“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