JCPenney Co.

Amazon.com, LLBean.com and QVC.com were the top three retailers on ForeSee’s Annual Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction survey.

New York -- J.C. Penney Co. has hired Brandon Tonniges, a former Abercrombie & Fitch Co. executive, as director of visual merchandising, Bloomberg reported.

Tonniges was a VP in Abercrombie’s “brand senses” division, described on the chain’s website as the “creative force” behind its store experience, according to the report.

Tonniges will report to a VP under Michael Fisher, who was named SVP visual presentation in March.

Promotional activity among the nation’s leading retailers declined during November aside from several notable exceptions. There was a flurry of intense promotional activity around Thanksgiving weekend, as always, but for the months as a whole the number of inserts distributed by retailers declined 7% and the number of pages declined by 5%.

New York -- As new CEO Ron Johnson works to transition the “old” J.C. Penney into a new era filled with shop-in-shops, he and his team have devised a way to keep the store looking fresh during the changeover: they use a lot of mannequins.

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Chicago -- Store opening plans for 2013 are at a four-year high even as positive retail trends tempered with uncertain fiscal policies signal a cautious start to the new year, according to a report released Monday by Jones Lang LaSalle.

According to Jones Lang LaSalle’s 2013 National Retail Real Estate Outlook, retailers will open as many as 78,325 stores in the next two years – up 11% from year-end plans in 2011. Construction will add 52 million sq. ft. of space in 2013, more than double the 20 million sq. ft. completed in 2012.

New York -- Amazon and Costco lead the pack lead the pack when it comes to the e-tailers that have most satisfied their customers, according to the "2012 Harris Poll Shopper Satisfaction Study of Online Retailers." The survey used a 100-point scale to measure customer satisfaction with the e-commerce sites of 14 big retailers. Amazon.com ranked first with a score of 82.

By Jennifer Friedberg, [email protected]

This is the year that retailers stop being afraid of mobile technologies, and instead, are embracing them as a way to engage with, and to better serve, their customers.

Abysmal sales at J.C. Penney haven’t deterred the company from pursuing a series of unique cause marketing activities around a potential new holiday tradition focused on giving back.