TECHNOLOGY

Walmart is reviving a familiar icon to be the symbol of its low-price marketing.

The discounter announced it is bringing back its yellow smiley image, which has been in hibernation for some 10 years. The image can already be seen in some digital advertising and will expand to television ads and select in-store signage next week.

Online home furnishings retailer Wayfair Inc. is rolling out an in-house-developed display advertising platform that will deliver tailored messages and collect customer data.

Known as Magellan, the platform was built in-house by Wayfair’s engineering, data science, and marketing teams. Magellan leverages enhanced bidding models that allow the flexibility to continually enhance targeting capabilities over time. This targeting also lets third-party Wayfair Media Solutions users extend the reach of their advertising programs.

An innovative advocacy campaign to encourage shopping at physical stores JLL launched for Mother’s Day will debut at other key seasonal periods during the next three months.
 

Supermarkets and fast-casual restaurant brands took the top positions in an annual ranking of customer experience.   Publix, Chick-fil-A, and H-E-B earned top three positions in Temkin Group’s 2017 Temkin Experience Ratings, a cross-industry benchmark of customer experience.     Publix had a score of 84%, closely followed by Chick-fil-A and H-E-B, which both scored 83% in the seventh annual rating.  

Tanger Factory Outlet Centers operates, owns or has an ownership interest in 42 shopping centers nationwide that encompass 14.3 million square feet. The company’s centers are home to more than 3,000 stores operated by 470 different retailers, which affords Tanger President and CEO Steve Tanger a unique vantage point on the retail industry. He spoke recently with Chain Store Age about the outlet shopping industry his father pioneered 35 years ago.

Purchases from mobile devices continue to rise and upping ad spend is driving results for retailers.

According to data from Rakuten Marketing., purchases from smartphones that originated from a display ad on a computer increased by 52% between the third and fourth quarter of 2015. During that time tablet purchases that resulted from a display ad on a computer grew by 125%.

Many of the roughly 100,000 average daily visitors to the Mall of America arrive with an expectation of being able to access the Internet via a fast and free Wi-Fi network. Living up to that expectation required the expansive property to rely on several key partners. When Mall of America decided it was time to offer free Wi-Fi for its 40 million annual guests, it turned to Garland, Texas-based AmpThink to design, build and manage the high density wireless network running on Cisco hardware throughout the 5.6 million square foot mall.

Traditional supermarket retailers are facing competition on all fronts, from online pure players, discount grocery chains and from the extreme-value general merchandise retailers (dollar stores). While dollar stores remain a niche segment, consumables are becoming a more important part of the sector, according to a report on forbes.com.