Home Depot

Waban, Mass. -- Sam's Club and Amazon.com deliver the best customer experience in the retail industry, according to the 2014 Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual ranking of companies based on a study of 10,000 U.S. consumers. Sam's Club and Amazon.com continue their reign as the highest-rated retailers for the third straight year, each earning an "excellent" rating.

A study of 10,000 U.S. consumers’ attitudes about retail customer service saw Sam’s Club best Amazon.com and dozens of other retailers among a field of 268 companies.

Retailers have been known to employ all sorts of clever devices when commemorating a grand opening, but shapewear retailer Spanx takes the practice to a new level.

Home Depot was known to saw a board in half in lieu of a traditional ribbon cutting and outdoor retailer Gander Mountain once had an archer with a razor tipped arrow sever the ribbon. When Spanx opens its fourth retail location on April 11 at the International Plaza mall in Tampa the company plans to commemorate the occasion with a hosiery cutting as part of a “jiggle-free jubilee.”

The buzz and hype surrounding 3D printing can make it hard to separate fact from fiction, but one thing is for sure: 3D printing has the potential to transform shopper expectations and retail supply chains.

ECRM compared retail circular advertising in February 2013 versus February 2014 and noted trends occurring across top retail chains. The home improvement retailers have continued to reverse trends from 2013. Home Depot doubled its page count and slightly decreased ads per page, leading to longer, slightly less dense circulars. Despite this, Home Depot still ran less than a quarter of the number of pages that Lowe’s ran, largely due to Lowe’s running three circulars to Home Depot’s one.

Ottawa, Canada -- Well-executed dynamic pricing strategies, such as those deployed by Amazon and Overstock, led to higher sales during the 2013 holiday season as opposed to all-season discounting and other strategies. In its “Retail’s 2013 Holiday Winners and Losers” report, pricing intelligence vendor 360pi rated retailers’ overall financial performance for the 2013 fourth quarter on a scale from +5 (above expectations/excellent) to -5 (below expectations/very poor) based on third-party financial analysts’ overall assessments.

The nation’s leading home improvement retailer is no stranger to e-commerce, but its efforts to offer a more robust omnichannel experience took a major step forward recently with the opening of the company’s first direct fulfillment center.

The Home Depot has promoted Craig Menear to president, U.S. retail. Menear was previously EVP, merchandising, responsible for all merchandising departments and merchandising services and strategy; the company's supply chain network; global sourcing; vendor management; marketing; and online sales.

In his new role, Menear will add responsibility for all U.S. store operations, with Marvin Ellison, EVP, U.S. stores, reporting to Menear.