Tue. Tipsheet: Costco ‘Shocked’ w/Tmall | Target’s Annie ‘Controversy’ | Kroger Expands Online Test

/in

 

Luxe buyer not who you may think by Krystina Gustafson at CNBC. “57.5 percent of luxury spenders are actually male, and many are of Asian and Middle Eastern descent…The report, which examined 30,000 high-end shoppers, found that luxury brands lose 50 percent of their top customers each year by not correctly identifying them.” Read more

 

Study: In-store pickup does not save U.S. shoppers much time by Deepa Seetharaman at Reuters. “According to a small study to be released on Tuesday by retail-intelligence firm StellaService, in-store pickup saved shoppers just 96 seconds on average compared with searching for items on their own. In a few cases, in-store pickup took longer.” Read more

 

Target Outrages Customers After Debuting Controversial Annie Ads at Perez Hilton. “A Change.org petition has been started by L’Sean Rinique urging Target to remedy this by including more African-American models in the ads and issuing an apology to the film’s star Quvenzhané Wallis, and has already garnered several hundred signatures from supporters.” Read more

 

A Handful of Blockbuster E-Commerce Acquisitions That Could Happen in 2015 by Jason Del Rey at Recode. “Walmart buys PayPal. Not the sexiest M&A possibility — especially for PayPal employees — but sources say the idea has been discussed by Walmart execs in the last few months…Walmart buys Wish. Wish, a mobile shopping app, is on fire. It has been one of the Top 10 shopping apps on the iPhone for much of this year.” Read more

 

Costco ‘shocked’ by one-day sales of $3.5M on Alibaba’s Tmall site by Tricia Duryee at GeekWire. “Our performance on Singles Day shocked and surprised our management and it totally transformed our annual business plan,” according to a statement issued by the company. “In 2015 we hope to offer Chinese consumers a richer variety of products through the platform and also improve their overall shopping experience.” Read more

 

WSJ: The 5 CMOs to Watch in 2015 (Target’s Jeff Jones #2) by Steven Perlberg. Read more (Subscription) 

 

Kroger expands online shopping test in Cincinnati by Alexander Coolidge at Cincinnati.com. “Kroger hopes to expand the service at another planned Kroger store: a proposed Marketplace store at Ohio 4 and Kyles Station Road that would replace and upgrade the Kroger at 5420 Liberty-Fairfield Road, pending local approval. The new store would be more than twice the size of the existing store.” Read more

 

San Diego: Target Promises No Starbucks at South Park Store at San Diego 7 NBC. “The company will commission a local artist to create artwork inside the store, to fit in with the aesthetics of the South Park community. The store will offer organic produce sourced from California when possible. “As we’ve mentioned before, we will not feature a Starbucks in this TargetExpress store because we know the local coffee cart is a popular neighborhood fixture and a gathering place for residents,” (Kristen) Emmons said.” Read more

 

Internet shopping has made it harder to hide holiday presents by Carrie Wells & Lorraine Mirabella at Baltimore Sun via Seattle Times. “Instead of hiding gifts in the closet or car trunk, shoppers on the Internet now must intercept the delivery person, hide email receipts in obscure folders, scrub their Internet history and buy with gift cards so a nosy spouse doesn’t spot charges on the credit card.” Read more

 

And the three most important retail themes for 2015 are…by Fred Imbert at CNBC. Read more / See the video

 

2015 could be year of first smart-home hacks by John Shinal at USA Today. “Eventually, the Internet of Things may be as convenient and hazardous for consumers as the Internet of PCs and smartphones.” Read more

 

Yesterday on Today (NBC): What are the best and worst products of 2014? (Walmart’s Great Value coffee and Family Dollar’s paper towels make worst list)  See the video

 

Texas: Possible prank leads to injury in Walmart by Sean Larsen at KXII 12 News. “One of them had to pull the seat,” Wesley Howard said, describing how he was freed from the restroom. “When one of them was putting some sort of acetone on it, so when they did they pulled the skin off the rear-end of this side of my thigh.” Read more / See the video

 

Happy Holidays!  Eye-on-Retail will return after the New Year.

***

Eye-on-Retail is a tipsheet read by thousands of Retail Merchants & Executives. It’s created and delivered early AM every weekday. 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 at info@shiftmarketinggroup.net.