Sales & Marketing

Menlo Park, Calif. - Google will close down its Google Checkout online payment service for good in November of this year. The online service and technology provider says the move is part of a broader transition to its Google Wallet multichannel commerce platform.

Minneapolis – Best Buy reported a net loss of almost 10% for first quarter fiscal 2014, seeing its revenue drop from roughly $10.34 billion the prior year to $9.38 billion. Increased price competition and the closure of 49 large-format stores contributed to the electronics retailer’s decline in revenue. A shift in the Super Bowl, which typically drives TV sales, to the prior quarter and reduced non-core sales also impacted revenue.

MINNEAPOLIS — Store closures and a shift in this year’s Super Bowl affected Best Buy’s results for the 13-week period ended May 4. 

Bellevue, Wash. – Real estate development firm Kemper Freeman is moving ahead with a $1.2 billion expansion of The Bellevue Collection, a regional shopping center located in Bellevue, Wash. The expansion will add two million sq. ft. of retail, office, hotel, residential, dining and entertainment space. The currently four million-sq.-ft. property already houses more than 250 stores and restaurants.
 

The Home Depot shrugged off bad weather, and thanks, in part, to a recovering housing market, the company reported first quarter sales of $19.1 billion, up 7.4% from last year's quarter, which had one less week. 

On a like-for-like basis, comparable store sales for the first quarter were positive 4.3%. U.S. stores comps were positive 4.8%, also on a like-for-like basis.

San Francisco – Target opened a new Technology Innovation Center in San Francisco, on May 20. The center, located in shared space with the digital marketing agency SapientNitro, employs about 20 people, including some shared SapientNitro employees. Target will use the center to develop mobile and e-commerce services, allowing it to better compete with online-savvy rivals such as Amazon.com.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Men’s Wearhouse will tailor email campaigns to individual shoppers using personalized email marketing technology from CQuotient. The solution will allow Men’s Wearhouse to capture data across consumer touchpoints and use predictive algorithms to target customers with individualized email messaging.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Men’s Wearhouse is looking to CQuotient to help it develop email campaigns tailored to individual shoppers at its brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce sites.

The announcement comes just a week after the specialty retailer launched a revamped version of its flagship online site.