Consumer Analytics

Sluggish traffic and weak performance in the consumer electronics segment led Hhgregg to post a 6.3% drop in same store sales in the third quarter.

The retailer reported a loss in profits from the prior year period and missed Wall Street expectations for both profit and revenue. Hhgregg posted a net loss of $86.9 million, compared to net income of $5.05 million, which was a wider loss than projected by analysts.

San Mateo, Calif. -- A pair of veteran retailers were among the most popular store sites on Facebook during the 2014 holiday season. Sears was the most popular U.S. department store, while Walmart.com was the most popular mass merchant store site, according to a study by Searchmetrics.

The Searchmetrics study analyzed the number of weekly Facebook likes, comments and shares for pages from the websites of nine top US department stores and three mass merchant stores during November and December 2014.

By Amy ter Haar

Sunnyvale, Calif. – Yahoo Inc. plans a tax-free spin-off of its remaining holdings in Alibaba Group. The spinoff will create an independent registered investment company called SpinCo.

Stock of the new company will be distributed pro rata to Yahoo shareholders, resulting in SpinCo becoming a separate publicly traded company. Following the spin-off, Yahoo will continue to operate its core business and hold its 35.5% interest in Yahoo Japan.

London – If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then perhaps a video is worth 1,000 sales. U.K. electric appliance retailer ElectricShopping.com has increased unit sales by 37% using Treepodia’s new YouTube Fetcher service.

NEW YORK — A survey conducted in eight world markets during the latter half of January 2015 revealed insights on online purchasing habits of consumers in winter. The survey was jointly carried out with One Hour Translation and Google Consumer Surveys and was based on a sample of 800 respondents — 100 from each of the following countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Japan.

New York -- E-commerce giant Amazon.com is upping the ante on its free shipping policy.

The Seattle company announced that all Amazon seller-fulfilled items are now eligible to contribute to Amazon’s minimum order of $35 to qualify for free shipping. So now customers can get free shipping whether the items are fulfilled by Amazon or from the millions of small and local businesses selling on Amazon.

Orlando, Fla. – Digital receipts solution provide FlexReceipts will provide its technology to  several independent retailers including denim retailer Paige USA, sportswear retailer TravisMathew, men’s clothier Milton’s, Rusty Del Mar Surf Shop and Robert’s China.

New York – E-commerce revenue continued its strong growth trend of recent year in 2014. According to the Custora E-Commerce Pulse 2014 Holiday Recap Report, U.S. e-commerce revenue was up 15.6% from the 2013 holiday season.

Black Friday (20.6% year-over-year jump in revenue) and Cyber Monday (15.4% year-over-year revenue growth) were the two biggest single e-commerce shopping days of the 2014 holiday season.

New York - With gas prices down 31% since June 2014 and oil prices tumbling to their lowest levels in several years, American consumer confidence has improved dramatically. According to the Nielsen Consumer Confidence Report, in fourth quarter 2014 U.S. consumer confidence went up 12 percentage points year-over-year.