Research Topic

San Diego – Consumers are using social media to connect not just with high school classmates and former flames, but with retailers. According to Interactions’ latest Retail Perceptions report, “Social Media: Invest to Impress?”, more than 75% of social media users expect retailers to have a social media presence, and 42% prefer to shop at retailers that connect with them through social media.

Ann Arbor, Mich. - Despite economic indicators that show the recession is over, customers are slightly less satisfied in 2015 than they were the prior year. According to CFI Group's Retail Satisfaction Barometer 2015, the RSB score for 2015 is 79 on a 0-100 scale (with 100 being the highest possible score), a one-point drop from 2014.

Washington, D.C. - The National Retail Federation today welcomed bipartisan patent reform legislation introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck E. Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ranking Member Patrick J. Leahy, D-VT, that seeks to protect retailers and other businesses from overly litigious patent trolls.

Chicago -- Self-service kiosks got a nod from the Millennial generation, as a new survey released by location-based mobile platform Retale showed that 20% of Millennial shoppers don’t like interacting with cashiers at checkout.

The survey examined consumer self-service checkout (SSK) adoption and preferences among brick-and-mortar retailers, focusing on SSK experiences, and evaluating convenience, challenges and desired improvements.

Research highlights include:

New York – While most observers agree there will not be widespread adoption of technology to accept payments from EMV-compliant payment cards in the U.S. by the October 2015 fraud liability shift deadline, Forrester Research is less optimistic than most. In a research note, Forrester said retailer concerns about the ROI of spending on chip and PIN technology, as well the development of new secure payment methods, will delay widespread adoption of hardware and software needed to accept chip and PIN payment in the U.S., until 2020.

The National Retail Federation issued a statement Wednesday supporting patent reform legislation seeking to protect retailers and other businesses from overly litigious patent trolls.

New York – Retailers who offer or are considering offering online grocery shopping may be on the right track. One-quarter of 30,000 online global respondents surveyed in the new Nielsen Global E-commerce and the New Retail Surv say they are already ordering grocery products online for home delivery and more than half (55%) are willing to use it in the future.

New York - H&M is number 32 on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) National Top 100 list of the largest green power users. H&M is using nearly 172 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power annually, which is enough green power to meet 100% of the organization's electricity use.