Predictive Analytics

Land O'Lakes' initiative to leverage technology to manage risk associated with weather and climate change will be part of a conversation this week focused on food security and climate change that brings together experts from the public and private sectors.

Jacksonville, Fla. - A lack of robust reporting tools that can give a 360-degree view to all aspects of a customer purchase and profile can seriously hinder e-commerce growth and optimization. A new study of 4,346 e-commerce marketers conducted by MarketingSherpa and sponsored by EBay Enterprise company Magneto shows that companies with a testing and optimization strategy based on extensive historical data saw higher median conversion rates than those that test based on intuition, best practices or don't test at all.

Mooresville, N.C. – Lowe’s Companies Inc. had a generally successful first quarter fiscal 2014 with earnings and sales both rising from the same period a year earlier, although sales missed Wall Street estimates. Net earnings rose 16% to $624 million from $540 million, while net sales increased 2% to $13.4 million from $13.1 million and same-store sales climbed 0.9%.

Greenwich, Conn. – Merger and acquisition (M&A) dealflow in the retail mobile payment sector has risen 500% between 2009 and 2013, while investment dealflow has grown 300%. According to data from Mooreland Partners, a mid-market investment bank specializing in technology deals, there were 232 M&A deals in this sector from 2009-213, and 259 from 1999-2013.

By Kellie Peterson, Director of Marketing at iinside

The supermarket business has never been more competitive than it is today. In any given geographic location, supermarkets compete with traditional rivals including local, regional, national and international stores, as well as farm shares, farmer’s markets, and specialty retailers. Big-box retailers are, of course, also getting into grocery, and then there’s the increasing threat of online retailers.

Atlanta – Severe weather dampened net income and sales growth at The Home Depot during the first quarter of fiscal 2014, causing increases in those figures to fall short of Wall Street estimates. Net income improved 17% to $1.4 billion from $1.2 billion.

Troy, Mich. - PayAnywhere, the professional grade mobile point-of-sale solution from North American Bancard, has released PayAnywhere Storefront, its free touch-screen tablet and stand with built-in credit card reader. PayAnywhere Storefront provides new simple pricing, security protection and advanced business analytics.

Washington, D.C. – Organized retail crime (ORC) is down slightly from 2013 but still a pervasive problem. According to the National Retail Federation’s 10th annual Organized Retail Crime Survey, which polled 76 senior retail loss prevention executives, eight-in-10 (88.2%) retailers report that they have been a victim of ORC in the past year, down slightly from 93.5% in 2013.

PayAnywhere, a professional grade mobile point-of-sale solution from North American Bancard, has released PayAnywhere Storefront, its free touchscreen tablet and stand with built-in credit card reader. PayAnywhere Storefront provides new simple pricing, security protection and advanced business analytics.

San Jose, Calif. – Brick-and-mortar retail sales fell 8.8% from January to April 2014 compared to the same period a year earlier. RetailNext analysis of almost 59 million specialty and larger format retail stores within the continental U.S. also shows that store traffic fell 8.2%.

Other findings include that brick-and-mortar transactions fell 9.2%, and, sales per store slipped 0.8%. However, two positive developments were an average transaction value increase of 0.5% and a 0.81% decrease in returns.