Advantage Solutions

As a result of its definitive agreement to acquire CytoSport Holdings, maker of Muscle Milk products, Hormel Foods has promoted three of its executives to leadership roles with CytoSport, based in Benicia, California.

Advantage Sales & Marketing (ASM) has acquired San Antonio, Texas-based Longhorn Food Brokers to strengthen its fresh food focus in the Lone Star state.

“The addition of Longhorn will provide complimentary resources and broader support for our clients and customers in the fresh category,” said Tanya Domier, Advantage Sales & Marketing CEO. “The Longhorn acquisition continues our strategy of building a national footprint for perishable-focused retail and headquarter services by partnering with the regional leaders in these categories.”

Advantage Sales & Marketing has acquired food brokerage company Tri-Venture Marketing to expand its national footprint and enhance its capabilities across a range of fresh categories.

Advantage, already one of the nation’s leading providers of sales, marketing and third party merchandising support services to retailers and suppliers, will operate the new business as Advantage Tri-Venture and maintain the firm’s existing headquarters in Lakeland, Fl., which coincidentally is the hometown of leading southeastern supermarket operator Publix.

Global ecommerce and payment processing leader First Data Corporation and Microsoft to simplify retailers ability to offer and redeem local deal offers.

The companies said that First Data’s OfferWise solution has been integrated with Microsoft’s Bing Offers Card-Linked which consolidates local deals from a number of deal providers. OfferWise is an open platform that enables retailers to electronically attach offers to any consumer payment card or mobile wallet to allow streamlined and automatic redemption of the offer at the point of sale.

By Sherry Orel, [email protected]

Retail today is supposed to be all about the experience. After all, it’s so easy to shop online. And yet so many retailers could be providing a much richer customer experience if they only made a few simple changes that meet customers needs and expectations.

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. — Dole Food Company has started the New Year with a new look for its website.

Dole describes the redesigned website as easy for consumers to use on all tablets and mobile devices. Dole teamed up with Santa Monica-based digital agency Blitz for one year to work on the redesign.

Redwood Shores, Calif. -- Oracle on Wednesday announced that it has completed the acquisition of Art Technology Group (ATG).

With the addition of ATG, Oracle can now provide best-in-class cross-channel CRM, Retail and Commerce that enables unified marketing, merchandising, service and order management, supply chain, and a seamless, personalized customer experience.