Digital Marketing

Riding the subway just got beautiful thanks to L’Oréal Paris as the beauty brand will launch the first-ever intelligent vending experience in the New York City subway system Monday, Nov. 4.

PriceGrabber, a leading distributed e-commerce platform and shopping site, conducted its Winter Holiday Shopping Survey and found that 69% of consumers plan to shop at the same retailers at which they shopped last year.

San Jose, Calif. -- Lance Thornswood, longtime general manager of user experience, e-commerce and creative for Target.com and interactive marketing, has been tapped to head up inRetail, a new division being launched by The Stephenz Group, one of Silicon Valley’s largest independent branding, marketing and digital agencies. The specialized division will address the growing consumer demand for omni-channel retail.

St. Petersburg, Fla. -- HSN (HSNi) is leveraging the cumulative power of its portfolio of leading lifestyle brands, which include HSN, Frontgate and Ballard Designs, to launch More the Merrier, a multi-platform holiday campaign. The campaign will include digital gift guides; special promotional offers, contests and sweepstakes.

Fort Worth, Texas – RadioShack has pulled out all the stops for its new hometown location in Sundance Square in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, opening a retro-styled store that speaks to the heritage of the brand and locale. Set to open Oct. 30, it will be the tenth RadioShack concept store to open nationwide, but the first to feature a custom design.

Wayne, N.J. – Toys ‘R’ Us is launching its digital wish finder, a dedicated website providing an online version of its “The Great Big Toys"R"Us Wish Finder” holiday catalog, on Nov. 2. The retailer is also launching The Toys"R"Us Wish List Wizard, a free iOS and Android app that turns parents’ smartphones into a scanner and lets kids scan items they want in-store for automatic inclusion on a digital wish list.

Promotion and pricing intelligence leader Market Track has acquired Competitrack to bolster its digital and electronic media capabilities and provide richer insights to retailers and consumer goods companies.
 
Chicago-based Market Track provides clients with retail promotion, real-time e-commerce and pricing intelligence solutions in North America while New York-based Competitrack is a leading provider of directly placed product and image data across 22 media channels including TV, print, radio, online display, online video, social and mobile advertising.

First Data Corporation, a leading global e-commerce and payment processing provider, has acquired Perka, a smart loyalty platform.

Perka became a First Data subsidiary on Oct. 4, and continues to operate autonomously as an innovative entrepreneurial company led by its current management and product development team. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
 

Toys ‘R’ Us plans to launch an online version of its “The Great Big Toys"R"Us Wish Finder” holiday catalog Nov. 2. The retailer is also launching The Toys"R"Us Wish List Wizard, a free iOS and Android app that turns parents’ smartphones into a scanner and lets kids scan items they want in-store for automatic inclusion on a digital wish list.

Seattle -- Starbucks is now offering gift cards that can be sent via Twitter. Under the company’s new “tweet-a-coffee program,” customers in the U.S. can sync their Starbucks account to their Twitter account and tweet to @tweetacoffee and the Twitter handle of the gift recipient, which will then send the recipient a $5 digital eGift.