Retailer Intelligence

Ottawa, Canada -- 360pi, a leading provider of retail price and product intelligence, announced a collaborative effort with SAS, a leader in business analytics software and services. The goal is to allow retailers who combine 360pi's competitive price intelligence with SAS' revenue optimization engine to gain full real-time visibility into competitive pricing to make more profitable pricing decisions.

ECRM compared retail circular advertising in April 2013 versus April 2014 and noted trends occurring across top retail chains. Toys “R” Us experienced a massive 350% increase in page count year-over-year due to its release of three circulars this April versus one last year. Only a short eight-page “Bike & Trike Trade-in” circular was run last year. This year, the bicycle circular ran in the last week of the month again, but the other two circulars appeared to be a response to the late Easter this year, with a focus on $5 or less basket-fillers.

ECRM compared retail circular advertising in March 2013 versus March 2014 and noted trends occurring across top retail chains. H.E.B. and Publix topped the charts in circular page change, with increases of 27.8% and 41.2%, respectively. The massive increase at Publix was attributable to the release of an additional circular this March (five versus four in 2013), while H.E.B. simply ran more pages in each of its five March circulars (eight to 12 pages each this year, as opposed to six to eight last year).

Waban, Mass. -- H.E.B. Grocery, Trader Joe's, Chick-fil-A, and Publix earned the highest scores in the 2014 Temkin Experience Ratings, which ranked 268 companies across 19 industries. Joining those firms in the top 14 spots are Aldi, Food Lion, Sonic Drive-In, credit unions, Dairy Queen, Kroger, Piggly Wiggly, Regions, Sam's Club, and Starbucks.

ECRM compared retail circular advertising in February 2013 versus February 2014 and noted trends occurring across top retail chains. The home improvement retailers have continued to reverse trends from 2013. Home Depot doubled its page count and slightly decreased ads per page, leading to longer, slightly less dense circulars. Despite this, Home Depot still ran less than a quarter of the number of pages that Lowe’s ran, largely due to Lowe’s running three circulars to Home Depot’s one.

A little more than a week after Signet Jewelers said it plans to acquire all of the issued and outstanding stock of Zale for $21 per share in cash consideration, Zale reported net earnings of $51 million in the second quarter, a 10% increase from $41 million in the prior-year period.

Same-store sales increased 1.9%, but revenues slipped 2% to $656 million from $671 million.

Understanding threats and taking advantage of opportunities is the name of the game in retail, and pricing intelligence provider 360pi has launched a new suite of tools that does exactly that.

360pi has launched 360insights, a suite of integrated visualizations and dashboard reports that gives retailers visibility into how they can immediately increase revenues and margins through adjustments to their pricing and product mixes.

Ottawa, Canada - Price and product intelligence technology vendor 360pi has launched 360insights, a suite of integrated visualizations and dashboard reports that gives retailers real-time visibility into how they can immediately increase revenues and margins through adjustments to their pricing and product mixes. Retailers can have this same visibility into their own competitor and category set and the power to identify opportunities and take meaningful actions that will drive revenues and margins.

Westlake Village, Calif. - Guitar Center has selected 360pi to increase their awareness of the competitive marketplace and to utilize the actionable insights gained from the 360pi intelligence to increase market competitiveness. Guitar Center had been using another provider, but selected 360pi’s 360price and 360assortment products to deliver near real-time insights into their competitive set.

Waconia, Minn. - Mackenthun's Supermarket hopes to gain insight into shopper behavior through analyzing scans performed with the ShopWell nutrition personalization app. Shopper preferences and behaviors can now be segmented by gender, age, food allergies, or nutritional goals.