Attitudes: Retailers

Waban, Mass. -- Chick-fil-A and Sonic Drive-In deliver the best customer experience in the fast food industry, according to the 2014 Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual ranking of companies based on a study of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Chicago – Morale is the biggest challenge facing retailers trying to fill and maintain their staffs. According to a new survey of 168 retail staffing managers and HR executives conducted by Harris Poll for CareerBuilder and WorkInRetail.com, 37% of respondents cited lifting employee morale as a challenge.

The following are the top 10 staffing challenges faced by retail hiring managers:

1. Lifting employee morale – 37%
2. Retaining top talent – 36%
3. Maintaining productivity levels – 29%

York, Pa. -- Bon -Ton Stores said its CEO, Brendan Hoffman, will step down early next year. The announcement follows a disappointing fourth quarter for the company.

Hoffman, a former CEO of Lord & Taylor, will leave Bon-Ton on Feb. 7, 2015, when his contract expires. He also will step down as director. Hoffman cited "strictly personal reasons" for his decision to leave.

He was appointed CEO of Bon-Ton in February 2012.

Kmart and Sears are among a group of companies identified as “the least engaging brands of 2014,” in a recently released index of customer loyalty.

"A brand can't do well in today's marketplace if it can't engage consumers, no matter how many ads are run, and no matter how much social networking one does," said Robert Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys, a New York-based brand loyalty and emotional engagement research consultancy.

National Retail Federation president and CEO Matthew Shay and chief economist Jack Kleinhenz issued a response to the organization’s February jobs report.

“While there are signs of modest momentum in the economy, now is not the time to play partisan politics with the recovery by forcing federal mandates on retailers and small business owners like an increase in the minimum wage,” Shay said. “Such policy decisions could hamper economic growth and actually drive up the unemployment rate.”

Los Angeles — The Lipsey Company has named CBRE Group the top global brand in commercial real estate for the 13th consecutive year.

A training and professional development firm specializing in commercial real estate, Lipsey has surveyed commercial real estate professionals on their perceptions of the industry’s leading brands since 2001. More than 100,000 U.S. and international professionals participated in the 2014 survey. Respondents included property owners, investors, lenders, occupiers, brokers and property managers.

Chicago -- An overwhelming majority of retail CFOs (96%) expect merger & acquisition (M&A) activity to increase or remain consistent with 2013 levels during 2014. According to the new BDO Retail Compass Survey of CFOs, two-thirds of CFOs anticipate that the majority of deal activity will occur in the U.S., followed distantly by Asia-Pacific (17%) and Europe (8%).

Washington, D.C. -- The National Retail Federation welcomed a proposal to reform the nation’s tax structure announced Wednesday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., saying it would strengthen the economy and jobs.

Atlanta – More than 50% of brands don’t have a strategy in place to manage responses to social media complaints from customers. Results of a recent survey conducted by Social Media Marketing University (SMMU) shows that 58.2% of brands receive customer complaints via social media “occasionally,” 10.9% receive them “somewhat often” and 4.9% receive them “very often.”

In total, almost 75% of brands receive social media complaints. In addition, survey results show:

San Francisco – More than 70% of time on responsive web design (RWD) is spent on the back end in areas such as integration and infrastructure. According to a new report from Moovweb and Forrester Research, 63% of 146 surveyed U.S. companies using RWD today believe that this technique is not suitable for long-term use, suggesting that RWD is largely viewed as a short-term, tactical approach to enterprise mobility.