Data & Analytics

The cold hard winter may have been taxing for some but it was certainly profitable for Big 5 Sporting Goods Corp., which reported an increase in profit in the first quarter.

With the one year anniversary of Walmart’s Saving Catcher app approaching, the executive who led its development is slated to give an update on what’s next for the price comparison app at a May 14 event in Bentonville.

Greg Chandler, senior marketing director of customer engagement at Walmart, is the featured speaker at an upcoming meeting of Doing Business in Bentonville. Chandler is scheduled to speak on the topic of “Walmart mobile retail – how Savings Catcher is changing the way Walmart things about digital retail.”

Amazon has climbed to the top of the social shopping ranks, thanks in part to the introduction of #AmazonCart and #AmazonBasket.

Bi-Lo Holdings wants to tap into its shoppers’ digital lifestyles with a 360-degree mobile app and website experience that delivers personalized coupons based customer shopping habits.

Walmart is schooling students in Virginia on savings with the latest iteration of its on campus concept store first introduced in 2011.

The new 4,100-sq.-ft. Walmart on Campus is located at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. The store opened April 29 and is part of an ongoing pilot program at Walmart to designed to provide VCU students and faculty, as well as the surrounding neighborhood, more convenient access to affordable products.

Minneapolis – Target Corp. is reportedly testing a solution that automatically recommends sponsored videos to Web users based on the content they are reading. According to Advertising Age, Target is piloting the Kargo Kapsule application, which recommends sponsored videos that relate to the content displayed on a consumer’s Web screen.

El Segundo, Calif. – Big 5 Sporting Goods Corp. kicked off fiscal 2015 with a strong performance in the first quarter. Net income grew 6% year-over-year to $2.3 million from $2.1 million, and would have grown more if not for increased expenses relating to wages and benefits, new stores, and a legal settlement.

Big 5 plans to open approximately 10 net new stores in fiscal 2015, including three in the second quarter.

Net sales climbed 5% to $243.6 million from $231.3 million, aided by a 3.9% increase in same-store sales.

New York – While most observers agree there will not be widespread adoption of technology to accept payments from EMV-compliant payment cards in the U.S. by the October 2015 fraud liability shift deadline, Forrester Research is less optimistic than most. In a research note, Forrester said retailer concerns about the ROI of spending on chip and PIN technology, as well the development of new secure payment methods, will delay widespread adoption of hardware and software needed to accept chip and PIN payment in the U.S., until 2020.

New York – Retailers who offer or are considering offering online grocery shopping may be on the right track. One-quarter of 30,000 online global respondents surveyed in the new Nielsen Global E-commerce and the New Retail Surv say they are already ordering grocery products online for home delivery and more than half (55%) are willing to use it in the future.