Data & Analytics

Austin, Texas — Whole Foods Market unveiled the name of its new banner of smaller, value-focused and millenial-targeted stores:  “365 by Whole Foods Market.”

New York — Internet ad revenues hit a record-breaking $13.3 billion in the United States in the first quarter of 2015, up 16% over the year-ago period, according to the latest IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report figures released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and  PwC US.  

By Joe Dalton    As technologies advance, social channels proliferate, and consumers become more plugged into digital marketing, personalization and contextualization is becoming the key to connecting with customers. While consumers build their online identities simply by using their devices for everything from browsing to averting traffic, they leave trails of their preferences, behavior, and values that retailers can draw upon to appeal to the interests of each individual customer.   

Menomonee Falls, Wis. — Kohl’s on Thursday announced a series of organizational changes, including the promotion of Michelle Gass to the newly created principal officer position of chief merchandising and customer officer. Gass joined Kohl’s in 2013 as chief customer officer from Starbucks, where she is credited with playing a key role in the coffee giant’s turnaround  several years back.    

Toronto, Canada – Hudson’s Bay Co. Inc. (HBC) swung a net loss of $54 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2015 from net earnings of $176 million in the year-ago period amid higher selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses even as as sales showed strong improvement.  

Washington, D.C. – At least two new strains of POS malware are reportedly threatening retailers. According to Bank Info Security, the FBI has released a warning about a new form of memory-scraping POS malware called Punkey.   Punkey can infect any Windows-based POS network and encrypts the data it steals, making detection difficult. Punkey may have been used in a recent breach at an unidentified U.S. restaurant chain.  

Boston – The in-store customer experience is going to get a lot more personalized and timely. According to a new special report by Boston Retail Partners (BRP), “Real-time Retail – The New Retail Imperative,” by 2020 nearly two-thirds of retailers will identify a customer when they walk in the store via their smartphone.  In addition, 76% of retailers plan to provide suggested selling based on a customer’s previous purchases within three years.

Other key findings gathered from recent BRP surveys include:

London, U.K. — Honest Cafe, an automated coffee house chain in London, is using IBM Watson Analytics to unearth client insights to help determine everything from coffee products and pricing, to marketing and promotions. Honest Cafe is a new venture from Revive Vending where three cafes currently in operation, and four more planned, are all unmanned.

New York — If credit card issuers stopped offering rewards, a slight majority of American credit cardholders wouldn’t change their spending habits. According to a new Bankrate.com survey, 51% of U.S. credit card holders say they would keep using the card the same way they did previously.    Another 26% would use the card less often and 19% would stop using it entirely.  

San Jose, Calif. — The New York attorney general’s office has reportedly notified eBay Inc. and PayPal Inc. that their revised user agreements may raise issues related to consumer protection regulations. According to the New York Times, the concern regards both companies requiring permission to contact users by phone for reasons including offers and promotions, surveys and debt collection.