Data & Analytics

After reporting standout results for the holiday quarter, Costco had a drop in same store sales in March that the retailer blamed on the earlier-than-normal Easter holiday.

Amazon’s Prime membership is starting to crowd out traditional retailers like Walmart and Target, according to Forbes.

The magazine reports that research consultant Millward Brown Digital found that consumers with Prime accounts –- of which there are reportedly 40 million subscribers –- are less likely to visit other retail sites when making online purchases.

New York -- Enrollment levels in consumer loyalty programs have reached an all-time according to the 2015 Bond Brand Loyalty Report. The fifth annual study shows consumers overwhelmingly agree that loyalty programs are worth the effort.

Chicago -- ShopperTrak, a leading provider of consumer behavior insights and location-based analytics, is teaming up with the shopping app, shopkick, to deliver in-store beacon and analytics technologies that allow retailers to engage with shoppers throughout their time in the store and deliver an enhanced shopping experience.
 

Redwood Shores, Calif. – Oracle is releasing six new Oracle Retail cloud services that provide retailers with rapid access to enterprise-grade applications for managing critical e-commerce, customer engagement, order management, order fulfillment, loss prevention, and brand compliance operations.

The new cloud services stem from the Micros Retail solutions acquired by Oracle in 2014, and they are part of a growing portfolio of retail solutions hosted by Oracle and available by subscription.
 

San Francisco – Alibaba.com has collaborated with e-commerce platform to Bigcommerce deliver an integrated shopping experience for sourcing products from Alibaba.com’s network of Chinese wholesale suppliers. The Alibaba.com Wholesale solution is immediately available to Bigcommerce’s 70,000 stores, and online merchants can now access and purchase a collection of more than 30,000 products from about 300 of Alibaba.com’s Gold Suppliers in China with scope to expand to more than three million products from thousands of Gold Suppliers.

Mountain View, Calif. – Google is reportedly planning to launch a service that will compete with Amazon Home Services later this spring. According to BuzzFeed, Google will integrate a new product into its core search functionality that will directly connect users searching for service providers such as plumbers and electricians to the providers.

Seattle – Amazon.com styles itself as a provider of everything its customers need, and that extends to software development. Amazon has selected Seta International as an official Amazon Software Solutions Provider.

Camp Hill, Pa. – Rite Aid Corp. beat Wall Street expectations with soaring profit in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014. The retailer reported net income of $1.83 billion, exponentially larger than net income of $55.4 million in the same quarter a year earlier.

A favorable tax asset valuation drove the substantial profit growth. Revenues rose 4% to $6.8 billion from $6.6 billion, mostly due to a same-store sales increase of 4.5%.

Walnut Creek, Calif. – Retailers are taking advantage of volumes of Big Data and advanced analytical technology to uncover deep insights on customer behavior. However, according to a new study from RSR Research, they may be focusing on customer behavior to an extent they overlook other valuable insights.