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Commentary and Discussion From the Retail Community
Burd: Dominick’s Not Putting Out ‘For Sale’ Sign
Many who have seen Dominick’s Finer Foods go from leading the Chicagoland market over the years to now representing about a 15 percent share of market believe the chain would…
Chain Store Age: Fitting Room Blues
Retailers are supposedly upgrading their fitting rooms, making the individual stalls larger and adding all sorts of enhancements. But the reality doesn’t live up to the hype, at least not…
Where is Cough-Cold Going?
Through a host of quick business retention maneuvers, overall industry sales of cough, cold and allergy medications have remained strong despite restrictions imposed by the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act. Not…
Music Stores Offer Downloading Alternative
It’s not a bolt out of the blue, but CD sales are in trouble and downloads from services such as Apple’s iTunes Music Store are the culprits behind the drop…
Same Same-Store Sales Story at Sears and Kmart
While Edward Lampert and Sears Holdings haven’t shown any real talent for retailing, investors in the company have been able to take solace in the strong performance of the company’s…
Humanely Raised Meat Going Mainstream
First it was ‘natural’, then ‘organic’. Is ‘humanely raised’ next? The American Humane Association believes a big trend at this year’s Food Marketing Institute (FMI) show will be how livestock…
Consumers Going Online for Groceries
Consumers are going online more often to buy all sorts of products and services and grocery is no exception. While still a small percentage of overall sales, home delivery and/or…
Retailers Come Together to Fight Climate Change
In late April, eight major U.K. companies including Tesco and Marks & Spencer joined Prime Minister Tony Blair in unveiling ‘We’re in this Together,’ a campaign to encourage consumers to…
GHQ: The Category That Keeps on Growing
The fresh produce category just keeps getting bigger, and more retailers are expanding their sections to take advantage of that growth and of consumer demand for new varieties of fruits…
The Battle of the Neighborhood Markets
Tesco is coming and Wal-Mart, according to a New York Post report, is thinking small as it gets ready to do battle with its rival from the U.K. Wal-Mart has…
Moberg Steps Down at Ahold
When Anders Moberg joined Royal Ahold four years back, he was brought in to stabilize a company that was going through the fallout from a nearly billion dollar accounting scandal…
A Flipping Bargain
In addition to being a euphemism for several expletives and a rapid-fire way of turning pancakes and burgers from one side to the other on a grill, flipping now has…
Irrational Tariffs Bring Law Suits
It makes absolute sense that men and women’s hiking boots imported from China would be taxed at the same rate. Of course, that’s not how the U.S. tariff system works…
BrainTrust Query: Is service-oriented architecture (SOA) technology the wave of the future?
Enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA), which enables companies to rapidly respond to changing business requirements and competitive market dynamics, while maximizing existing IT resources, was one of the key tech trends…
Marketers Reaching Out to Muslims
A report by Louise Story in The New York Times says grocers and other marketers are seeking to find ways to reach American Muslims through culturally based advertising. While hard…
Kiosks Take Over Perfume Sampling Duties
Five-foot kiosks, created by Scentest Communications, are now being positioned next to perfume counters in roughly 80 malls on the East and West coasts of the U.S. In addition to…
Target Ready to Make Statement in Food
A new report from J.P. Morgan suggests Tesco and Target may be ready to shake up the U.S. grocery business, according to Reuters. Is Target finally putting itself in a…
BrainTrust Query: What can we learn from Japan’s mobile wallet challenges?
As mobile phone technologies ramp up in sophistication, an application enjoying increased interest from retailers and marketers alike is the “mobile wallet.” Put simply, mobile wallets, also known as “wallet…
Making Customers Want to Stay and Shop
Retailers understand that customers who stay in a store longer will spend more. But, as a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report points out, the key for retailers is how to get customers…
Talk About a Loyalty Program
Like other retailers, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nieman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Barneys New York and Bloomingdale’s have shopper loyalty programs. But, that is where the similarities apparently stop as these…
Retail Promotion or Illegal Gambling?
A new crop of retail promotions offering refunds based on the outcome of sporting events or weather conditions may be illegal gambling, according to law experts. In Massachusetts, for example,…
