Predictive Analytics

Pittsburgh – GNC Holdings Inc. will use customer-centricity solutions from dunnhumbyUSA across all facets of its marketing to more effectively segment and engage with in-store and online customers. This will include personalized communications and offers to shoppers through both online and offline channels.

Bedford, Mass. – Daily mobile/online retail revenues surge an average of 55% on Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving), but a corresponding surge in attacks drives hard losses, on average, as much as $500,000 per hour or $8,000 per minute. In addition, a new study of 1,100 U.S., and U.K., retail IT staffers from RSA and the Ponemon Institute shows that 66% of respondents expect that disruption would result in customer churn that would damage reputation and brand and could push losses as high as $3.4 million from a single hour of disruption.

Real time retail is the best way to describe an intriguing new shopper engagement platform from Bazaarvoice that allows brands to respond to questions and reviews about their products directly on retail sites within the Bazaarvoice network.

Caty, N.C. – Consumers have somewhat contradictory desires for greater data privacy and for businesses to have detailed insight into their personal needs, and also have seen improvement in how businesses use personal data. According to a new study from analytics technology provider SAS, 71% of 1,260 respondents surveyed said that recent news about government access to personal data increased their privacy concerns.

A compressed shopping season coupled with the continued growth of e-commerce has UPS forecasting that peak season daily package volumes will grow by 8%.

Chico, Calif. – Online home improvement retailer Build.com has successfully deployed 360price, 360pi’s exact match solution, to monitor pricing for more than a billion permutations and combinations of products, categories and competitors. Build.com seeks to leverage real-time price intelligence to drive conversions, revenues and margins.
 

Coupons.com has appointed former Safeway executive Mir Aamir as the company’s CFO and COO.

A unique perspective into the holiday season was provided by leading payments processor Vantiv when the company reported strong third quarter results but expressed reservations about the volume of activity during the fourth quarter.

The company said its third quarter revenues increase 14% to $532 million and net income on an adjusted basis increase 17% to $80 million compared to $68.1 million while adjusted earnings per share increased 25% to 40 cents from 32 cents.

New York -- The three rules of retail real estate are the same as the three rules of any other type of real estate – “location, location, location.” But each retail chain has its own unique requirements for what makes a good location, and Charlotte, N.C.-based Bojangles’ Restaurants Inc. is getting some technical assistance in determining the best spots for new stores based on factors such as who lives nearby.

Scouting the Best Locations

Toano, Va. – Lumber Liquidators increased its net income in the third quarter of fiscal 2013 58.4% to $20.4 million, from $12.9 million in the year-ago period.

Net sales grew 24.5% to $254.3 million, from $204.3 million in the same period a year earlier. Same-store sales grew 17.4%, driven by a 9.8% increase in the number of customers invoiced and a 6.9% increase in the average sale.