Data & Analytics

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.

Retail consulting firm McMillanDoolittle has posted an interesting blog on Gap Inc.’s ongoing efforts to turnaround its troubled namesake brand. Here is the full posting:

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.

New York - Lack of a single customer view, an inability to deal with large amounts of data and lack of time for optimization are among the challenges that cause the biggest headaches for modern marketers. According to new research published by Econsultancy in partnership with SmartFocus, among the pain points marketers face are the challenges of making customer data actionable, bottlenecks caused by IT and web development teams and lack of time for campaign testing and optimization.

The report identifies the following key challenges:

New York – Retail real estate giant Simon has announced the winners of its inaugural 'Simon Launch,” a retail startup competition aimed at uncovering, investing in, and accelerating top startups in the retail industry. 

The winning startups, which were selected from more than 300 applications, are:

New York -- An investigation of Whole Foods Market stores in New York City has found systemic overcharging of its customers for prepackaged food.

The city's Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) said some Whole Foods stores routinely overstated the weights of its pre-packaged products – including meats, dairy and baked goods – resulting in customers being overcharged. DCA tested packages of 80 different types of pre-packaged products and found all of the products had packages with mislabeled weights.

New York -- 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.

North Plainfield, N. J. -- Nearly one-third (31.1% ) of retailers report that their companies have opened or will open new stores this year, according to a survey by retail real estate management firm Levin Management. It is the highest mid-year percentage in the four years for which comparative Levin survey data is available.