Wednesday Tipsheet: McMillon on CNBC | H.Depot Acquires | Kroger Turkey Fight

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This Morning:  Walmart’s Doug McMillon Appears on CNBC by Matthew Belvedere at CNBC. “This 2 percent to 3 percent growth range number just feels like it’s kind of perpetual,” he said on “Squawk Box” from the Business Roundtable meeting in Washington, D.C. “We’re kind of like we were last year year. And as I look ahead to next year, it feels like more of the same.” See the video / Read more

 

“Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Has Chosen an Heir Apparent” by Jason Del Rey at Recode. “There is a succession plan,” Bezos said in an onstage interview on Tuesday with Henry Blodget, CEO of Business Insider, in which Bezos is an investor. “There is someone who would take over.” Blodget, of course, asked Bezos to divulge who it is. Bezos didn’t budge, calling it a “secret,” before releasing his trademark bellowing laugh.” Read more

 

Target CMO Jeff Jones On Crisis As Catalyst (And The Real Story Behind ‘Alex From Target’) by Jennifer Rooney at Forbes.” See the video / Read more

 

“Home Depot to acquire HD Supply’s Hardware Solutions unit” at Atlanta Bus. Chronicle. “The Home Depot Inc. will buy HD Supply’s Hardware Solutions unit, formerly known as Crown Bolt, for an undisclosed amount…The deal is expected to close by the end of 2014.” Read more

 

“Walgreen index identifies states with largest number of flu cases” by Ellen Jean Hirst at Chicago Tribune. “Richard Ashworth, Walgreens president of retail and pharmacy operations: “With the ability to generate hyperlocal data that’s as specific as a single ZIP code, the Walgreens Flu Index can become a platform to improve preventive health measures throughout the season, including immunization rates.” Read more

 

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“Wal-Mart’s South Africa Growth Slowed by Mall Food Fight” by Janice Kew at Bloomberg. “Game, a chain owned by Wal-Mart that’s known for household goods ranging from soap to electronics, is encountering opposition as it adds fresh produce to the mix. Rivals with stores in South African shopping centers that have Game outlets have sued to enforce lease clauses barring new food retailers.” Read more

 

“Kroger in middle of Texas turkey fight” by Steve Watkins at Cincy Bus. Courier. “Dallas City Council wound up passing an ordinance earlier this year that levied a 5-cent fee for any bag that a retailer uses. The retailers didn’t like that. Whether coincidental or not, Kroger opted not to donate turkeys this year to a program called Baskets of Hope, which hands out turkeys to needy people just before Thanksgiving. Kroger has donated for years. It just so happens that Dallas City Council member Dwaine Caraway runs Baskets of Hope and was one of the more vocal proponents of the bag tax.” Read more

 

“Target Loses Bid To KO Banks’ Data Breach Litigation” by Jonathan Randles at Law 360. “A Minnesota federal judge left intact most of a consolidated class action against Target Corp. over losses payment card-issuing banks suffered as a result of the retailer’s massive data breach, ruling Tuesday that Target owed banks a duty to protect customer credit and debit card information from hackers.” Read more (Subscription)

 

UK: More than half of Christmas shoppers plan to ‘Showroom’ on mobile this year by Paul Skeldon at Internet Retailing. “Under 35s are the most ‘handy’ shoppers, with 67% finding the best deal on a handheld device while out shopping.” Read more

 

“The Fresh Market opens its first store in Dallas” by Maria Halkias at Dallas News. “The Fresh Market will become the latest grocer to enter the competitive Dallas-Fort Worth market Wednesday when it opens the first of its four local stores in the works.” Read more

 

HuffPo: “Walmart Denies Stalling In Tracy Morgan Lawsuit” “Plaintiffs’ accusation that Wal-Mart is somehow behind Mr. Roper’s motion in an attempt to delay discovery is simply false,” the company’s attorneys wrote.” Read more

 

“Woman Stumps Orchard Road’s OSHbot with “I’m Looking for a Boyfriend” by Jonathan Bloom at ABC 7 News. “What we actually do is use a process called science fiction prototyping, where we give all our marketing research and trend data to professional published science fiction writers,” said Lowes Innovation Labs Director Kyle Nel.” See the video / Read more

 

Tuesday Tipsheet: Wmart’s Ashe on CNBC | Target’s Rosso Iview | Gun Friday & Hells Angels

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“Online Sales Grew 8% on Cyber Monday vs. 13-15% Projection” at Reuters. “Consumers are not holding back their purchases for deals on certain days anymore and that trend is becoming increasingly clear,” said Jay Henderson, strategy program director at IBM.” Read more

 

…IBM: Mobile Accounted for 38% of Traffic & 20% of Sales on Cyber Monday “Consumers spent more money on their desktops with an average order value of $136.60 compared to their mobile devices at $116.96, a difference of 16.8 percent.” Read the release

 

…IBM: Facebook referrals drove an average of $126.31 per order, Pinterest referrals averaged $98.69 per order Read the release

 

“Supervalu director got $3M for 10 months of work” by Sam Black at Minn./St.Paul Bus. Journal. “Robert Miller spent 10 months as non-executive chairman of Supervalu Inc. For his contribution running the board meetings, working with new CEO Sam Duncan and for presiding over an 11-minute annual meeting in Bloomington in 2013, Miller received stock compensation worth $3.05 million.” Read more

 

“Wal-Mart Cyber Monday online sales break record” by Terri Cullen at CNBC. “Wal-Mart Stores on Tuesday announced that online sales broke company records, with more than 1.5 billion pages viewed on Walmart.com between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday.” Read more

 

Walmart’s Neil Ashe on CNBC  “Ashe says 70 percent of Black Friday traffic was on mobile.” See the video

 

“Target Builds TV Ad Impact via Digital Tools, Brent Rosso explains” by Robert Andrews at Beet.TV. “We are a very large TV advertiser,” Target digital media VP Brent Rosso tells Beet.TV. “A lot of our approach has been copied in the marketplace. You hear a jingle (in the ad) and you used to say, ‘That’s Target’ – now it could be a number of different (brands). “To a certain degree, we’ve lost a little bit of the edge there – this digital approach is our way of taking it back.” See the video / Read more

 

Help Wanted: “Retailers seeking cyber head for industry group” by Cory Bennett at The Hill. “According to a job description, the center’s head “will actively engage private sector stakeholders and government agencies to facilitate information sharing and strengthen the retail industry’s capability and capacity to detect, prevent, respond to, and mitigate computerized attacks on retail networks.” Read more

 

WSJ: “Basic Costs Squeeze Families” by Ryan Knutson & Theo Francis. “The data—drawn from 14,000 households that either keep diaries on their spending for two weeks or agree to quarterly interviews—helps explain why so many retailers are turning in persistently lackluster results, and why the household-products business has shown virtually no growth for years.” Read more (Subscription)

 

“Sam Walton’s Granddaughter Has Plans To Fix Public Education In America” by Luisa Kroll at Fortune. “There are an estimated 6,440 public charters–defined as schools that receive some public funding but operate independently–currently operating nationwide. The Waltons have provided over $350 million in seed money to help start more than 1,600 of them, situated mostly in poor urban areas where minorities are in the majority.” Read more

 

“Walmart to cut 250 jobs in China” by Tom Mitchell at Financial Times. “Walmart is to cut 250 jobs in its Chinese operational division and shutter a regional management office in the northeast as it ploughs ahead with its expansion and restructuring plan.” Read more

 

“Home Depot & Lowe’s Keep Radio Managers Happy” at Radio Ink. “The Home Depot retained its number one position airing 55,262 commercials during Thanksgiving week. Lowes moved up to number two, from five, with just over 31,000…Walgreens moved from 14th to 6th.” Read more

 

“Black Friday was Second Biggest Day for Gun Sales Ever” by James Covert at NY Post. “Gun sales surged on the day after Thanksgiving, with more than 175,000 background checks submitted from gun dealers, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Read more 

 

H-E-B and Trader Joe’s Earn Highest Emotion Ratings See the rankings

 

Atlanta: Restoration Hardware Aims to Give Retail a ‘Soul’ “Our goal is to transform the traditional retail model from a way to shop to a way to live,” Mr. Friedman continues. “Most shopping centers and retail malls are archaic windowless boxes, lacking any sense of humanity.” Mr. Friedman concluded, “We don’t want to change the face of retail, but rather give it a soul.” Read the release

 

“Tesco CEO Dave Lewis to Assume Direct Control of U.K. Operations” by Celeste Perri at Bloomberg. “(Dave) Lewis will take the position on an interim basis, the Cheshunt, England-based retailer said on its website yesterday. He takes over from Robin Terrell, who has headed the unit since Tesco divulged the accounting irregularities in September.” Read more

 

“Hells Angels Members Descend Upon Local Walmart for a Purchase That Brings Store Manager to the Scene” by Oliver Darcy at The Blaze. “A group of Hells Angels members visited a Fresno, California Walmart on Black Friday to purchase the store’s entire supply of bicycles so the organization could provide them to needy kids.” See the video / Read more

Monday Tipsheet: Black Friday Downer | Forecasts Hold | Amazon’s Kiva

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“Black Friday Fizzles With Consumers as Sales Tumble 11%” by Lauren Coleman-Lochner at Bloomberg. “The NRF had predicted that 140.1 million customers would visit retailers last weekend, a small decline from last year’s 140.3 million. Instead, only 133.7 million showed up. An effort by some retailers to put items on sale ahead of Thanksgiving may have contributed to sluggish demand on Black Friday, Shay said.” Read more

 

ShopperTrak: Sales at retail stores totaled about $12.29 billion on Thursday and Friday, down 0.5 percent from last year at Reuters via Yahoo. “The research firm stuck by its forecast for November and December sales to increase 3.8 percent.” Read more

 

‘Black Friday’ Fades as Weekend Retail Sales Sink by Shelly Banjo at WSJ. “Shoppers spent an average of $380.95, down 6.4% from a year earlier.” Read more (Subscription)

 

Black Friday 2014: Ecommerce desktop pages were 20% slower than in 2013, mobile pages were 57% slower at Venture Beat. “The five fastest desktop sites, according to Catchpoint, were H&M, Costco, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Etsy.” Read more

 

One-third of Black Friday Online Revenue Was Mobile  Read the release

 

For the first time, online traffic from mobile devices outpaced traditional PCs on Thanksgiving Day  Read the release

 

“Data breaches now industrywide problem: Target CEO” by Tom DiChristopher at CNBC. See the video

 

“The Girls Scouts are going digital for the first time to sell you cookies” by Leanne Italie at Star-Tribune. “For the first time in nearly 100 years, Girl Scouts of the USA will allow its young go-getters to push their wares using a mobile app or personalized websites. But only if their scout councils and guardians say OK.” Read more

 

Alex from Target Interview at WXYZ-Detroit ABC  See the video

 

“Wal-Mart investors to reconsider gun sales after NYC church challenge” by Carey Reed at PBS. “U.S. District Judge Leonard Stark handed down the ruling in favor of New York City’s Trinity Wall Street church, allowing for their original proposal to be presented and voted on by shareholders in 2015.” Read more

 

“Retailers target Alibaba in online sales tax push” by Martin Matishak at The Hill. “Thanks to the online sales tax loophole this Chinese company will decimate our local retailers. Unless Congress ends special tax treatment for Alibaba and other online giants, Main Street will never look the same,” the narrator states.” Read more / See the ad

 

“Army of Amazon robots ready to help fulfill orders on Cyber Monday” by Andrea Chang at LA Times. “The robots — more than 15,000 of them companywide — are part of Amazon’s high-tech effort to get orders to customers faster. By lifting shelves of Amazon products off the ground and speedily delivering them to employee stations, the robots dramatically reduce the time it takes for workers to find items and put them into boxes for shipment.” Read more

 

“Attention shoppers: Customer tracking in cereal aisle” by Jonnelle Davis at News & Record. “Lowes Foods and Wake Forest University business students are watching you…Beahm said students in Wake Forest’s MBA program will analyze the large volume of data gleaned from the lab as part of their business studies, and faculty will use it to do research. The labs are set up in 10 Lowes grocery stores in North Carolina.” Read more

 

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Eye-on-Retail is a daily tipsheet read by thousands of Retail Merchants & Executives every weekday morning. Eye-on-Retail is unique because it’s timely, smart and fun. It’s created early AM every weekday and delivered between 7-8 am CST. We love data, earnings reports, executive presentations and stories off the beaten path that get at what’s happening in the world of retail. Contact us @ info@shiftmarketinggroup.net.