Today’s Tipsheet: Top 50 Innovative Co’s | H.Depot Reaches Settlement | Target: Cheapest Toys / Sells 25% of Adele Albums
Target Goes Big on Discounts This Holiday Season, Bringing Some Headaches by Shannon Pettypiece at Bloomberg. “Its toy prices were 1.3 percent below those of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. during Black Friday and 5.2 percent cheaper than Amazon.com Inc., according to an online survey by Bloomberg Intelligence. Target also undercut Toys “R” Us Inc. and Sears Holdings Corp.’s Kmart chain, the survey found.” Read more
Amazon Received 12 times as Many Twitter Mentions as Walmart on Cyber Monday by Phil Wahba at Fortune. “…509,000 to 51,100. Target, though a much smaller digital retailer than Walmart, got 112,000 mentions. Though lets not give Target too much credit: a lot of that probably had to do the web site’s problems.” Read more
Cabela’s says it’s exploring strategic alternatives at CNBC. “Cabela’s is working with Guggenheim Securities as its financial advisor and Sidley Austin and Koley Jessen as its legal counsel to assist in the strategic review.” Read more
Target sells a quarter of Adele’s 4 million albums by Nick Halter at Minneapolis/St.Paul Business Journal. “The album…broke Target’s records for first-day album sales and for first-week album sales, said spokesman Lee Henderson.” Read more
Home Depot reaches settlement agreement with MasterCard over data breach by David Allison at Atlanta Business Chronicle. “However, attorneys representing the financial institutions suing Home Depot over the data breach are unhappy…”Home Depot began sending the communications hours before the Thanksgiving holiday, when Class Counsel and putative Class members would be otherwise occupied, requiring putative Class members to take action as soon as December 2…” Read more
Black Friday breaks record with 185K gun background checks by Nick Penzenstadler at USA Today. “More Americans had their backgrounds checked purchasing guns on Black Friday than any day in the on record, according to data released by the FBI this week.” Read more
Google, Battling Amazon, Sees Some Bright Spots in Holiday Shopping Data by Jason Del Rey at Recode. “ChannelAdvisor shows that Google shopping ads — otherwise known as Product Listing Ads — drove 24.3 percent more sales in the five shopping days starting with Thanksgiving than they did last year.” Read more
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Amazon Dominated 36% of Online Black Friday Sales, Says Slice by Katie Roof at TechCrunch. “A distant second, Best Buy brought in 8.23% of total online revenue, followed by Macy’s at 3.38%, Walmart at 3.35% and Nordstrom at 3.11%. It’s hard to say whether these impressive Amazon numbers are skewing high because Slice’s users are more active online shoppers.” Read more
Costco is the 14th Largest Pizza Chain in the US by Kate Taylor at Business Insider via MSN. “Ultimately, Costco is a bigger pizza chain than California Pizza Kitchen and nearly as big as CiCi’s Pizza — at least when it comes to sheer size.” Read more Top 100 Pizza Companies List
A mobile app enables Chinese consumers to buy from overseas retail websites by Frank Tong at Internet Retailer. “A startup has sold more than $100 million in six months by letting those consumers shop for imported products via a mobile app. The app, called Red, was launched in January 2014, but at that time did not sell any products, only allowing consumers to review foreign products.” Read more
How Big Food Is Using Natural Flavors to Win Consumer Favor by Annie Gasparro at WSJ. “In consumer tests, “Some people told us they hadn’t seen that color turquoise in any food besides Trix, so we knew even if we could match it, it wouldn’t look natural,” said Kate Gallager, a cereal developer at General Mills. She decided to leave out both colors in the new cereal with natural colors and flavors to be launched in January…” Read more (Subscription)
50 Most Innovative Companies (Amazon #9) by Alan Murray at Fortune. See the top 50 list
Target Has Record Cyber Monday via A Bullseye View. “Jason Goldberger, president of Target.com and Mobile: “Early in the day, Target.com orders were coming in twice as fast as our busiest day ever. And by early in the night, Target had already surpassed the previous record for online sales.” Read more
Are Genetically Modified Pigs Next After FDA Approves Salmon? by Jade Scipioni at Fox Business. “Whitelaw used a new technique called gene-editing, where the piglets genetic code has been flipped to make their immune system slightly closer to a warthog’s—a wild African pig that is more resistant to the swine fever disease.” Read more
German supermarket chain EDEKA releases tearjerker of a Christmas ad by Jessica Estepa at USA Today. “Germany’s EDEKA supermarket chain went for heartwrenching in their latest advertisement. The commercial is one minute and 46 seconds of an emotional roller coaster..” See the ad / Read more
Tipsheet Extra Stories
Walmart scam arriving in mailboxes
Amazon Working on Augmented Reality for the Living Room
Patent Lawsuits Set One-Day Record with 257 New Cases, Most Filed in Texas
Dick’s Sporting Goods Funds Girls Ice Hockey League In Anchorage, Alaska Through 2018
The CEO Paying Everyone $70,000 Salaries Has Something to Hide
Contact Jason Long, jlong@eyeonretail.net