Predictive Analytics

New York City -- The Grupo Pao de Acucar, the largest retailer in South America, has selected the SAP Carbon Impact OnDemand solution to monitor and manage carbon emissions and energy consumption in each of its 1,832 stores. The solution, from SAP, will help the group, long recognized as a sustainability leader for retailers both in Latin America and globally, to more effectively control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase the data quality of environmental reports submitted to financial and sustainability regulatory agencies.

NEW YORK — Retail industry sales are expected to rise, albeit not at the same pace as 2011, according to the National Retail Federation.

Retail industry sales will rise 3.4% to $2.53 trillion, NRF said, compared with a pace of 4.7% in the year-ago period. The expected slowdown in consumer spending, NRF said, will be influenced by a number of factors, including stalled unemployment rate and lack of newly-created jobs. But despite the lower projection, the industry is expected to garner stronger numbers than other industries, NRF said.

Atlanta -- Retail analytics solution provider QuantiSense said Monday that Urban Outfitters has licensed its full suite of solutions including QuantiSense Merchandising, Direct and Store Ops.

Urban selected the QuantiSense Decision Orchestration Platform, which combines business intelligence, data warehousing and sophisticated retail analytics into role-based, actionable and repeatable processes.

Smarter decision-making is a goal all retailers have, and now Target should be in an even better position to execute on that objective following a major agreement with industry leading data warehousing and analytics provider Teradata.

New York City -- Consumer confidence rose more than forecast in January, reaching its highest level in eight months amid signs of an improving labor market.

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment increased to 74 from 69.9 at the end of December. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey called for 71.5. The measure has increased 9.9 points in the last two months, the biggest such gain since April-May 2009.

Charlotte, N.C. -- Analytic data solution-provider Terradata said Thursday that Belk has selected multiple Teradata Data Warehouse Appliances and the Teradata Retail Logical Data Model to build a new integrated database-driven analytics environment.

San Francisco -- Williams-Sonoma Inc. said Thursday it has cut its fiscal Q4 earnings outlook below Wall Street expectations due to heavy holiday promotions levels.

The company said it had to offer discounts to entice shoppers this holiday season. Although earnings guidance has been reduced to below expectations, Williams-Sonoma’s revenue outlook remains in line with Wall Street, trimmed to a range of $1.24 billion to $1.26 billion. The company had previously expected revenue as high as $1.27 billion.

INDIANAPOLIS — Electronics retailer Hhgregg announced that it has lowered its third-quarter forecast, reflecting weakness in the video category.

The company said that fiscal third quarter comparable-store sales are estimated to have increased 3.9%, with the video category expected to have decreased 4.8%, the appliance category expected to have increased 6.8%, the home office category expected to have increased 91.4% and the other category expected to have decreased 7.1%. 

Atlanta -- Dollar volume growth on cards overall was a healthy 6.9%  in December, according to First Data Corporation’s First Data SpendTrend analysis for the full month of December 2011 compared to December 2010. SpendTrend tracks same-store consumer spending by credit, signature debit, PIN debit, EBT cards and checks at U.S. merchant locations.

However, strong auto sales, driven by low interest rates, likely diverted consumer spending to car sales from other retail areas, the report said. Auto sales are not captured in SpendTrend figures.

Chicago -- Galleria Retail Technology Solutions, a provider of retail and category optimization solutions, announced that The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. has chosen Galleria to help optimize its merchandising strategy and improve the customer experience within its more than 300 northeast and Mid-Atlantic stores.

A&P will roll out several of Galleria’s solutions throughout its family of supermarkets.