Digital Marketing

Amazon has sweetened the value proposition for its Prime members this holiday season by offering a 30 minute head start on select Lightning Deals on Amazon.com and daily sales events at MyHabit.com.

The early access deals feature is the latest enhancement to Amazon’s Prime membership which is best known for providing free two day shipping to members who pay a $99 annual fee. The feature brings elements of the competitive shopping behavior to Amazon by creating a sense of urgency to make purchases before the goods are gone.

By Mike Moriarty, A.T. Kearney

Well, well, well. Amazon is opening a store.  Isn’t that nice!

Now, does that make the company an enormous on-line retailer with “a store”, or does it make Amazon a small to mid-sized retailer with an enormous online presence?

It almost doesn’t make any difference — and that in itself makes a difference. Welcome to planet Earth, Amazon!

Morrisville. N.C. – Same-store sales soared at Amazon.com and EBay during September 2014. According to e-commerce technology provider ChannelAdvisor, Amazon's September same-store sales growth came in at 37.9%, a decrease compared to August's 45.1%.  

Even with a decrease from August to September, 37.9% is more than twice the growth rate of e-commerce.

Grapevine, Texas -- GameStop announced the first in a series of updates to its GameStop app on mobile devices, and a chance for users who download the new app to win 1,000,000 PowerUp Rewards points.

Sephora, Express, Art of Shaving and Things Remembered are among the retailers using a new, in-mall mobile retail solution from StepsAway.

New York -- One-quarter (25%) of U.S. consumers plans to spend more on holiday shopping this year up from 20% in 2013, and spending on holiday gifts is expected to average $718, according to Accenture’s annual holiday shopping survey.

The survey also found consumer enthusiasm for Black Friday shopping has reached its highest level in eight years. Two-thirds of respondents (66%) said they are likely to shop on Black Friday, compared to 55% who planned to do so in 2013.

More than 362,000 votes were cast online in an innovative approach Walmart used to determine how $3.7 million in donations would be allocated among food banks nationwide.

By Jeremy Geiger, Retailigence

The headline is bold, but yes, 2014 is the year of hyperlocal mobile advertising, and there are three very important trends converging today to make this happen. The first is smartphone proliferation; according to eMarketer, smartphone users worldwide will total a record-breaking two billion in 2014. Now billions of people around the world have the devices needed to make hyperlocal ads possible.