Tag: Holiday shopping

WalMart Goes After Amazon This Holiday Season

Posted on November 2, 2017 by - Blog

WalMart announced a series of holiday-time strategies on Wednesday, primarily focused on battling the threat of Amazon taking away from their sales. Their holiday strategy includes three themed parties between now and December 16, across 7,000 stores, for a total of 20,000 in-store parties. The parties will give shoppers the opportunity to play with toys, take pictures with Santa, see product demonstrations and taste goods. In the stores, WalMart will have extra staff on hand to assist with checkout and grab additional items for shoppers. In addition, the retailer has also tripled its inventory and expanded its assortment of brands. WalMart will also offer price rollbacks on thousands of items.

Retailers CompetingAs far as online strategies, WalMart is offering more than 2 million items with free 2-day shipping on orders over $35. Also new is a “pickup discount” when shoppers order online and pick up in store. They have also doubled their grocery pick up locations, where they bring the groceries out to the customers’ cars.

WalMart is also going after Amazon’s helm as the low-price leader. A study was released this week showing that Amazon’s prices are typically 11% lower than WalMart, Target and Jet, but WalMart is closing in, being only 3% higher than Amazon across all products . The retailer is especially price competitive with Amazon in the beauty category, with products being 1% lower than Amazon on average. Experts state that going into the holiday season, the price war will continue to heat up across all of the categories of products WalMart sells.

Source: Chain Store Age

Retail Should Have a Holly Jolly Holiday Season

Posted on October 30, 2017 by - Blog

Retail during the Holidays

The National Retail Federation (NRF) annual holiday spending survey results were released, with a promising outlook for the holiday retail spending season. Consumers surveyed reported they expect to spend an average of $967.13 this year, up 3.4% from last year. Online shopping was listed by consumers as the #1 shopping destination for the first time ever, listed so by 59% of those surveyed. The NRF also noted it expects retail sales in November and December to be up by almost 4% over last year, for a total between $678 billion and $682 billion.

The survey also reports that gift cards remain the #1 popular item on wish lists. This is followed by clothing and accessories at 55%, which is the highest level that category has seen in over a decade. Other popular categories include consumer electronics at 33%, home décor at 24% and home improvement items at 18%. While 59% will shop online, 57% say they will shop at a department store, 54% at a discount store and 35% at a clothing or accessories store.

The survey showed that with regard to holiday spending only 27% are concerned about the impact of the nation’s economy, which is down 32% from last year.

Source: Chain Store Age

December 2017 Calendar Will Influence Holiday Shopping

Posted on September 27, 2017 by - Blog

Black Friday Shopping

In an announcement yesterday, Shoppertrak, a leading provider of shopper analytics, predicted that Friday, November 24th (also known as Black Friday) will be the busiest shopping day of 2017.

For the first time since 2012, there will be four Saturdays in December prior to Christmas Day, influencing shopper behavior. Saturday, December 23rd and Saturday, December 16th are predicted to be the second and third busiest days respectively. Shoppertrak goes on to list their predictions for the top ten shopping days of the year, and claims that those ten busiest days are estimated to account for 40-45 percent of total shopping visits made during the entire 2017 holiday season. It will be essential for brick and mortar retailers to meet the holiday season with sound staffing and inventory strategies.

“The holiday season is prime time for in-store shopping, and this year is no different,” said Brian Field, senior director of advisory services at ShopperTrak. “In fact, because of the rising influence of online, it’s even more important that physical retailers differentiate themselves with knowledgeable associates, stocked shelves and smooth checkout lines to improve customer experiences rather than trying to cut corners in the name of cost savings.”

Timely and insightful retail data analytics like those provided by Accelerated Analytics empower brands to make data-driven inventory decisions and develop a strong inventory strategy. With forecast reports, low inventory and out of stock alerts and more, brands can manage store performance and ensure that their products are on the selling floor during the critical holiday-shopping season and beyond.

Source: Shoppertrak