Consumer Attitudes & Behavior

Irvine, Calif. -- Merchandise returns in 2013 cost U.S. retailers more than $267 billion in lost sales. That’s one of the findings contained in The Retail Equation’s 2013 Consumer Returns in the Retail Industry study, which analyzes results from the National Retail Federation’s annual survey on merchandise returns and the 2012 Canadian Retail Security Survey from The Retail Council of Canada National Retail Federation.

Washington, D.C. — A day after he gives his State of the Union speech, President Obama will follow up Wednesday with visits to a Costco store in Maryland and a steel plant in Pennsylvania, USA Today reported.

During his stop at the Costco in Lanham, which is located about 15 miles from the White House, Obama is expected to deliver remarks on the economy, the report said.

Beloit, Wis. -- Almost one-third of U.S., consumers (30%) plan to buy a new TV in 2014 and of those, 32% said during Super Bowl sales, while 25% said during Black Friday. A new consumer survey from FatWallet also revealed price will have the most influence on TV purchases, with more than half saying they plan to spend less than $500, while one-in-four plan to spend more than $700.

London -- Retailer assumptions that displaying faces, large text and the word “free” on their websites will draw customer attention may not be correct. Recent analysis from an eye-tracking study by neuroscience artificial intelligence technology provider EyeQuant shows all three of these assumptions are less true than many retailers think.

Retailer assumptions that displaying faces, large text and the word “free” on their websites will draw customer attention may not be correct. Recent analysis from an eye-tracking study by neuroscience artificial intelligence technology provider EyeQuant shows all three of these assumptions are less true than many retailers think.

New York -- The Deloitte Consumer Spending Index, which tracks consumer cash flow as an indicator of future consumer spending, rose in December 2013. The Index, which comprises four components, tax burden, initial unemployment claims, real wages and real home prices, increased to 4.3 in December from 3.9 the prior month.

Although Starbucks’ profit in the first quarter rose a better-than-expected 25% to $540.7 million from $432 million in the year-ago period, same-store sales missed Wall Street expectations.

Same-store sales rose 5%, beneath Wall Street expectations of 5.9%. Revenue for the quarter ended Dec. 29, 2013 rose 12% to $4.24 billion from $3.79 billion.

Same-store sales in the Americas region also rose 5%, while analysts had expected a 6.4% increase.

The Michigan Retailers Association (MRA) said that Michigan's retail industry had a poor holiday shopping season thanks to damaging winter storms and “outdated government policies that favor out-of-state online companies.”

Retailers posted only a 0.1% average increase over last holiday season, according to the Michigan Retail Index, a joint project of MRA and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- The U.S. convenience store count increased to 151,282 stores as of December 31, 2013, a 1.4% increase (2,062 stores) from the year prior, according to the 2014 NACS/Nielsen Convenience Industry Store Count. Convenience stores account for 34.3% of all retail outlets in the United States, according to Nielsen, which is significantly higher than the U.S. total of other retail channels including drug stores (41,378 stores), supermarket/supercenter (37,459 stores) and dollar stores (24,853 stores).

Madison, Wis. – Target Corp.’s data security breach has already cost all credit unions between $25 million to $30 million. Those numbers are expected to rise in coming weeks as more of the cooperative financial institutions report their costs and as fraud losses are incurred down the road, according to preliminary results of a survey of credit unions by the Credit Union National Association (CUNA).