Data & Analytics

St. Louis – Most Americans will spend the same or less on holiday shopping this year as they did last year. According to a recent survey by financial services firm Edward Jones, 37% say they plan to spend less on holiday shopping in 2013 than they spent in 2012.

New York -- Macy’s shoppers will be able to see it, scan it, shop it this holiday season with the chain’s upcoming integration of NantMobile’s iD visual recognition technology. The new Macy’s Star Gifts app, powered by iD, empowers mobile shoppers to leverage visual recognition technology to purchase items from Macy’s Star Gifts assortment while on the go. Whether they scan it from a catalog, magazine ad or even from an outdoor billboard, Macy’s will deliver mobile access to product information, gift-giving assistance and much more.

Woonsocket, R.I. – CVS Caremark Corp. on Tuesday raised its profit forecast for the year on Tuesday, amid better-than-expected profit. Net income for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 3013, grew 25% to $1.25 billion, compared to $1 billion in the same quarter the prior year.

Net revenues rose 5.8% to $32 billion compared with the year-ago period.

ECRM compared retail circular advertising in October 2012 versus October 2013 and noted trends occurring across top retail chains. Although Home Depot and Lowe’s continued to see large year-over-year changes, these shifts have been consistent throughout the past few months: the new sizes and densities of circulars within the home improvement channel have solidified. Lowe’s now features lengthy circulars with few ads per page, while Home Depot typically runs shorter, denser circulars.

Montreal -- Canadian footwear retailer Groupe Yellow has selected the Epicor Retail Software as a Service (SaaS) solution to support the organization’s retail operations. Yellow has also signed on as the first SaaS customer to deploy Epicor Retail Sourcing and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) as a hosted solution.

LeapFrog Enterprises is rolling into the holiday with its strongest product lineup ever but concerns about consumer spending have the leading educational entertainment company tempering its view of fourth quarter sales.

Deerfield, Ill. -- Walgreens had October sales of $6.37 billion, an increase of 6.1% from $6 billion for the same month in fiscal 2013. Same-store sales improved 5.8%.

Calendar day shifts negatively impacted total comparable sales by 0.3%age point, while generic drug introductions in the last 12 months negatively impacted total comparable sales by 0.7%age point. Walgreens opened 14 stores during October, including four relocations, and closed two.

North Bergen, N.J. – Vitamin Shoppe reported net income of $16.3 million during the third quarter of fiscal 2013, flat with the same quarter in the prior year. The retailer also reported a 14% increase in total net sales, to $272.5 million from $239 million, as well as a 2.6% jump in same-store sales.