Data & Analytics

Beijing, China - Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is both thinking and acting globally with a major expansion of its cross-border e-commerce initiatives. Alibaba’s new global effort includes the launch of 11 official country pavilions on its Tmall Global platform.

An investigation of Whole Foods Market stores in New York City has found systemic overcharging of its customers for prepackaged food, according to government officials.

The recent admission by Mickey Drexler to making “mistakes” while explaining the results of two J.Crew sweaters – one successful, one not – shined a bright light on the importance of each new product decision and the consequences of getting it wrong. In the grand scheme of things, one or two bad decisions do not always make or break a company. But when you string multiple bad decisions together, the stakes are much higher.

The combination of Royal Ahold and Delhaize Groupe creates a new super-regional chain along the Eastern Seaboard that will serve 50 million customers weekly and generate annual sales of more than $60 billion.

The merger announcement was highly anticipated following months of speculation followed by confirmation of talks between the companies. Now that the merger agreement has been reached, Ahold and Delhaize said they expect the deal to close by mid-2016.

Carpinteria, Calif. -- With more Americans using credit, debit and prepaid goods to pay for goods and services, the amount merchants pay to process those cards continues to rise.

Naples, Fla. – Retailers often may not have the tools they need to effectively fight omnichannel fraud. More than half (54%) of retailers in the U.S. and Europe still have to consolidate their fraud management solutions across all channels, according to new research conducted by Forrester Consulting for ACI Worldwide.
 

Minneapolis – Furniture retailer Room & Board has aligned its online and in-store customer experience with Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s predictive digital marketing capabilities. Room & Board has improved the customer experience and delivered more relevant information, which in turn has increased the average order value by 16% and delivered a 2,900% ROI payback during a two-month period.

This has resulted in a significant increase in online sales and improved loyalty.

Ann Arbor, Mich. - Customer satisfaction with goods and services purchased and consumed in the U.S. suffered a fifth consecutive quarterly decline, sending the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) to its lowest point since 2006. According to the ACSI, the national level of customer satisfaction is down 0.7% to 74.7 on a 100-point scale in the first quarter of 2015 and is off 2.7% since peaking in the fourth quarter 2013.