Pricing
Low prices: That's what's going to get registers ringing this holiday season at Kohl's, which is clawing its way out of a business slump. So said Kevin Mansell, CEO of the 1,134-unit department store chain, at Goldman Sachs' retail conference on Thursday. His comments come a day after the CFO of competitor Target delivered the opposite message at the investor conference, vowing not to partake in the price wars during the Christmas shopping season.
In the first half of fiscal 2012, J.C. Penney's sales dropped 21.3 percent, or $1.7 billion. At an investor conference today, the company's chief financial officer indicated that the rest of the year will be consistent with that of the first half, or another 20 percent. This is in harmony with my forecast published here on Aug. 1. At this pace, the drop will total over $3 billion for the full year. While earnings will also be lower, the company reiterated its view that cash will build to $1 billion at year-end.
eBay is launching a new local deals feature similar to Groupon, LivingSocial and Google Offers called Lifestyle Deals. The page of local deals on the eBay Lifestyle Deals homepage links to eBay listings from the new eBay seller "signpostoffers," which is a player in the local deals space.
For the second year in a row, Wal-Mart Stores, the nation's largest retailer, will offer a layaway program for holiday purchases. Echoing Wal-Mart executives’ comments last week that American consumers are still worried about their finances, the company also said it would add an extra month to the program so shoppers have more time — and paychecks — to pay for their items on layaway. "Our customer was saying if they had two more paycheck cycles, that really would be helpful for them," said Duncan MacNaughton, chief merchandising and marketing officer for Wal-Mart U.S.
This week's top article (determined by number of clicks) deals with a theme most retailers are smack in the middle of: back-to-school season. Peter Albers of Ohana Companies analyzes how retailers can use promotions to drive back-to-school sales in his guest bylined article. The article delves into detail on three specific promotional strategies — rebates, promotional games and referrals. What's your company doing or planning to do to drive sales during the all-important back-to-school season? Are you using promotions, social campaigns, mobile contests? What have you done in the past that's been successful (or not)? Go to Retail Online Integration's Twitter page and use the hashtag #ROIMostClicked to give us your thoughts. We'd love to hear from you!
What do you think about J.C. Penney's decision to move away from its six-month-old everyday low pricing model? And how do you handle pricing? Do you think sales are the way to go or are you a fan of the everyday low pricing model? We're trying to get to the bottom of this issue via our new "Question of the Week" discussion over on on Retail Online Integration's Facebook page. We would love to hear from you and get a dialog going on this important retail subject.
With very few other retailers offering layaway programs, Kmart has a point of difference in the market. Now, the retailer is looking to draw even further attention to that difference and bring in new customers by promoting a 5 percent discount on layaway purchases made for back-to-school. To qualify for the discount, Kmart customers put down $15 or 10 percent of the purchase amount, whichever is greater, and pay a $5 fee. The offer is good until August 18. The program is also available to online shoppers.
Following in the footsteps of Target's and American Eagle's nationwide rollouts, Macy’s announced Wednesday it would begin offering shopkick rewards at its more than 800 stores. Using shopkick's app for iPhone or Android devices, shoppers can collect points, or "kicks," by visiting and performing certain tasks in Macy's stores. They can then exchange their kicks for Macy's-specific rewards like gift cards, as well as for more general rewards, including song downloads, restaurant certificates, movie tickets, Facebook Credits, charity donations, etc.
OneStopPlus.com, a division of Redcats USA and the world's first and only online shopping mall for plus-size women, announced today the launch of OSPFlash, a limited-time sale destination offering consumers deep discounts on designer merchandise. For the first time, designer brands that are typically excluded from promotions, discounts and coupons will now be participating in the site's latest venture, giving consumers access to some of their favorite brands at discounted prices. The offers will be accessible via the OneStopPlus.com homepage and will be available for 48 hours every Tuesday beginning at 9:00 a.m.
It's every seller's nightmare: a glitch that results in products being listed — and sold — for a penny instead of their regular price. It happened for about 15 minutes on Tuesday to some Amazon.com sellers, but the third-party vendor whose clients were affected said it's making good. Appeagle was pushing an update to Amazon in order to conform to the marketplace's new requirements for repricing software when it noticed a problem in one line of code.