Consumer Analytics

Walmart and Hobby Lobby top the retailer list of the first ever annual Faith Equality Index.

Faith Driven Consumer, a group that represents 41 million Christian consumers, has published an index rating the faith compatibility of major brands both in the consumer and entertainment spheres, as well as serving as a voice for this community.

Amazon’s first permanent physical store has opened in its hometown of Seattle and guess what? It looks a lot like the bookstores whose demise it facilitated.

In a letter to customers, the retailer announced the opening of the store located at 4601 26th Avenue NE in Seattle’s University Village on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

The Finish Line Inc. is continuing its efforts to become an omnichannel lifestyle experience with a new social media campaign.

For the second year in a row, Finish Line customers will be able to demonstrate their basketball skills via social media platforms by using the hashtag #theFundamentals on Twitter and Instagram, or submitting them via Snapchat. The digital entries will be judged by a group of NBA athletes.

eBay is targeting consumers across digital and physical channels this holiday season with a new online holiday hub and even in-person selling stations.

Through Jan. 1, 2016, eBay is running a multifaceted holiday campaign called “Wish Bigger.” A central feature is a holiday-specific shopping site, eBay.com/holidays, which will offer features such as a soon-to-launch holiday heat map that will track what eBay customers are wishing and shopping for coast-to-coast on a weekly basis.

Rather than let third-party platforms have all the online home services fun to themselves, Sears is joining the game.

Sears Home Services is launching a new site, SearsHomeServices.com, aimed at connecting homeowners with Sears-certified technicians. The site also offers do-it-yourself information. Technicians are regionally listed and rated by criteria such as number of repairs completed, average cost, and length of repair time. Customer reviews are also featured.

Every retailer hates online chargebacks, and unusually active chargeback activity is often an indicator of e-commerce fraud.

Risk management firm Chargebacks 911 has identified the U.S. cities in the Northeast where the highest percentage of e-commerce transactions result in a chargeback. Visa and Mastercard have set 1% as acceptable chargeback threshold, and these ZIP codes far exceed that figure.

• 17% chargeback rate: Port Washington, New York (11050)
• 15% chargeback rate: Astoria, New York (11105)

It’s not your imagination – a lot of new players are entering the mobile payment market.

Although social commerce is still relatively new, it appears to be quickly gaining acceptance with consumers.

According to a new survey of more than 1,500 U.S. consumers from Citi Retail Services, social commerce, or the concept of using social media to drive sales, is evolving and growing at a faster pace than all other online channels. And shoppers are buying in.

A new e-commerce integration will empower online retailers to sell goods directly through Instagram.

Springbot, an e-commerce marketing platform designed for online stores, has integrated with Instagram to allow the creation of customized shopping pages through a Magento or Shopify merchant’s Instagram profile. Springbot already provides the tracking of revenue attribution for retailers on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

Mobile payment keeps getting more popular, at least on the provider side.

According to Re/Code, Amazon.com is launching a mobile “Pay with Amazon” button that will let consumers automatically use their Amazon payment information to make purchases on other retailer’s e-commerce apps. While not exactly a mobile wallet app, the Pay With Amazon button is definitely an attempt to obtain a piece of the mobile payment market which Apple, Samsung, Google, and several other entities are trying to take an early lead in.