Winter Holidays

Popularity and resale value do not always correlate when it comes to gift cards.

Visa is tops in a ranking of the gift cards expected to be most popular this holiday season.

Rounding out the top 10: American Express; iTunes; Wal-Mart; Target; Starbucks; Netflix; eBay and Google Play. The ranking is from CardHub, a credit card comparison Web site owned by Evolution Finance.

Tanger Outlets announced it has acquired land in Daytona Beach, Florida and plans in to immediately commence construction of its new outlet center development. When complete, the new center will beapproximately350,000 sq. ft. of retail space and feature over 80 upscale brand name and designer outlet retailers.

Target is embarking on its most omnichannel holiday season ever with more services designed to add convenience and value for shoppers.

In a new blog post and infographic posted on Target.com, the retailer details how the intersection between stores and mobile play a big role in the Target shopping experience: Nearly 25 percent of Target.com sales will be fulfilled by a store, either through Order Pickup or shipping from a store.

Target recently introduced two new "click-and-mortar" features designed to improve the shopping experience.

Home goods and Sephora helped J.C. Penney turn a page on the ongoing story of its story of transformation by exceeding top-line growth expectations in the third quarter.

For its third quarter ended Oct. 31, the company cut its loss by 27% to $137 million, or 45 cents a share. It reported net sales of $2.90 billion, compared to $2.76 billion in the year-ago period. Same-store sales increased 6.4%.

Shoppers have wasted no time in getting started with their holiday purchases this year, according to a new survey.

The National Retail Federation’s Consumer Holiday Spending Survey shows that 56.6% of those celebrating the holidays had already started shopping by early November, up from 54.4% last year and 16% from the 49% who had started by this time in 2008, the first time NRF asked the question. This also marks the highest percentage seen in that timeframe.

The holiday promotion season is fast approaching with the arrival of Thanksgiving and Black Friday. From that moment the race is on for customer dollars through to the New Year. We’ve all been through this many times, and it seems like no sooner has one season finished than we are shortly into planning for the next. But what impact are the prices we set having on customer behavior and the profits of retailers?

Home goods and Sephora helped JCPenney turn the page on the next chapter of its story of transformation by exceeding top-line growth expectations in the third quarter.

For its third quarter ended Oct. 31, the company reported net sales of $2.90 billion compared to $2.76 billion in the third quarter of 2014. Same store sales increased 6.4 % for the period. JCPenney cut its loss by 27% to $137 million, or 45 cents a share. Total sales increased 4.8 percent to $2.9 billion versus $2.76 billion last year.