Pricing

Maximizing the Amazon Opportunity This Holiday Season
November 13, 2015 at 10:00 am

Fundamental data such as sales and category share is the lifeblood of todayโ€™s best-performing brands in the brick-and-mortar world. Their long-term strategies and everyday execution โ€” for example, knowing which categories and retailers they should be under- or overinvesting in โ€” are measured and closely managed by these critical indicators. However, despite the exponential growthโ€ฆ

Wal-Mart Makes Changes to Black Friday Strategy
November 12, 2015 at 11:44 am

Wal-Mart plans to offer most of its Black Friday discounts to online shoppers hours before they become available in stores, as the company attempts to hold off challenges by Amazon.com and other e-commerce rivals. The worldโ€™s biggest retailer, which said it still expects to draw record crowds even with the online push, will make theโ€ฆ

Macyโ€™s, Other Retailers Brace for Heavy Discounting
November 12, 2015 at 11:05 am

When Macyโ€™s, a store closely associated with Christmas, says there's trouble brewing ahead of the holidays, it's enough to send the world of shopping into a tailspin. The retailer of โ€œMiracle on 34th Streetโ€ warned Wednesday that its stores were awash with merchandise after a sluggish fall season and that slow business would force it toโ€ฆ

6 Reasons โ€˜Low Priceโ€™ Costs You More in the Long Run
November 3, 2015 at 11:16 am

Technology has streamlined processes and opened up the worldโ€™s labor forces, thereby helping to cut the cost of doing business. However, this same technology has led to comparison shopping and price transparency. In other words, for all the good itโ€™s done to make your business competitive on price, technology has leveled the playing field inโ€ฆ

Amazon Launches Black Friday Deals Store
November 2, 2015 at 11:01 am

Amazon.com on Sunday launched its Black Friday deals store as it begins to count down to what traditionally has been one of the biggest shopping days of the year. The Seattle retailer promises tens of thousands of deals on technology, toys and clothes between now and Dec. 22. TVs, digital cameras, projectors and connected products forโ€ฆ

Struggling Retailer Kmart Turns the Blue Light Back On
November 2, 2015 at 10:55 am

Attention Kmart shoppers: the struggling discount chain is bringing back the "Bluelight Special" in the hopes the iconic marketing approach it pioneered decades ago will breathe life into its store and online sales. The retailer started sounding the blue sirens used to flag the surprise, 15-minute long deals to shoppers at its 942 stores on Friday,โ€ฆ

Lord & Taylor Launches New Store to Compete with Nordstrom Rack
October 26, 2015 at 10:55 am

Looking to compete with the Nordstrom Racks and Saks Off 5ths of the world, Lord & Taylor is launching its first off-price store, Women's Wear Daily reports. The new "Find @ Lord & Taylor" shops will offer a selection of women's, men's, kid's, footwear and home products that have been marked down 70 percent. Lordโ€ฆ

lululemon Hosts Rare Sale Event; Consumers Line Up
October 16, 2015 at 11:17 am

lululemon, the popular luxury athletic wear brand, is holding a three-day warehouse sale at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston this weekend. The sale is a rare event for the company: lululemon sells 95 percent of its gear at full price, The Wall Street Journal has reported. The website does list cheaper items tagged under โ€œWe Madeโ€ฆ

The Positive Side to Price Discrimination
October 6, 2015 at 9:43 am

Price discrimination gets a bad rap. Google the phrase โ€œprice discriminationโ€ and youโ€™ll find articles on large health, entertainment, insurance and even mail companies being investigated for illegal price discrimination โ€”  i.e., the practice of charging different price points to different customers for the same product. The word discrimination itself is loaded. It's a termโ€ฆ

Uber-Style Surge Pricing May Catch On With Retailers
October 5, 2015 at 11:29 am

For some, โ€œsurge pricing,โ€ the use of algorithms to automate price increases on products and services in periods of high demand and limited supply, adheres to a basic principle of the free market economy. Others see it as a form of price gouging. Regardless of your point of view, the use of surge pricing appearsโ€ฆ