Predictive Analytics

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.

By Will Poindexter and Coleman Mark, Bain & Company
 
Retailers need to quickly build world-class IT capabilities for omnichannel retailing — a seamless, integrated shopping experience, whether the customers are in the store or online. The major reason: customer expectations are rising, in part thanks to the strides made by new competitors with business models built on technology, and pure-play retailers like Amazon, which are not encumbered by legacy environments and physical stores.
 

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.

By Marcel Munoz, CTO, Thanx Media

2014 was an interesting year in e-commerce. Who would have predicted that mobile commerce would explode the way it did? Advances in technology continue to influence consumer behavior and in turn their preferences are driving innovation in software and hardware.

Boca Raton, Fla. - Office Depot Inc. has selected CoreMedia LiveContext software to help enhance the customer shopping experience for Officedepot.com by streamlining the collaboration between its online authors to ensure faster time-to-market for executing integrated campaigns. Late in 2014 and within a short period of time, CoreMedia LiveContext was integrated with the Office Depot product catalog, pricing information and front-end modules, providing business users with a single interface to access this real-time information and blend it with marketing content.

Louisville - Gasoline and convenience-store chain Thorntons Inc. is receiving its own refreshing results from its Paytronix-powered “Refreshing Rewards” loyalty program. Since the program was launched in September 2014, Thorntons Refreshing Rewards program managers have been successfully using targeted promotions to get members to visit more frequently and are leveraging program data for category management.  

New York -- In today's data-filled world, many retailers are missing some of the most basic — and important — metrics of all: store data and conversion rates. Join this Chain Store Age Webinar on Jan. 29, 2 p.m. (EST), and learn how the insights gained from this data can give companies an edge in today's hypercompetive, omnichannel retail environment. Analytics expert Mark Ryski will discuss how insights from store traffic and conversion analytics can help retailers deliver better results.

Making sense of promotional activity can be challenging given the abundance of new variables to consider which is why a recent change from Efficient Collaborative Retail Marketing (ECRM) is much needed.

ECRM, a leader in business innovation and technology, enhanced its data and analytics website at www.ECRMdata.com with new functionality, increased retail coverage and ease of use.

New York – Mobile apps have a lot of potential uses, but in 2015 retailers will likely focus on consumer engagement. According to the 2015 E-commerce Industry Outlook report from performance marketing technology company Criteo, 42% of retail executives and ad agencies rank consumer engagement as the primary goal of mobile app strategies.

Other Criteo predictions, based on data insights from billions of online transactions, include:

New York -- Ebay Inc.  plans to cut about 2,400 positions, or 7% of its workforce, across eBay marketplaces, PayPal, and eBay enterprise in the current quarter to simplify its organizational structure.

The company also said it will explore strategic options for eBay enterprise, including a sale or an IPO.