Winter Holidays

St. Petersburg, Fla. -- HSN (HSNi) is leveraging the cumulative power of its portfolio of leading lifestyle brands, which include HSN, Frontgate and Ballard Designs, to launch More the Merrier, a multi-platform holiday campaign. The campaign will include digital gift guides; special promotional offers, contests and sweepstakes.

Bentonville, Ark. – Gearing up for the holidays, Wal-Mart announced that it expects to promote more than 160,000 associates to jobs with higher pay and more responsibility this year, including 25,000 promotions during its fourth quarter.

Wayne, N.J. – Toys ‘R’ Us is launching its digital wish finder, a dedicated website providing an online version of its “The Great Big Toys"R"Us Wish Finder” holiday catalog, on Nov. 2. The retailer is also launching The Toys"R"Us Wish List Wizard, a free iOS and Android app that turns parents’ smartphones into a scanner and lets kids scan items they want in-store for automatic inclusion on a digital wish list.

Chicago -- Four of the 10 busiest holiday shopping days will occur between Dec. 20 and Dec. 24, and retailers should prepare accordingly, according to ShopperTrak, a leading provider of shopper analytics. Additionally, with a shortened shopping season and only four weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas – down from five last year – retailers must be ready to capture holiday spending during a narrower window of time.

Procter & Gamble, a Worldwide Olympic Partner, kicked off the company’s Thank You Mom campaign with its Raising an Olympian series featuring Olay athlete Lindsey Vonn (United States), Gillette athletes Felix Neureuther (Germany) and Sven Kramer (Netherlands) and Pantene athlete Elena Ilinykh (Russia).

The launch of the Thank You Mom campaign marks 100 days to go until the start of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games and is supported by more than 15 P&G brands around the globe such as Pampers, Head & Shoulders and Covergirl.

Amazon.com is finalizing plans to open a new 1.2 million-sq.-ft. fulfillment center in Moreno Valley, Calif., which will create more than 1,000 full-time jobs ahead of the holiday shopping season.

This will be Amazon’s fourth fulfillment center in the state. The company’s other sites are located in Patterson, San Bernardino and Tracy.

Toys ‘R’ Us plans to launch an online version of its “The Great Big Toys"R"Us Wish Finder” holiday catalog Nov. 2. The retailer is also launching The Toys"R"Us Wish List Wizard, a free iOS and Android app that turns parents’ smartphones into a scanner and lets kids scan items they want in-store for automatic inclusion on a digital wish list.

According to ShopperTrak, a leading provider of shopper analytics, the busiest holiday shopping days will occur between Dec. 20 and Dec. 24, and retailers should prepare accordingly.

Additionally, with a shortened shopping season and only four weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas — down from five last year — retailers must be ready to capture holiday spending during a narrower window of time.

Atlanta -- Among the affluent households, the average expenditure for December holiday gifts in 2013 is estimated to be $2,175 down 2.8% from 2012, according to a new survey of the wealthiest 10% of U.S. households by the American Affluence Research Center. However, affluent households spent in 2012 almost 7% more than they had anticipated in the 2012 survey, supporting the premise that people often tend to spend more for gifts than they had planned.
 

A compressed shopping season coupled with the continued growth of e-commerce has UPS forecasting that peak season daily package volumes will grow by 8%.