Consumer Analytics

By Dave Richards, Accenture

New York -- Parents and their children in grades K-12 will spend a combined $543 on back-to-school items, and double that, at $1,223, on college spending. According to new survey data from Deloitte, parents alone expect to spend 13% less than in 2013.

Santa Cruz, Calif. - Sixty-six percent of retailers attending the recent Big Data & Analytics for Retail Summit believe the number one way to ensure a successful holiday season is to understand customer behavior to drive sales and build loyalty. Moreover, data from business analytics provider Looker shows that four-in-10 retailers feel they are still ineffective when it comes to using data to improve business performance.

Just how often does Amazon change prices throughout the day? And when do other leading retailers adjust their prices? Price intelligence and optimization leader 360pi is out with a new report that answers those questions and sheds lights on some surprising pricing tactics at top retailers.

The report, titled “When Should You Change Your Prices,” explores the phenomenon of pricing dynamism at leading retailers and assesses its effectiveness. What 360pi discovered is that the level of price dynamism can vary dramatically across retailers.

The retail industry is undergoing an unprecedented omnichannel transformation with an overwhelming majority of leading retailers aggressively reconfiguring supply chains to provide shoppers a seamless experience, according to a new study from Boston Retail Partners.
 
The omnichannel trend has been underway for many years now, but Boston Retail Partners indicates that more than 90% of retailers are pursuing omnichannel supply chain re-invention efforts the management consulting firm describes as “unified commerce.”
 

Eddie Bauer has unveiled a free iPhone app, called Eddie Bauer Adventure Guide, which lets outdoor enthusiasts look up more than 10,000 unique U.S. locations across nine different activities.

"Inspiring and enabling people to get outside and live their adventure is what we do as a brand," Mike Egeck, CEO of Eddie Bauer, said. "Our new iPhone app makes it easy to do just that."

Petaluma, Calif. – E-commerce platform provider MarketLive has entered a strategic agreement with Amazon Payments, offering the ability for MarketLive retailers to help streamline the login and checkout process and increase conversion numbers. The integration of login and pay with Amazon with the MarketLive platform allows shoppers on MarketLive retail shopping sites to leverage their existing Amazon account to quickly login and select their shipping and payment information that they use for Amazon.

Twitter posted solid growth in user metrics for its second quarter, including strength in mobile, which allowed the social media platform to exceed sales and profit forecasts.

Twitter said it had 271 million monthly active users during the quarter ended June 30, an increase of 24% compared to the prior year. Roughly 78% of those users were on mobile devices, a 29% increase from the prior year.

Cleveland -- Shopping ranks as a favorite activity among nearly half of all teens and young adults aged 13 to 24. According to a new survey of more than 1,000 teens and young adults ranging from ages 13 to 24 conducted by Alexander Babbage in partnership with Forest City Enterprises Inc., shopping at malls ranked above a virtual shopping experience among the entire group, with the 13-to-17-year-old age group showing the strongest preference for a bricks-and-mortar shopping experience.  

San Jose, Calif. – EBay has had success with the password reset it launched in May 2014, following the public revelation of a February 2014 security breach that may have exposed user information. According to Bloomberg, more than half of EBay’s existing 149 million customers have returned since the rest, and the company has also experienced 10-15% growth in new customers since that time.