Social Media

Food Lion has come up with an artistic way to connect with the communities it serves and feed the hungry at the same time.

The retailer is inviting kids ages 5-14 to participate in its Food Lion Feeds "Summers Without Hunger" Design-a-Reusable-Bag Contest. The winning design will be featured on next year's Food Lion Feeds reusable bag, which will be sold in more than 1,100 stores in June. The campaign is anticipated to help provide another 1 million meals to families and children in need. 

The world’s largest social network is testing new e-commerce eatures, including a dedicated shopping section, Re/code reported. Facebook’s push comes as other social sites, including Twitter, are exploring social shopping.

Social commerce is finally here.

Various retailers and social media platforms have been experimenting with letting consumers make purchases directly from social networks for some time. But in the past few weeks a flurry of new and expanded social commerce options have been introduced.

Placing ads in tweets just got easier and more precise for retailers.

The retail revolution may not be televised, but it will be digitized.

The new Q3 E-commerce Pulse from predictive analytics platform provider Custora shows that e-commerce revenue grew a healthy 11.8% year-over-year in third quarter 2015. E-commerce transactions rose an almost identical 11.6%.

Mobile continued to grow in significance as a channel for e-commerce in the quarter. Phones and tablets made up a combined 28.7% of e-commerce transactions, up from 23.1% of orders during the same time the prior year.

For the 2015 holiday shopping season, the dollar figure forecast on consumer spend is less relevant for retailers, according to PwC's 2015 Holiday Outlook. Rather, a deeper understanding of the complex retail landscape and the focus on building long-term shopper relationships is how retailers will define success this year.

PwC outlines 10 big trends that are expected to drive the 2015 holiday shopping season:

Not only is a picture worth 1,000 words, but it may be worth $1,000.

A new survey from Adobe shows that consumers have a very positive response to “shoppable media” – online images and videos that serve as direct transactional tools.

By now, you’ve probably heard that Facebook will be testing a “dislike” button. Unconfirmed reports say the button will be designed to let users express empathy for posts about negative events, such as the death of a loved one.

Assuming Facebook does introduce a dislike button, retailers will need to decide whether to enable it on their Facebook pages. Here are two pros and one con a dislike button would pose to retailers.

Pro #1: Instant Sentiment

Another day, another social network makes it easier for consumers to purchase goods without leaving a retailer’s social page.

Pinterest is adding three major new e-commerce platforms and a whole bunch of retailers to its existing “Buyable Pins” feature.

Naturalizer is looking to engage with its core shopper on an emotional level by launching a digital marketing campaign that focuses on how style transcends generations.

The Naturalizer brand plans to feature the special bond between mother and daughter in this omnichannel campaign, as seen through the Durso, Sambucini and Baker families. Each family has styled a different Naturalizer shoe – with mother and daughter adding their own twist.