Predictive Analytics

Despite many forecasts of a gloomy holiday season for retailers, Deloitte is predicting an increase in consumer spending.

Online retailer Rue La La will be leveraging Artisan Mobile’s Artisan Optimize platform to enhance its mobile technology.

"We are excited to be working with Artisan Optimize to directly impact the results of our mobile app," said Gerry McGoldrick, VP, Marketing, Rue La La. "Through their technology we are learning what drives conversions and, more importantly, we are able to make changes quickly and easily to keep consumers engaged."

Despite having more data and insights into consumer desires and preferences, companies in the U.S. have failed to meaningfully improve customer satisfaction or reverse rising switching rates among their customers. As a result, there is a potential $1.3 trillion of revenue at play in the U.S. market represented by the ‘switching economy,’ according to new research released by Accenture.

Minneapolis – Supervalu Inc. beat Wall Street estimates with second quarter fiscal 2014 net earnings of $40 million, compared to a $111 million loss in the year-ago period.

The supermarket operator reported net sales of $3.95 billion, up 0.2% from $3.94 billion last year.

Same-store sales results varied by banner. Same-store sales in the Save-A-Lot network were negative 0.3, while same-store sales for corporate stores within the Save-A-Lot network were positive 4.6% and were negative 0.9% in the Retail Food segment.

Palo Alto, Calif. – HP Autonomy is releasing the HP Digital Marketing Hub, a new solution that enables marketers to deliver personalized experiences based on real-time analysis of diverse and massive volumes of information across multiple customer touchpoints. HP Digital Marketing Hub combines technologies from HP Autonomy, HP Vertica and HP Labs and leverages the HP Converged Cloud to provide advanced marketing analytics.

Shoppers responding to a recent National Retail Federation survey said they expect to spend slightly less this holiday season in contrast to an earlier economic forecast by the trade group which indicated spending during November and December would rise by 3.9%.

Mahwah, N.J. -- The websites for the top 500 U.S. retailers are still too slow and continue to get slower – pages have slowed down 14% since summer 2013, and are 16% slower than fall 2012, according to a study by Radware.

New York -- Thirty-One Gifts, one of America’s largest direct-selling companies, has chosen TXT Maple Lake to assist in managing its retail processes. Using TXT’s integrated retail planning solution, TXT will manage the whole spectrum of Thirty-One’s forecasting, merchandise, assortment and inventory management.

Jon Abolins, senior tax director at Avalara
 

Los Angeles -- Faced with an uncertain economic and political environment and the first government shutdown in nearly two decades, Americans are expected to tighten their holiday budgets this year, beginning with Halloween, according to market research firm IBISWorld. Total spending on the holiday is anticipated to grow only 3% to $7.63 billion in 2013, compared to a strong 17.8% increase in 2012.