Data & Analytics

Menlo Park, Calif. – Facebook may not have anywhere near the retail sales volume of Wal-Mart, but in at least one important financial metric the social media network has overtaken Wal-Mart. According to the Associated Press, Facebook has knocked Wal-Mart out of the Standard & Poor’s list of the top 10 most valuable stocks.

New York – Disney and Ralph Lauren, vertical brands with a strong retail presence, are the highest-ranked retailers in a new Brand Keys survey of what brands U.S. consumers consider the most patriotic. To determine the rankings, Brand Keys drilled down into consumer response to 230 brands to see which were most associated with the value of patriotism.

Following is a list of the retailers who made the list of top 50 most patriotic brands, with their emotional engagement strength for patriotism:

No. 3: Disney (96%)

All good things must come to end — including, after nearly four years, my contributions to this column. “Retail Rap” will soon be forging on without me. This is the first of two final columns I’ll be contributing, and I’ll beg your indulgence if I wax nostalgic at times in this, column number 99, and in my last submission two weeks from now, Retail Rap number 100.

Woonsocket, R.I. -- Norman de Greve will join CVS Health as chief marketing officer, effective July 15. In this role, de Greve will be accountable for marketing strategy across the enterprise.  

Currently, de Greve is president of the Boston and Detroit offices of the DigitasLBi marketing agency. de Greve has experience in cross-channel communications planning, brand campaigns, media, loyalty and analytics.

In addition to his 14 years at DigitasLBi, de Greve spent time in management consulting.
 

New York - Consumers are continuing to abandon national food, beverage and household brands. According to Deloitte's annual American Pantry Study of more than 354 brands across 34 product categories, nearly three in four (73%) consumer packaged goods (CPG) categories show an overall decline in their brands' "must-have" status, meaning that shoppers would purchase whether on sale or not.

Hangzhou, China – Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Holding Group Inc. will reportedly pull the plug on its 11Main U.S. specialty e-commerce site. According to TechCrunch, Alibaba plans to fold 11Main into New York-based social shopping platform OpenSky.

Deerfield, Ill. - Mondelez International has renewed its global strategic partnership with Facebook, with a focus on creating and delivering creative video content and driving impulse snack purchasing online. Through this partnership, the companies will work together to leverage and innovate around video consumption and mobile commerce.

Ann Arbor, Mich. - Customer satisfaction with goods and services purchased and consumed in the U.S. suffered a fifth consecutive quarterly decline, sending the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) to its lowest point since 2006. According to the ACSI, the national level of customer satisfaction is down 0.7% to 74.7 on a 100-point scale in the first quarter of 2015 and is off 2.7% since peaking in the fourth quarter 2013.

Seattle – Amazon.com is reportedly using a proprietary machine learning solution to analyze online customer reviews and present newer and more relevant reviews first. According to CNet, the system takes into account factors such as newness, whether the review was written by a verified Amazon purchaser and how many customers found the review helpful.

San Francisco – In its latest step toward becoming more of a commerce platform, Twitter is testing two new ways to make finding content about products easier. The first pilot is of a new way to surface and organize relevant Tweets about products and places on dedicated pages.

These pages will feature images and video about the product alongside information such as a description, price, and an option to buy, book, or visit the website for more information. Twitter is starting to experiment with a small number of products and places.