Data & Analytics

New York -- Parents and their children in grades K-12 will spend a combined $543 on back-to-school items, and double that, at $1,223, on college spending. According to new survey data from Deloitte, parents alone expect to spend 13% less than in 2013.

Seattle – Amazon.com and Blackhawk Network Inc., a prepaid and payments network, have teamed up to bring customers a new way to manage and spend their gift cards. Using the new Amazon Wallet app, customers can more easily store, redeem and check the balance of gift cards from dozens of major retailers and restaurants.

Fort Worth, Texas -- RadioShack is opening 21 new interactive remodel stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. RadioShack began remodeling and opening highly experiential concept stores across the country in July 2013, and has refreshed its more than 4,000 U.S. company-owned stores.

Santa Cruz, Calif. - Sixty-six percent of retailers attending the recent Big Data & Analytics for Retail Summit believe the number one way to ensure a successful holiday season is to understand customer behavior to drive sales and build loyalty. Moreover, data from business analytics provider Looker shows that four-in-10 retailers feel they are still ineffective when it comes to using data to improve business performance.

Downers Grove, Ill. -- FTD Companies Inc. will acquire the Provide Commerce floral and gifting business from Liberty Interactive Corp. for $430 million in cash and stock. Both companies have annual revenues of more than $600 million.

Just how often does Amazon change prices throughout the day? And when do other leading retailers adjust their prices? Price intelligence and optimization leader 360pi is out with a new report that answers those questions and sheds lights on some surprising pricing tactics at top retailers.

The report, titled “When Should You Change Your Prices,” explores the phenomenon of pricing dynamism at leading retailers and assesses its effectiveness. What 360pi discovered is that the level of price dynamism can vary dramatically across retailers.

BitPay, a payment service provider (PSP) specializing in e-commerce, B2B and enterprise solutions for the bitcoin digital currency, has unveiled a new pricing plan that offers basic payment processing free, forever.

The company is hoping to leverage the pricing plan to woo businesses into accepting bitcoin for goods and services.

After a delay of several days, Lumber Liquidators has reported second-quarter results, nearly three weeks after the company revised its full-year guidance, which caused its stock to plummet in recent days.

Net sales for the quarter increased by 2.3%, totaling $263.1 million, compared with $257.1 million in the same quarter last year. But comparable-store sales decreased by 7.1%, with the average sale declining 1.8%. Net income was $16.6 million for the three months ended June 30, down 18.7% from last year's $20.4 million.

Big 5 Sporting Goods’ second-quarter results were affected by a continued reduction in demand for firearms and ammunition. The company also pointed to general softness in the overall consumer environment, adding that the calendar shift of the Easter holiday had a small but unfavorable impact on sales.

The retail industry is undergoing an unprecedented omnichannel transformation with an overwhelming majority of leading retailers aggressively reconfiguring supply chains to provide shoppers a seamless experience, according to a new study from Boston Retail Partners.
 
The omnichannel trend has been underway for many years now, but Boston Retail Partners indicates that more than 90% of retailers are pursuing omnichannel supply chain re-invention efforts the management consulting firm describes as “unified commerce.”