Data & Analytics

The IRI Summit 2015 conference this week in Austin is helping senior manufacturers and retailers find growth in CPG manufacturing, retail and health care.

The program highlights strategies for finding growth opportunities with shoppers via cutting-edge content and analytics, technologies and retail best practices.

Seattle - While Amazon is winning the battle for smartphone shoppers in America, it has yet to achieve the same dominance in at least 10 other countries internationally. This is the key finding of a monthly report from Informate Mobile Intelligence that tracked and measured consumer use of smartphones in 12 countries during February 2015.

The new report reveals shopping apps as having the highest penetration in the U.S. at 60%, followed by India at 46%. The other 10 countries measured, by comparison, only had a median reach of about 18%.

Dallas – Waiting in line is probably the least appetizing part of the dining out experience. That is why Chili’s Grill &Bar has selected the NoWait mobile network to power its new mobile waitlisting app.

Rolling out nationwide in summer 2015, NoWait enables guests to search local Chili's restaurants, understand the wait time to be seated and add their names remotely to a restaurant's real-time seating list. Customers will also be able to track their place in line and show up when their table is scheduled to be ready.

What’s wrong with the retail Industry? Corporate Responsibility Magazine is out with the 2015 version of its 100 Best Corporate Citizens and only three, that’s right, only three retailers were worthy of inclusion on the list.

Charlotte, N.C. -- Shoppers in the United States are in no hurry to buy a wearable device, according to a survey by Carlisle & Gallagher Consulting Group, a business and technology consulting firm exclusively focused on the financial services industry. The findings suggest that future adoption of the technology will be driven by attractiveness, alerts and payments functionality.

EBay painted a mixed financial picture for the first quarter, with lower revenue from its marketplaces division and higher revenue from its Paypal division, which the company said it plans to spin off later this year.

Louisville, Colo. -- Ace Hardware is America’s favorite home improvement store and Costco is the favorite for home furnishings, according to a new nationwide survey by Market Force Information. The findings are based on consumers’ satisfaction levels and their likelihood to recommend the retailer to others.

In the home improvement sector, Ace Hardware earned the top spot with a composite loyalty score of 61% (out of a potential 70%). Menards came in second, at 50%, followed by Lowe’s, Home Depot and Walmart.

King of Prussia, Pa. - eBay Enterprise, an eBay Inc. company, is releasing Magento Enterprise Edition 1.14.2. Magento’s new solutions include new automated product category sorting capabilities, integration of Google Tag Manager, and access to new automated functional tests.

In addition, the Magento Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK) enables retailers to create custom iOS applications, as well as provides a sample app that merchants can customize to accelerate their development.