Consumer Attitudes & Behavior

Houston -- A report released Tuesday by research company NPD Group found that the convenience store sector experienced marked gains last year, as visits increased 4.6% in the fourth quarter and grew an average of 3.7% per month for 2012.

Traffic gains were spread among all type of c-stores, according to NPD’s Convenience Store Monitor, which tracks the consumer purchasing behavior of more than 51,000 convenience store shoppers in the U.S.  

PORT WASHINGTON — Despite a plethora of constantly changing products, the consumer technology industry saw its sales decline 2% in 2012, according to The NPD Group. This is on top of the less than 1% drop in 2011. Since 2010, consumer technology sales have declined by $4 billion.

New York -- Office Depot and OfficeMax are in talks to merge, according to reports by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.

The retailers are discussing as potential stock swap that would result in a single company with nearly $18 billion in revenue, reports said. The combined company would be better positioned to take on Staples, Walmart and other competitors.

The second and third largest players in the office retail space could soon join forces. According to published reports,OfficeMax and Office Depot could announce a merger this week.

The rumors have gotten Wall Street buzzing as pre-market trading saw shares of Office Depot and OfficeMax up 28.5% and 20%, respectively.

RESTON, Va. — In terms of growth, clicks continued to outpace bricks in 2012 — and how!

That was the key takeaway from comScore’s “2013 U.S. Digital Future in Focus” report: Despite the backdrop of continued economic uncertainty, 2012 was a strong year for retail e-commerce. Throughout the year, growth rates versus the prior year remained in the mid-teens to outpace growth at brick-and-mortar retail by a factor of approximately four times.

New York -- Analysts had already suggested that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. would report weakened sales in February, as its primary customer base felt the pinch of newly increased payroll taxes. But internal emails leaked to the press confirmed the impending bad news.
 
Bloomberg on Friday quoted an email generated by a Wal-Mart mid-level executive as saying that the retailer had the worst sales start to any month in seven years in February. Wal-Mart blames the slow start to the 2% payroll increase as well as on delayed tax returns.

Reston, Va. -- Despite the backdrop of continued economic uncertainty, 2012 was a strong year for retail e-commerce, according to comScore’s “2013 U.S. Digital Future in Focus” report. Throughout the year, growth rates versus the prior year remained in the mid-teens to outpace growth at brick-and-mortar retail by a factor of approximately four times.

PLANO, Texas — Dr Pepper Snapple Group reported $629 million in profits for fiscal year 2012, up from $606 million in 2011, the beverage maker said Thursday.

Profits for the fourth quarter were $170 million, compared with $166 million in fourth quarter 2011, driven by fiscal year 2012 sales of $5.99 billion and fourth-quarter sales of $1.48 billion, compared with $5.9 billion and $1.46 billion in 2011, respectively.