Sales & Marketing

The Cartwheel couponing app from Target, which launched in 2013, is getting its biggest makeover yet.   Having been used by more than 25 million customers to create a total savings of more than $500 million, Cartwheel will now offer a more personalized experience, among other upgrades.  

Walmart is trimming administrative positions in some 500 stores in the West.   According to multiple media reports, the discount giant will cut three backroom accounting and invoicing positions at each store, for a total of 1,500 jobs. Affected employees will not be laid off, but instead offered front-of-store roles such as pharmacy technician or assisting pickups of online orders. Invoicing tasks will be shifted to corporate headquarters in Arkansas, while accounting functions will be automated.  

Father’s Day is Sunday, June 18, and retailers and dads alike will have reason to smile, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC).    American adults who plan to consume this holiday will do so in a big way, spending an average of $169.60 at predominantly at physical retailers, according to ICSC’s most recent consumer survey.    Here are eight specific findings:  

Amazon.com is reportedly going to make it easier for third-party sellers on its Marketplace platform to sell certain items.  

E-commerce retailers could do better in converting shoppers at the point of sale, but are displaying encouraging signs.   According to the Checkout Conversion Index for the second quarter of 2016 from payment platform provider Pymtns.com, underperforming e-commerce retailers will lose $162.4 billion in potential revenue during 2016 due to failure to convert site visitors to sales. This is due to a variety of frictions that exist between online discovery and checkout.  

Macy’s has managed to avert what would have been the first strike at its most valuable property — its flagship in Manhattan — in over 40 years.   

The Kroger Co. topped Wall Street expectations with more than one result in the first quarter of fiscal 2016.

A new, small-format grocery concept from McCaffrey's Food Markets — Simply Fresh by McCaffrey’s — has opened in a restored 1928 industrial deco building in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, that originally housed a Ford dealership.