A First Glimpse of Holiday 2012
Last week, ShopperTrak was the first out of the gate with official holiday projections. ShopperTrak is expecting holiday retail sales during the November/December period to grow 3.3 percent and foot traffic to increase 2.8 percent over the same period a year-ago. In other holiday-related news, a survey by the consulting firm Hay Group suggests some retailers […]
Sears expands ‘Scrubology’ shops
Sears Holdings is expanding the availability of its in-store professional apparel shop to 91 Sears and Kmart stores nationwide. Revealing of their core shopper.
Is Square Footage the Issue?
Over the last 2+ years, Wall Street analysts have pounded BestBuy on the size of their big box store fronts. Best Buy recently announced another 42 store closures – bring to 50 the total stores that will shutter in 2012. Best Buy has also worked over the last year to shrink their footprints. In some […]
Why the Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet are Good for Traditional Retail
This month Amazon’s new tablet the Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet go on-sale this month. While both products are technically the house brand of competing retails, they’ll be widely available in a variety of retail channels. One would typically presume that a consumer interested in the Kindle Fire would just go to Amazon.com to […]
Why Don’t Retail Sales Show More Seasonality?
My title is a bit deceiving – retail sales definitely do show strong seasonal trends driving by year-end holiday buying. As the chart makes evident, retail sales are very seasonal. For GAFO, which represents stores that specialize in department store types of merchandise (furniture & home furnishings, electronics and appliances, clothing & accessories, sporting goods, hobby, book, […]
Further Confirmation of CEA Holiday Research – Shoppers Pushing Shopping later in the Season
For the last 18 years, CEA has conducted and published a holiday outlook. This research has revealed that overtime consumers are starting (and likely ultimately finishing) their holiday shopping later in the year. Over time fewer are starting their holiday shopping in September and October and more are beginning in November and December. I credit this shift to shoppers waiting on deals and […]
CMOs of Leading Retailers Most Bullish on Tech this Holiday Season
Read more here.
Black Friday Predictions
Each year I predict the lowest pricing we’ll see for a variety of tech products during Black Friday. Last year I predicted we’d see notebook computers selling for as low $299. In fact Walmart sold a notebook for $198 on Black Friday. This year I’m predicting the lowest prices we’ll see for notebook computers will be $250 – actually higher than […]
on Amazon’s Digital Book Lending Service
Amazon is now a library – sorta. Last week, Amazon launched the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library which gives Kindle users who own an actual Kindle device (and not just use the Kindle app on other devices) AND are Amazon Prime subscribers access to 5,000+ books they can “borrow.” A few things worth noting: 1) this is probably the first example of a subscription service for digital books. […]
10 Ways Black Friday Will Be Different this Year…
Here’s the article. All are sound except #9.
