Mass Merchant

Walmart shoppers who read Harlequin novels and who also have a fondness for bull riders are in for a treat.

Many U.S. retailers have difficulty being successful in the Great White North of Canada. Now that Target is exiting, can Walmart fill the gap? A new article suggests that it can, if Walmart works at it hard enough.

Financial blog The Motley Fool reports that Walmart can succeed where Target failed. 

Sluggish traffic and weak performance in the consumer electronics segment led Hhgregg to post a 6.3% drop in same store sales in the third quarter.

The retailer reported a loss in profits from the prior year period and missed Wall Street expectations for both profit and revenue. Hhgregg posted a net loss of $86.9 million, compared to net income of $5.05 million, which was a wider loss than projected by analysts.

San Mateo, Calif. -- A pair of veteran retailers were among the most popular store sites on Facebook during the 2014 holiday season. Sears was the most popular U.S. department store, while Walmart.com was the most popular mass merchant store site, according to a study by Searchmetrics.

The Searchmetrics study analyzed the number of weekly Facebook likes, comments and shares for pages from the websites of nine top US department stores and three mass merchant stores during November and December 2014.

New York -- In its ongoing efforts to reduce costs, Sears Holding Corp. is cutting jobs.  

The struggling retailer will cuts 115 jobs, including 100 at its Hoffman Estates, Illinois, headquarters, the Chicago Tribune reported.
 
 

A bigger push to sell its offerings online helped drive record sales in 2014 for Swedish retailer Hennes & Mauritz, as well as prompt expansion plans for the retailer. 

The Stockholm-based retailer said net profit rose 17% to $760 million in 2014, ahead of analysts’ forecasts. Same store sales increased 26% in 2014, the retailer reported.

By Amy ter Haar

For many supermarkets, having an effective grocery shopping app is a key component of their omnichannel toolkit. But how to design it?

Retailers could learn from Favado 2.0, a redesigned version of the grocery community savings app by savings.com. The sale and coupon data in Favado 2.0 is aggregated by grocery savings experts throughout the country and presented in a new visual format.