Marketing Tactics

Consumers in recent years have shown a seemingly insatiable appetite for special offers and discounts. During the holiday season, retailers generated billions of dollars by rolling-out high-profile promotional strategies – but was this activity actually profitable?   For many retailers, the holiday season lead to significant profit erosion. According to DynamicAction’s Retail Index, 44% of all orders last year were sold on promotion. At the same time, however, retailers saw a 24% reduction in margins.   

A cloud computing/e-commerce giant heads up Fast Company’s annual ranking of the 10 most innovative companies in retail. Amazon not only topped the retail sector category, it also came in number one in the overall World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies listing. (Rounding out the top five: Google, Uber, Apple and Snap.)

One independent grocer is making a move to compete with larger chains. 

Another corporate ranking, another first place finish by Amazon.   The online giant came out on top in Harris Poll’s annual corporate reputation rankings report. The poll measures the reputations of the 100 most visible companies in the United States as perceived by the general public.        

The Bon-Ton Stores is expanding an initiative that gives its network of stores a more local flavor.    The department store retailer will add "Close to Home in-store shops to at least 100 stores this year after a successful launch in 45 stores in fall 2016.   

Starbucks has extended its social gifting promotions into China, where it has launched a major expansion program to double its stores within the next five years.      The coffee giant’s new “Say It With Starbucks” program, created by Starbucks and Weixin, China’s leading mobile social communications app, enables users to gift a Starbucks beverage or digital gift card via a social gifting platform.   

Watch out Victoria’s Secret — Amazon is moving onto your turf.   The online retail giant plans to launch a line of inexpensive bras in the United States, reported The Wall Street Journal.   The bras will be priced around $10, according to the report, which is significantly lower than the bras sold by Victoria's Secret and other lingerie retailers.   

Web searches are often inconsistent due to irrelevant keywords and content, making it more important than ever for brands to use more retail-specific factors to stay relevant.    Details that can improve brands’ visibility in Google searches are shared in the “E-commerce Ranking Factors 2017 — Ten Things eCommerce Sites Need to Know to Rank on Google,” a report from Searchmetrics that analyzed the top 20 desktop search results on Google for over 6,000 industry-specific keywords.