Winter Holidays

Macy's has integrated NantMobile’s iD visual recognition technology into its Star Gifts app to allow customers to shop on the go from catalogs, billboards and magazine ads.

Wakefield, Mass. – Most consumers in the U.S., U.K., and Australia are not using mobile technology for holiday shopping this year, but many will use mobile devices for product research and in-store showrooming. According to results of the 2013 Holiday Preferences Study from SDL, the majority of consumers in the U.S. (64%), U.K. (68%) and Australia (67%) are not using a tablet or smartphone more this year to purchase gifts.

J. Crew consumers can now take advantage of MasterCard’s digital wallet service, MasterPass, at checkout. The digital wallet service enables shoppers to use any payment card or enabled device to unlock a simplified and speedier checkout experience regardless of where they are.

Seattle -- Zoomingo, the personalized shopping discovery app that helps shoppers find the best deals in their local stores and malls, announced an agreement with Simon Property Group, the largest mall operator in the U.S., to market the Zoomingo app for the upcoming 2013 holiday shopping season.

Hoffman Estates, Ill. -- Sears and Kmart stores joined the growing list of national retailers whose stores will open on Thanksgiving Day.

Kmart, which has opened Thanksgiving Day for 22 years, this year will be open for 41 straight hours, starting at 6 a.m. Thanksgiving Day to 11 p.m. Black Friday.  Sears will open at 8 p.m. Thanksgiving Day.

Shoppers continue to integrate digital devices into their lives and crave an equally integrated experience from retailers, but satisfying this heightened set of ominchannel expectation remains a work in progress for most retailers.

Few retailers have a well-defined omnichannel strategy with most professing to be in the development phase, according to a global consulting firm Hay Group. This rather worrisome insight was among the key findings in global consuling firm Hay Group’s 7th annual holiday hiring survey.

New York -- Starting in November, J. Crew consumers can take advantage of MasterPass at checkout, a digital wallet service enables shoppers to use any payment card or enabled device to unlock a simplified and speedier checkout experience whether they’re at home, in a store or on the go.

Sears and Kmart stores are joining the still growing list of retailers that will open Thanksgiving Day in the hopes of luring Black Friday shoppers early.

Kmart will open for 41 straight hours, starting at 6 a.m. Thanksgiving Day to 11 p.m. Black Friday. Sears will open doors starting at 8 p.m. Thanksgiving Day to 10 p.m. Black Friday, with more than 1,000 doorbusters available until 1 p.m. Friday afternoon.