Winter Holidays

San Francisco — Shopping activity increased slightly from October in November 2014, but slumped compared to November of the previous year. Monthly retail benchmarks from in-store analytics provider Euclid reveal that  traffic lagged significantly throughout the month, with Black Friday also failing to match the previous year as deals were more distributed across time and channels.   

Meijer is responding to a need from food pantries for nutrition education resources by publishing a cookbook that features recipes using ingredients frequently found in food pantries.

The retailer has distributed English and Spanish versions of Simply Cook to its food bank and pantry partners across the Midwest. During the holiday season, food banks see a tremendous increase in demand of free meals per day.

Seasonal excitement at seven of Gander Mountain’s 154 stores is being driven by a train-themed merchandising initiative called the Holiday Express.

In a first-of-its-kind effort, seven stores in Florida, Minnesota, Missouri, New York and Virginia feature the large seasonal display filled with activities and an area where kids can have a free photo taken with Santa.

Big Lots hypothetical core customer Jennifer isn’t feeling so cheerful this holiday season as the nation’s leading closeout retailer is eyeing a low single digit fourth quarter comp increase.

Plano, Texas –  Hoping to boost its holiday mobile traffic, J.C. Penney has enhanced its digital presence, including an all-new JCPenney iPhone app. Along with improved navigation, faster browsing and easier access to coupons, one notable feature of the JCPenney app is the ability for customers to scan the barcode of an item to find its availability on jcpenney.com   

San Jose, Calif. - Cyber Monday (Dec. 1) saw nearly 30% more online shopping activity than any other shopping day during the 2014 Thanksgiving-to-Cyber Monday holiday timeframe. Data from SLI Systems outlining e-commerce activity across online retailers in the U.S. during the five-day period reveals that Cyber Monday at 10:00 PM EST was the peak online shopping hour.  Nearly 40% of the online shopping was conducted on mobile devices. Other key findings from the study include:  

  San Francisco – Although email is at the point it’s often considered a “legacy” technology, a slight majority of consumers still prefer it for holiday communication from retailers. According to a new consumer survey from Salesforce, 53% of respondents said that email is their preferred communication channel during the holidays.  

Even if Dollar General is unsuccessful in acquiring Family Dollar, the company plans to get bigger faster in 2015 by opening two stores every day and enhancing the productivity of an already expansive footprint.

Challenging times continue for teen retailer Aeropostale, as an 11 percent drop in same-store sales leads the company to report its eighth straight quarterly loss.

The retailer also said it would close 75 stores in the fourth quarter.