Supply Chain & Merchandising

PITTSBURGH and BENTONVILLE, Ark. — GNC is making its foray into the warehouse club for the first time by offering select private-label products at Sam's Club locations.

GNC's products will boost Sam's Club's current health-and-wellness offerings by extending GNC's specialty retailing brand to mass-market customers.

Washington, D.C. -- A report released Monday by the Commerce Department showed that consumer spending in the United States in January edged up 0.2%, curbed by increased food and gas prices.

The results missed Bloomberg News forecasts and represented the smallest gain since June.

Incomes beat projections by climbing 1%, according to the report, reflecting the tax-cut compromise reached by President Obama and Congressional Republicans in December, and inflation remained below the Federal Reserve’s long-term forecast.

Home Depot, Lowe’s and Sears offer free delivery and installation of major appliances, and now Best Buy does too. The company this week announced what it declared was an industry-leading combination of free delivery along with an 18 months same-as-cash financing offer to spark interest in the appliance category.

Target is set to report February same-store sales this Thursday and offer the first data point of the new fiscal year in which same-store sales are forecast to increase in the range of 4% to 5%. For February, the company has forecast a low single-digit increase and last week in conjunction with the release of fourth-quarter results confirmed it was on track to meet the low single-digit number.

Target’s longstanding pricing philosophy of remaining within a few percentage points of Walmart remains intact, according to the most recently monthly pricing survey from Credit Suisse. The firm looks at prices on a basket of goods in Dallas and Chicago each month, and in January it revealed the gap between Walmart and Target had widened to 3.9% from 3.7% in December.

Minneapolis -- Best Buy Co. announced it will free delivery and no interest financing if paid in full within 18 months on all appliance purchases over $429.

The solid fourth-quarter financial results Target reported last week were quickly overshadowed by long-term growth objectives that gave stakeholders a clear idea of where the company is headed in terms of sales and profits. Target expects its annual sales, currently about $66 billion, to reach the $100 billion mark within six to seven years, and current earnings per share of $4 will at least double over that same time frame.

BETHPAGE, N.Y. — New York-based supermarket retailer King Kullen announced that it is partnering with NuVal to provide customers with better insight of what foods they should be eating.

NuVal's nutrition scoring system — in which store items receive a NuVal score from 1 to 100, making it easy for consumers to compare the overall nutrition of the foods they buy at a glance — will be implemented in all of King Kullen's stores, which are located throughout Long Island and Staten Island.