Actually Want to Save and Share
Earlier this week, Google began publicizing a new interactive ad format called Gadgets, now in “extended Beta.” Being an offering of its AdWords business, Gadgets promise a heightened level of…
Bargain Hunters Don’t Hurt Grocery Profits
Extreme-price grocery shoppers, or those who contribute negative gross margins to a retailer, account for a very small share of the market and don’t have significant adverse effects on retail…
24/7 Sidewalk Shopping
Using a new technology, consumers can touch the glass window of the Roots flagship clothing store in Toronto to earn a carbon offsetting credit equivalent to 50 km of driving…
Behavior Beats Context in Online Ads
Online consumers are more receptive to behaviorally targeted ads than contextual advertising, according to a new study. The Jupiter Research study prepared for Revenue Science, a digital media company, found…
Study: Self-Checkout Curtails Impulse Buys
According to a study from IHL Consulting Group, impulse purchases among women drop 32.1 percent and men 16.7 percent when self-checkout is used instead of a staffed checkout. The primary…
Vending Units Bring Luxury Goods to Supermarkets
In a shopping environment where more consumers seem ready to trade down from steak to chopped meat, will grocery store customers be willing to pony up hundreds of dollars to…
Former Penn Traffic Execs Accused of Inflating Numbers
Retail executives have been found guilty in the past of intentionally inflating sales and earnings numbers by booking vendor promotional allowances before they were due. The question, after the latest…
Ann Taylor Tries Haute Couture
Ann Taylor has introduced an upscale clothing line in an effort to capture a larger number of affluent female shoppers. Launching this week in stores in New York and Chicago,…
Mars Wants to Keep Cocoa in Chocolate
Others may be lobbying to be able to substitute vegetable oil for cocoa butter in the making of chocolate, but not Mars Inc. The company came out in an attempt…
Menu Foods On Comeback Trail
This has not been a good year for Menu Foods as the company lost a reported 80 percent of its contract business after pet food it manufactured sickened and in…
Hannaford’s Ratings System Drives Healthy Purchases
Hannaford Brothers says its nutritional rating system has been a success, particularly in steering purchases in the expansive packaged-food section of the store. The system called Guiding Stars rates the…
Guiding Opinions
The Co-operative, the U.K. supermarket group, is balloting its four million members in the development of an ethical food policy. This is the largest poll of ethics ever undertaken in…
Sports Apparel and Footwear Seeking Status
With the emergence of video games and, more recently, mobile gadgets such as iPods and cell phones, traditional sporting goods gear has lost some of its buzz. The industry has…
Loyalty Programs on Fast Evolutionary Track
Loyalty programs can do more than just give shoppers rewards for spending a lot of money. The next trend appears to be to better target the “best of breed” shoppers…
