Sales & Marketing

New York - Despite some of the most promotional activity and extended operating hours the retail industry has ever seen, total spending for the four-day Black Friday weekend came in below projections, down a surprising 11.3% from last year.  According to the National Retail Federation's preliminary figures,  weekend spending dropped to  $50.9 billion from $57.4 billion last year.   

The world's largest retailer reported a robust Black Friday weekend — including record online sales — as part of its kickoff to the 2014 holiday sales season.

“In a few short hours, we flipped from being the largest grocery store in town to the best gift shop on the block," said Laura Phillips, SVP of merchandising at Walmart. "Not only did we have millions of customers shopping our stores, but we’re confident Walmart was the first stop of the night for most of them."

Fremont, Calif. - Men's Wearhouse will open the first-ever Joseph Abboud retail store in midtown Manhattan in spring 2015. The store follows the launch of JosephAbboud.com in early November.   

Move over pumpkin pie: Black Friday fervor seemed to stir up more conversations on social media than the Thanksgiving holiday itself.

According to Salesforce.com, social media posts about Black Friday shopping numbered 2.7 million. Roughly 278,000 posts were stamped with the hashtag "#blackfriday" and another 8,000 were labeled "#deals," vs. just 85,000 with "#Thanksgiving."

There were also about 1.84 million holiday shopping posts on Thanksgiving Day, and about 719,000 posts the day before Thanksgiving.

Washington, D.C. - The Alliance for Main Street Fairness (AMSF) launched a television advertising campaign to educate lawmakers on what is says is the imminent threat posed by China's online mega-retailer Alibaba as it enters the U.S. retail market. Retailers are asking the U.S. House of Representatives to join the U.S. Senate by passing e-fairness legislation that closes the online sales tax loophole this year.    

Buying tech products was the No. 1 priority on consumers’ shopping lists this past holiday weekend, according to a new survey from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA).

Pittsburgh - Just more one-third of all Black Friday online revenue came from shoppers on mobile devices, up 48 percent from 2013. According to Branding Brand's sample of 35 North American retailers running on its commerce platform, 90% of these consumers were on Apple devices.   Mobile devices (smartphone and tablets combined) produced a total of almost 2.2 million visits, 48,000 orders, and $5. 54 million in revenue on Black Friday. In addition, mobile devices generated:

Data migrations and system upgrades usually require at least some downtime. In fact, 81% of companies schedule migrations overnight or on weekends when fewer people are working, and fewer customers can potentially be disrupted by downtime. Particularly in this era of 24/7 online ecommerce, some degree of business risk always accompanies downtime.

 

Downtime costs the retail industry $18 billion annually, according to market research firm IDC. But it doesn’t have to.