Digital Marketing

Gift cards are exceedingly popular with Millennials, as new research from the Wharton School’s Baker Retailing Center and The NPD Group found. Here is fresh insight as to why:

Members of Target Corp.’s senior leadership team including CEO Brian J. Cornell, chief marketing officer Jeff Jones, and chief creative officer Todd Waterbury attended the recent TED Conference in Vancouver. In a post on the Target Bullseye Blog, the executives describe learnings such as the importance of empowering dreamers, the power of trust and reputation in social business, and why originals choose different Web browsers than everybody else.

The commercial real estate community is somewhat of a paradox. For an industry that is literally built on the premise of creating new and exciting destinations, there is a tendency to do things the way they have always been done.

The list of social media networks offering or planning to offer retail functionality reportedly just got longer. According to Re/Code, Joanna Coles, editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and a board member of the Snapchat social network, publicly stated that Snapchat intends to offer e-commerce. The announcement came during a presentation Coles made at the Re/Code Code/Media conference in Dana Point, California, on Feb. 17. [Re/Code]

There are a lot of options in decorating a home, and Los Angeles-based specialty home furnishings retailer Z Gallerie wants to match its offerings to customer tastes.

“We’ve been known for one particular style which our customers love and that we’ve done quite well with,” said Chris Nicklo, VP of customer and chief marketing officer of Z Gallerie, during an interview with Chain Store Age. “But to grow, we knew we would need to appeal to a broader spectrum of customers.”

E-commerce platform Shopify wants to help social media content creators expand into the world of online sales.

Shopify is partnering with FameBit, a Santa Monica, California-based platform that allows social media influencers and brands to collaborate for product and service endorsements. The new partnership will allow more than 31,000 of FameBit’s influencers to leverage Shopify’s VIP program and technology to expand into e-commerce.

Move over Big Lots and Ollie’s Bargain Outlet. Kmart is ready to begin making opportunistic purchases of closeouts and liquidated good in keeping with its strategic vision to make shopping fun again.

Kmart said its strategic merchandising group is actively sourcing extreme-value deals by purchasing the inventory of liquidated companies and capitalizing on other opportunistic situations to obtain outstanding products and offer unbeatable value.

Barneys New York has opened flagship in downtown Manhattan on the same block that the upscale retailer was founded on in 1923 and maintained a presence through the late 1990's.