Data & Analytics

When it comes to increasing brand awareness on social media for the holidays, a few chains stand out.

Global sporting goods retailer Decathlon, which operates 850 stores in 22 countries, is improving inventory visibility and shelf accuracy.

Decathlon will roll out radio frequency identification (RFID) solutions from Checkpoint Systems in more than 400 stores globally and further extend its existing RFID source-tagging program for millions of products in all its stores around the world.

GameStop forecast an exceptionally wide range of same store sales possibilities during the fourth quarter following weaker than expected third quarter results.

It’s almost time to stop using the term omnichannel retail.

Modern customers have told retailers that they expect consistency across channels during their shopping journeys. That caused some disruption several years ago, but the market responded.

Retailers that haven’t grasped the concept of omnichannel and implemented it successfully are generally out of business or losing serious market share to slicker competition. The term omnichannel has more or less become superfluous: It is now implied in the simple term retail.

The recent KronosWorks 2015 conference was held in Las Vegas, a city built on taking chances. However, increasing automation of workforce management tasks is helping retailers remove the risk from activities such as scheduling, staffing and hiring.

Here are three hot automation trends highlighted at KronosWorks that are helping retailers win the workforce management game.

Holiday is going to have a new look this year, as retailers take a different approach to the shopping season. As a result of consumers’ overwhelming focus on price, online shopping and free shipping incentives, retailers have been forced to rethink their strategies. As part of our ongoing series of retail industry surveys, HRC Advisory recently spoke with over a dozen top U.S. retailers to gauge what’s to come for the 2015 holiday season.

John Bultema, executive VP, treasury management and currency processing solutions for Fifth Third Bank, spoke with Chain Store Age editor Marianne WIlson about the current status of cash receipts in retail store. And how they aren’t going away anytime soon.

A familiar name factors heavily into the online holiday shopping plans of consumers.

Asurion Retail Solutions has introduced an unlimited device protection plan to help retailers build stronger, more connected relationships with small businesses and consumers.

The new initiative is a first-to-retail product innovation, according to Asurion, that allows retailers to serve as a single-source destination for customers’ protection coverage needs across an unlimited number of devices purchased from any retailer.

A familiar name factors heavily into the online holiday shopping plans of consumers.

According to a new poll from Reuters and Ipsos, 51% of consumers plan to do most or all of their online holiday shopping at Amazon.com. This dwarfs the next-most-popular specific retailer, Walmart, favored by 16%.

Other traditional and online retailers combined for the second-highest response of 18%. Other popular retailers with low responses include Target (3%) and Macys (2%).