Marketing Tactics

San Francisco -- General Growth Properties announced the launch of the first-ever marketplace at Stonestown Galleria’s in San Francisco. The marketplace is a partnership with SFMade, a California 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that promotes goods and services manufactured, designed and produced in the Bay Area.

Brick-and-mortar sales metrics were below expectations in September, but not all was lost.

According to the September 2015 Retail Performance Pulse report from brick-and-mortar analytics firm RetailNext Inc., traffic declined at the lowest rate since January of this year.

Following months of speculation, Amazon.com is officially launching Handmade at Amazon. The new online store features handmade items crafted and sold directly by artisans, and is a direct challenge to Etsy Inc.

Handmade at Amazon offers more than 80,000 handcrafted items from around the world. Customers can shop by country, locally, or by individual artisan profile. Shoppers can also browse by product category, including jewelry, home décor, artwork, stationery and party supplies, kitchen and dining, and furniture.

It’s not quite a “dislike” button, but Facebook is expanding how users can respond to posts.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook is testing “Reactions,” a set of six emoji that expand upon the “Like” button, in Ireland and Spain.

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:

The “paint ‘n’ sip” phenomenon, whereby friends, neighbors, and colleagues come together to paint, drink and relax, is showing no signs of slowing down and that’s good news for a Louisiana-based company.

Painting with a Twist, which bills itself as the original and largest paint-and-sip franchise, has opened more than one new location each week this year, and is on track to reach its goal of 100 new locations in 2015.

In the 1960s, when our company was founded, cutting edge was a typewritten, hand-illustrated catalog. Since then our technology has moved on considerably but our focus is the same: Using the latest systems and techniques to create an exceptional, engaging customer experience.

Almost every retailer worth their salt understands the importance of omnichannel in achieving this today - but actually finding and implementing the technology to do it properly is the hard part.

Retailers constantly experiment to serve customer needs in new ways and HSN has taken that concept to a new level with an initiative involving Ford.
 
Through the end of October, HSN and Ford Motor Company are offering a “preferred price event” based on the core value proposition of a prenegotiated price on a wide range of the automaker’s models.
 

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.