Loyalty Marketing

Hoffman Estates, Ill. – A reduction in selling, general and administrative expenses helped Sears Holdings Corp. reduce its first quarter net loss even as its sales continued to slide. The results came in as the chain prepares for the launch of its real-estate investment trust this week to raise cash. Sears said it expects the REIT transaction to raise $2.6 billion.

Food Lion has launched a new web site designed to make shopping, saving and planning for dinner easy for shoppers.

My latest retail IT-related travels took me to the Retail Experience Center at Microsoft headquarters (in Redmond, Washington), where I toured a simulated shopping mall environment that demonstrated a variety of innovative ways the company is using technology to enhance customer engagement for retailers.  Here are the three most interesting solutions from that visit:

A Beacon for Coffee Drinkers

American Signature is expanding an in-store tablet technology initiate running on the CloudTags platform after a pilot program yielded impressive results.

American Signature, operator of 124 stores, is using the CloudTags technology solution to allow customers to seamlessly shop online and in-store. Customers are offered a CloudTags-enabled tablet upon entering the store and tap on special product tags placed on each piece of furniture throughout the showroom.

The retail industry is accustomed to weak same store sales at Sears and Kmart, but the magnitude of the decline the company experienced in the first quarter was large even by its standards.

Retailers have a new way to drive sales thanks to a mobile-friendly upgrade to RetailMeNot’s popular app.

RetailMeNot, operator of the nation’s largest digital offers marketplace with more than 18 million unique monthly users, introduced the first version of a new “products” section on its app that features popular items.

The new product functionality offers a deep link to retailers’ mobile optimized sites, providing a way to help retailers market specific products in addition to the other promotional capabilities offered by RetailMeNot.

Cupertino, Calif. – Apple Inc. is enacting a number of significant enhancements to its Apple Pay mobile payment app, including adding support for rewards programs and store-issued credit and debit cards. During a June 8 keynote address at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Jennifer Bailey, VP of Apple Pay, said that retailers, including Dunkin' Donuts, Walgreens, Wegmans, and Kohl's, will support the new reward card functionality.

While empty, decaying malls make for inspired photo shoots, most of America’s shopping malls are actually doing well. In fact, according to new data from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) and the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries, shopping center occupancy rates were 92.7% at the end of 2014 – the highest level in six years! Occupancy was even higher for malls (both super-regional and regional malls) at 94.2%, the highest since 1987.