Loyalty Marketing

At CVS Health’s annual Analyst Day held Wednesday here, Helena Foulkes, CVS/pharmacy president, shared significant details on the progress CVS Health has made to drive growth in its stores.

This holiday season, both laptop/desktop computers and mobile phones will play a critical role in the online path to purchase.

According to a new study of more than 1,000 U.S, consumers from online discount platform Ebates, more than half of Americans (53%) are choosing to use their laptops to shop this holiday season, followed by their home computer (39%) and their mobile phone (24%).

This month, Target began contacting its Pharmacy Rewards members to informing them that the company was ending the rewards program because CVS/pharmacy will bring its own program when it replaces the pharmacies in Target stores as part of a deal between the two companies announced this summer.

In the first part of December, delivery providers experienced difficulties that probably left some holiday shoppers less than merry.

According to analysis of what more than 130,000 shoppers said in surveys about on-time deliveries of their full orders between Dec. 1 - Dec. 10 by Bizrate Insights, a division of Connexity, the timeliness trend is clearly downward.

The value proposition of Perfumania stores is under scrutiny after the retailer reported dismal same store sale for the third quarter.

For the 13-week period ended Oct. 31, net sales at Perfumania decreased 8% to $142 million, compared to $154.3 million in the prior year. Same-store sales decreased 22.1%. Net income was $3 million, or net income per diluted share of 20 cents, compared to a net income of $7.5 million, or a net income per diluted share of 48 cents during last year’s third quarter.

Despite the mixed outlook for holiday sales, the private equity community remains interested in retail, believing that the sector can offer the opportunity to achieve scalable growth.

Only one retailer has averaged online deliveries in one day so far this holiday season.

According to a Kurt Salmon study of online orders from 62 retailers across a broad range of categories, including brick-and-mortar and online-only retailers, Zappos kicked delivery into a higher gear than any other analyzed retailer with an average of delivery in one day.

It’s no secret Amazon.com counts Google and Apple as two of its biggest competitors for general online domination. According to Motley Fool, Amazon is expanding a specific benefit of its Prime paid loyalty service intended to both boost membership and stay current with Google and Apple’s consumer offerings. [Motley Fool]