Mass Merchant

New York City -- Dress Barn on Monday announced it has been renamed Ascena Retail Group Inc. and will trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker ASNA.

The company said it had reorganized under the new holding company, but was not making changes to operations, directors or officers. The names of its three specialty chains -- Dressbarn, Maurices and Justice, also are unchanged.

MINNEAPOLIS - Target has created a new way for parents to share news about their new baby. The company last week announced the launch of its Big Baby Billboard, an interactive online experience that includes an outdoor presence in New York City and Los Angeles. For a limited time, parents can visit the Target Baby Facebook page to create a playful digital birth announcement that can be shared online with family and friends, the company reported. Target said it will then randomly select birth announcements for display in New York City's Times Square (through Jan.

By Craig R. Johnson

Target.com was second only to Walmart.com in terms of the number of unique visitors its website attracted this holiday season, and as such is well positioned to capture a large share of this year’s record online spending. Total online holiday sales advanced 13% to nearly $31 billion, according to the online measurement firm comScore. For the 56-day period beginning Nov. 1 through Dec.

Amazon and Netflix are the top scorers in terms on online customer satisfaction, according to the sixth annual ForeSee Results E-Retail Satisfaction Index (U.S. Holiday Edition). Both had a score of 86 on the study’s 100-point scale, with 80 generally considered the threshold for excellence. Here are the study’s top performers:

New York City -- BJ’s Wholesale Club is in the sights of private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners, which may pursue a hostile bid for the chain, according to The New York Post.

The Los Angeles-based buyout firm may make a bid if no auction occurs in coming weeks, the report said, citing an unidentified person close to the situation. BJ’s planned an auction to sell itself after an earlier bid from Leonard Green, according to the newspaper.

Holiday shoppers continued to unleash three years of pent-up demand as the season winds up, on their way to setting a new record of over $521B, blasting through 2007’s pre-recession record of $508 billion, according to Customer Growth Partners. Based on CGP’s proprietary mall surveys and government retail data -- and despite Sunday’s Northeast blizzard -- the sales growth confirmed CGP’s +5% holiday sales forecast. [CGP’s data include e-commerce, unlike NRF, which excludes the same.]

Chicago -- Total GAFO retail sales for Christmas week (week ending Dec. 25) slipped 4.1% compared with last year, while the company’s retail traffic index (SRTI) reported a 6.8% total U.S. foot traffic decline for the same period, according to ShopperTrak’s National Retail Sales Estimate (NRSE). The 2010 calendar shift that placed Dec. 26 on a Sunday as opposed to a Saturday last year had the greatest impact on overall performance.