Winter Holidays

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   

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.

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:  

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.

  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.  

Reston, Va. - Cyber Monday reached $2.04 billion in desktop online spending, up 17% from a year ago and representing the heaviest online spending day in history and the only day ever to surpass $2 billion in sales. According to data from comScore, the weekend after Thanksgiving also reached a major milestone as it saw its first ever billion-dollar online shopping day on Saturday, while Sunday’s sales just fell short of the $1 billion mark.

San Luis Obispo, Calif. - Omnichannel retailers that provide cross-channel offers to their customers are the big winners emerging from this year’s “Cyber Week.” Data from Shopatron shows that forcing customers into buying frenzies on specific days is losing favor, and that retailers who focus on meeting cross-channel consumer demand with ever increasing levels of service are realizing the benefits.