Loyalty Marketing

Bentonville, Ark. – Wal-Mart is working with Autoinsurance.com to offer customers in Arkanas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas an auto insurance comparison service. AutoInsurance.com provides customers with multiple quotes from national insurance carriers including Progressive, Esurance, Safeco, The General and others within minutes.

Wal-Mart plans to offer the service nationwide in the coming months. The launch of this service stems from a successful pilot that took place in Pennsylvania during 2013.

Deerfield, Ill. -- Walgreens has been named the Best Integrated Mobile Experience for its Paperless Coupons program in the 18th Annual Webby Awards, which are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS).

Bellevue, Wash. – Eddie Bauer has signed a long-term renewal agreement with Alliance Data Systems Corp. to continue providing private label credit card services. Alliance Data will continue to deliver a marketing-driven private label credit card program that recognizes and rewards Eddie Bauer cardholders and complements the reward incentives the Eddie Bauer Friends rewards program offers customers.

Foot Locker Foundation, the charitable arm of Foot Locker, announced the 20 recipients of the Foot Locker Scholar Athletes Program. Each student will receive $20,000 in college scholarships, totaling $400,000.

The scholarship program, funded by the Foot Locker Foundation and administered by DoSomething.org, honors students who demonstrate academic excellence and exemplify strong leadership skills in sports and within their communities. To date, the program has awarded $1.2 million to help deserving high school student athletes pay for school.

Mountain View, Calif. - Airtight Networks, which provides in-store WiFi analytics such as how long customers stay and shop, how often they come in and marketing campaign effectiveness, is partnering with Frontera Consulting to package social media and retail intelligence capabilities with the Airtight platform. The new solution offers WiFi-based brand lifecycle management.

The Container Store’s net income soared by about 800% year-over-year during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013, to $18.34 million from $2.09 million. A substantial drop in effective tax rate, as well as lower net interest expense, helped drive the impressive growth in net income.

Net sales slipped from $217.02 million to $216.82 million, while same-store sales climbed 1.4%. The company cited severe weather as reducing sales.

Chicago -- Consumer confidence rose significantly in the first quarter of 2014, according to a MarketPulse survey from IRI. All age groups are reporting a more positive outlook — especially Millennials. A distressed consumer segment since the economic downturn began, this age group is showing the greatest rise in confidence.

As part of a competition between Fruity Pebbles and Cocoa Pebbles to see which cereal is more popular with fans, Post Foods announced two professional American soccer players to grace its cereal boxes. Omar Gonzalez of the Los Angeles Galaxy will join WWE star John Cena on Team Fruity, while Olympic gold medalist and forward of the Portland Thorns, Alex Morgan, will join basketball star Kyrie Irving on Team Cocoa.