"Shrinking Walmart stores will impact suppliers" by Kim Souza at The City Wire.  "As Wal-Mart Stores continues to focus on a smaller footprint for some of its stores, suppliers will see less shelf space and analysts say there is no time to waste in planning a survival strategy.  The Bentonville-based retail giant recently announced it would build 125 new supercenters this year at a cost of $2 billion. Total square footage on the new supercenter prototype is 140,000, shrinking from 169,000 in 2010. That’s 17% smaller than supercenters built four years ago."  Read more:  https://www.thecitywire.com/node/27581#.UX-h6bWG3X4   "Home Depot [...]

  "Home Depot’s failure in China: Ignoring women" by Ruchika Tulshyan at Atlanta Business Journal.  "“Research data indicates that Home Depot should adopt urban boutique concepts,” the study said. These stores should be placed in malls or on street corners, rather than operate as “big-box” retailers. The stores should emphasize female consumers.  “In many cultures, women are the primary purchasing agent. Especially in China, women make the final decision in buying home décor products,” said Gao. “After the one-child policy in China, women became so scarce that brides were given full control of how they wanted their house to look [...]

  "Walmart U.S. could learn from its sister chain Asda" by Andria Chang at Market Watch.  "Asda offers online groceries that she said could reach 98% of Britain’s population. It also has Asda direct non-food site; its George.com apparel delivers across Europe; and mobile commerce is 16% of its online sales.   Meanwhile, the chain allows customers to order online and pick up general merchandise within two hours in all stores and pick up groceries in more than 100 stores. It also offers free in-store Wifi.  “We believe that ASDA’s expertise with these technologies could be the secret sauce that gives [...]

    "Acosta Partners for Wal-Mart Demos" at Supermarket News.  "Acosta Sales & Marketing here said its integrated marketing division has formed a partnership with Out Front Marketing to provide custom experiential marketing for products outside Wal-Mart stores...Out Front Marketing creates and executes experiential solutions and events at Wal-Mart parking lots and store exteriors. The company uses portable marketing centers called “Mobile Brand Boxes,” which can include interactive simulators and games as well as other loyalty and brand-building tactics."  Read more:  https://supermarketnews.com/retail-amp-financial/acosta-partners-wal-mart-demos#ixzz2RRXGCTO2   "Sleeping ad giant Amazon finally stirs" at Reuters.  "An Amazon mobile ad network, launched late last year, [...]

  "Wal-Mart Vs. Amazon: World's Biggest E-Commerce Battle Could Boil Down To Vegetables" by Clare O'Connor at Forbes.  "What else can Wal-Mart possibly do to win the web? Nielsen’s Todd Hale has one answer. “E-commerce is growing at 11% a year, but sales for consumer packaged goods online — food, groceries, everyday items — are more like high double digits, almost 20%,” said Hale, SVP of consumer and shopping insights. “This is the space Wal-Mart has to go after: perishable items. That’s where they need the infrastructure.”  Read more:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2013/04/23/wal-mart-vs-amazon-worlds-biggest-e-commerce-battle-could-boil-down-to-vegetables/   "A free lunch at Costco?" by Donna Freedman at [...]

    "DIY chain Menards bets bigger is better" by Karen Dybis at The Detroit News.  "According to marketing-research firm IBISWorld Inc., Home Depot and Lowe's accounted for about 73.4 percent of industry revenue in 2012, making home improvement a highly concentrated industry.  IBISWorld estimates that Menards generated revenue of $7.6 billion during 2012, accounting for about 4.8 percent of the industry's market share. Generally, IBISWorld estimates revenues at home-improvement stores will increase at an annualized rate of 3.1 percent to $191.5 billion by 2018."  Read more:  https://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130423/BIZ/304230325#ixzz2RHgocIpE   "Big box uses emerge as more Wal-Mart sales go online" by [...]

  "The Store Is Media And Media Is The Store" by Doug Stephen at Retail Prophet.  "You see, what’s actually evolving is a new and far more complex role for the store, and online brands like Google, Bonobos and Warby Parker are affirming it, as they each embark on creating their own, branded, physical stores. They along with a growing number of other online pure-plays recognize that in order to “fully actualize” their brands, they need to animate a physical presence and visceral experience for their consumers, not to move products but more critically, to move hearts and minds"  Read [...]

  "Twitter Lets Advertisers Target Keywords In Tweets - But It's Still No Google" by Robert Hof at Forbes.   Here’s how Twitter describes the way it will work: For example: let’s say a user tweets about enjoying the latest album from their favorite band, and it so happens that band is due to play a concert at a local venue. That venue could now run a geotargeted campaign using keywords for that band with a Tweet containing a link to buy the tickets. That way, the user who tweeted about the new album may soon see that Promoted Tweet [...]