Retailers are ready to increase their Bing spending

Bing is making inroads into retailers’ search marketing budgets as 41% of merchants plan to divert at least some of their spending from Google Inc. to the two-year-old search engine operated by Microsoft Corp., according to the newest Internet Retailer survey.

At Stores, Making 5 for $5 a Bigger Draw Than 1 for $1

Three 12-packs of Pepsi are selling for $12.99 at Stop & Shop grocery stores. Ten cans of tuna, or 10 bags of marshmallows, are going for $10. Six ears of corn for $2. Ten containers of Meow Mix cat food for $5.50.

Want just one each of those items? Well, yes, you get the same discount in most cases. But grocers would prefer that you think bigger. Like most retailers, they are feeling the pinch as people spend less these days. So they are playing a multiples game to entice shoppers to buy more than their shopping lists dictate.

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“We look at the customer buying behavior, and that’s how we land on multiples — to get customers a little higher than their typical purchase rate,” said Tom O’Boyle, executive vice president for merchandising and marketing at the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, which owns grocery stores including Pathmark, A.&P. and Food Emporium.

Big players in e-commerce have gotten the mobile message, study finds

The mobile message seems to be getting through to the heavy hitters in retail: Of 25 well-known brands and e-commerce sales leaders, all have mobile commerce sites, a new study finds. However, only 12% offer an iPhone or Android mobile app.

Features present on all 25 m-commerce sites or apps include product name, product description, price and the ability to complete a purchase, the study finds. From there content and features vary. 88% enable consumers to share product information via social media, 100% provide a store locator, but only 52% integrate GPS satellite technology within the locator. 88% allow consumers to set up an account, 80% enable customers to track orders after a purchase, 80% allow shoppers to create a wish list, 56% enable customers to access their loyalty program accounts, and 40% display estimated shipping charges before adding a product to a shopping cart.

Retailers who are thinking of moving to Cloud computing should read the latest whitepaper from Microsoft, Driving Revenue and Innovation in Retail with Windows Azure. The Whitepaper provides solution scenarios along with workload patterns for these scenarios and examples from the industry.

Momentum is building around cloud scenarios applicable to retailing by enabling business agility at lower cost.  Microsoft has made a strong commitment to cloud computing to help retailers connect with consumers whenever and wherever they choose.  Windows Azure provides a platform and a set of services that can be used individually or together.  It is a flexible and interoperable platform that is use to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based service-oriented capabilities.

There are business-enabling benefits for retail enterprises, including the ability to extend services related to products and retail offerings directly to consumers. The global reach that can be achieved will enable retailers to deliver products through vastly extended supply chains and product-sourcing approaches. A cloud computing strategy that is integrated with existing business plans will have the effect of reducing cost and increasing services to customers throughout the world.

Download Whitepaper.

Altimeter Group has released a new report titled Rise of Social Commerce – A Trail Guide for the Social Commerce Pioneer which discusses the use of Social Technologies to connect, listen, understand and engage to improve the shopping experience. The report provides a four-stage process to assess where companies are at and the path forward.

• Let’s Be Social: Programs are launched to drive brand advocacy and increase volume/market share.
• Enlightened Engagement: Companies create interconnections of e-commerce and social platforms – both owned and in the wider web – to influence influencers, improve decision-making, and distill the voice of the customer for the enterprise.
• Store of the Community: Fans drive assortment, selection, and services through open innovation networks and social networks.
• Frictionless Commerce: Companies redesign the shopping experience across channels and categories, to create a truly customer-centric shopping experience.

Read More.

Meet the new shopper. Underneath the keys of the keyboard, they are shopping in a new way. Unleashing the power of the social network, the digital consumer is shopping with friends, sharing recommendations, and actively engaging in dialogue with brand owners on how they want to be served. But, can you listen? Can you serve the new shopper? Or are you so busy YELLING your brand message, that you will miss this opportunity to listen, engage and serve the consumer in new ways? With the rise of social commerce, you have new opportunities to anticipate, personalize and energize the shopping experience; but our finished research report documents that the biggest barriers are enterprise processes that are designed to broad-brush markets, push big-brand messages, and serve markets through conventional channels.

Some good news. With the projections of marginal increase in holiday sales this season (increase of about 2% this year, totaling around $852 billion during the November through January period), Retailers are likely to hire more temps this holiday season.

Retailers to boost holiday temp jobs

Retailers are expected to hire more seasonal workers this year, increasing their payrolls by up to 600,000 jobs during the holiday months.

The bad news is, they're still not ramping up their payrolls to pre-recession levels, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said in its latest holiday hiring forecast released Monday.

"Retailers do not want to be caught with too many workers at a time when many of the fundamentals needed for strong consumer spending remain a little shaky," John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a release.

Before the recession began, retailers hired 720,000 workers during the 2007 holiday season. And in 1999 that number was near 850,000.

As if economic downturn was not enough to force down shutters, Bed bugs too have joined the race. Bed bugs have forced more than one Retailer to shut down their stores in New York, Nike being the latest victim.

Niketown Infested By Bedbugs -- Closed Indefinitely As Bloodsucking Pest Crisis Continues

The bedbug crisis continues, with the blood-sucking pests claiming their highest profile victim to date: Niketown.

The sneaker company's flagship New York City store has been closed indefinitely after bedbugs invaded the store.  The front of the gleaming 5-story 57th Street shopping cathedral is now covered with brown paper.

Bedbugs have infested one retailer and office after another in recent months: Abercrombie & Fitch, the Empire State Building, Time Warner, Google...

Can it be long before the make the move to the Apple Store?

Some good examples of how Design is playing a strategic role in helping Big Box Retailers reset for the future.

Trends: A Strategy Made Visible

Design is helping to:
• organize intuitive and logical adjacencies and traffic flow
• break large scale presentations into smaller, more understandable ideas
• establish focal points as attractors and cross-merchandising collections of related product
• adapt the look and feel to the market served, and
• provide graphics that have the dual purpose of amplifying the store branding while communicating pathway.

Read More.

Great Infographic on the number of followers of US Grocery Retailers.

NYTimes.com has a story on how Retailers are unaware of Mobile Barcode Scanning Apps which provide instant price comparison and allow users to save money.

These apps allow consumers to compare the prices of merchandise on a store's shelf to competing stores in the area just by taking pictures with their smartphone's camera. The prices are instantly retrieved and displayed on the mobile phone so consumers can know before they buy if they're getting a good deal.

Although consumers may be catching on to this barcode-scanning trend, some stores are still in the dark. For example, a Target store in Michigan recently requested a shopper to stop scanning merchandise, saying it went against store policy. The customer reported the event to the application's makers, Big in Japan, whose app Shop Savvy is a popular download for Android handsets.

I have written about similar app for iPhone in the past. It is a great way to save money in these difficult times. If you are a retailer what would you do, encourage consumers using such application or deny them a chance to save money?

A very well written blog post on the relationship based on trust between Retailer and Vendors when it comes to shipping displays, running promotions and packaging.

Why would I stop a vendor from shipping displays, running promotions and changing packaging? Because I don’t trust that they know what they’re doing. I’ve seen too many hastily designed displays, too many promotions that build up like expired plaque on my planogram, and too much packaging that shows how little they understand the value of real estate. From here, it’s a short leap to understand why I’d ask for “just hand me the check book” entitlement programs. Entitlements are insurance policies against vendor marketing failures. Pay me up-front. I expect you to fail.

All this makes sense until a brand shows me that they understand what I do for a living and then proves it. Show me quantitative packaging and promotion research measured against your end users who shop in my stores. Show me how you’ll forecast it, ship it, sell it through, and then clean it up after it’s done. If you can do this, I’ll test anything you want because I’ll believe that you know what you’re doing and you won’t make a complete mess of the one thing I have that you don’t – my stores.

http://note-to-cmo.blogspot.com/2008/07/yin-and-yang-of-retail.html

Good story on how Retailers are using Mobile Technology

Consumers are not yet using their mobile phones to do all their shopping, as some forecast, but retailers are still finding them a powerful tool.

With the first wave of US economy stimulus checks being deposited into bank accounts past week, retailers have started getting aggressive to pick up their shares of the checks. Forbes.com is reporting that, retailers like Sears and Kroger are giving 10% bonus to those who turn their stimulus checks into company gift cards. Another story reports that other retailers like Walmart, Lowe's, CVS etc are offering discounts this weekend. But that may not be sufficient to pull the consumers to stores, recent polls are suggesting that most of the people will convert the checks into cash and pay off debt or add to their savings.

The checks and payments are part of a $168 billion tax rebate plan passed by Congress to help spur the lagging economy. Under the plan, individuals who have filed their tax returns for the year can receive up to $600 and families can get up to $1,200, plus $300 per child. The rebates are expected to reach 130 million households. The direct deposit payments began on Monday and paper checks go out May 9.

This quarter results will tell us who which retailer picked up maximum store traffic thus boosting amount of cash on their balance sheets.