eCommerce

New York -- British fast-fashion retailer Topshop, a unit of Arcadia Group, opened a flagship on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, close to Rockefeller Center.  

Jackson, Miss. -- Kate Spade New York and Lululemon Athletica are both opening their first permanent Mississippi locations, as Chestnut Hill, Mass.-based WS Development announced the retailers’ grand opening plans at Highland Village in Jackson, Miss.  

Bay Shore, N.Y. -- Consumers are growing disenchanted by the physical shopping experience, with 63% admitting they prefer to shop online, according to a study by Tensator Group.    Eighty-percent of shoppers have used a store to view a product before purchasing online, the report found. And 68% admitted to using their phone to check the price of an item online before deciding whether to purchase in-store.  

Brussels, Belgium -- Delhaize Group has signed an agreement to sell its Bottom Dollar Food stores to deep-discount grocer Aldi Inc. for approximately $15 million, including the assumption of associated lease liabilities. The transaction, which involves  66 Bottom Dollar stores in the greater Philadelphia and Pittsburgh markets, is expected to result in an asset impairment and other charges for Delhaize Group of approximately $180 million.  

Jeffersonville, Ind. --  A majority of consumers (88%) say free shipping makes them more likely to shop online, while 30% shop online to find the best deal possible and 20% to avoid holiday crowds, according to a new survey from omnichannel customer engagement technology vendor Accent.   Other notable findings include:  

San Francisco--JLL announced that it has expanded its retail brokerage practice in Northern California with the addition of Jamie Kendall as VP. Kendall will be based in the firm’s San Francisco office, and will partner with the firm’s existing retail, agency leasing and investment sales teams to help maximize the value of retail assets for JLL’s growing client base in downtown San Francisco.

Mateo, Calif. -- ShopRunner announced a new partnership with Alipay which will pave the way for Chinese online shoppers to buy directly from U.S. retailers’ ecommerce sites. Alipay is China's leading e-payments provider and is widely used by hundreds of millions of Chinese online shoppers.  

Dan McNutt, Retail, Exel   With the holiday season right around the corner, the coveted shopping season is even closer with Black Friday and Cyber Monday merely weeks away. In years past, holiday shopping was targeted to brick and mortar, Black Friday foot traffic, but with the steady boom in e-commerce, the shopping frenzy is now taking place in the digital world as well.