Seasonal

New York - Fifty-one percent of consumers say saving money is their top priority this holiday season, and  40% are driven by finding the right product. Those are among the findings of a recent survey conducted by RSR.  

New York – Omnichannel specialty bath and beauty product brand Sabon boosted its online sales 35% during Black Friday and Cyber Monday by implementing Dynamic Yield’s personalization engine. Sabon saw lifts across key metrics including user engagement, total page views, time spent on site and sales.  

Petaluma, Calif. – During the second week of the holiday shopping season (Dec. 1-7), smartphone and tablet shoppers were especially generous spenders. According to data compiled by e-commerce software provider MarketLive, year-over-year online revenue generated by consumers using smartphones grew 107%, or slightly more than double.  

San Francisco – To serve the needs of tech-oriented holiday shoppers, “Wired” is opening a pop-up store in New York City and an e-shop at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The annual holiday pop-up in New York showcases items hand-selected by “Wired” editors and curators, and will be open Dec. 11-21.    

Menomonee Falls, Wis. – Consumers who want to shop at odd hours to avoid dealing with holiday crowds will have plenty of opportunities at Kohl’s. Kohl’s Department Stores will keep its doors open for more than 100 hours straight from 6 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 19 through 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve, Wednesday, Dec. 24.  

ECRM compared retail circular advertising in November 2013 vs. November 2014 and noted trends occurring across top retail chains. Home Depot added an additional Black Friday 2014 circular promoting appliances. Home Depot offered deep Black Friday 2014 discounts on microwaves. Staples increased circular pages by +38%, and featured an attractive “Free Kindle eReader with laptop purchase” and a $99 Asus laptop on the Black Friday 2014 circular front. Walgreens had little change in November circular metrics but CVS cut 9 pages; a 10% decline.

Florence, N.J. – Burlington Stores Inc. increased its net loss to $34.21 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2014 from $16.86 million in the same period a year earlier amid increased expenses net loss.   By the end of fiscal 2014, Burlington Stores expects to have opened 24 new stores and closed two stores, for a total store count of 543.  

If you’re like me, and you were curious about how Black Friday hype translated into retail sales, your head is spinning right about now. Because the flurry of post-Black Friday news reports is packed with conflicting information, data that doesn’t seem to add up, and—perhaps unsurprisingly given those disparities—wildly variant conclusions about whether the Black Friday weekend was a “success” or a “disappointment” and about what is in store for the rest of the holiday season.