Data & Analytics

New York -- Duane Reade and Poncho, a personalized weather-forecasting service that sends users relevant weather updates tailored to their preferences via text or email, are teaming up in a pilot program targeted to the New York Metropolitan area consumer. Poncho users will receive their regular weather updates with select alerts featuring coupons for Duane Reade products that will help them battle the elements and their allergies.

Grand Rapids, Mich. -- Meijer has added features to its mPerks program that allows customers to store digital receipts from purchases in a single place and details exactly how much they've saved by shopping at the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based retailer. The new features are available for subscribers who enable the digital receipts option on their accounts and enter their mPerks ID each time at checkout.  

Deerfield Park, Ill. -- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights is reportedly investigating privacy practices at the new Well Experience stores run by Walgreens. According to the Wall Street Journal, the investigation is focusing on whether pharmacist consultations with customers at Well Experience Stores violate the privacy of patient medical data.

Miami – Burger King Worldwide Inc. is reportedly planning to introduce a mobile payment app. According to the Wall Street Journal, Burger King will launch the smartphone app in select markets starting in April 2014 and will offer it in all 7,000 U.S. stores within a few months of initial rollout.

New York -- Net-A-Porter.com topped all competitors across all retail verticals for customer service in February, according to Stella Benchmarks. The retailer was particularly strong in fulfillment, besting all other retailers in both shipping and returns.

Net-A-Porter.com provided a pre-paid, adhesive return label in all orders handled by StellaService analysts. In addition, Net-A-Porter.com issued refunds in less than a week on average.

North Wilkesboro, N.C. – Lowe’s is partnering with lawn product provider Scotts and digital agency HelloWorld to run an online promotion tied to the NCAA “March Madness” college basketball tournament. By utilizing the rich engagement platform of HelloWorld, participants fill out a form to register and select who they think the final four teams in the tournament will be.

Franklin, Tenn. – The growth of new mobile device shipments is expected to grow 95% worldwide and more than double (108%) in North America during 2014. According to IHL Group's Mobile POS Vendor Database, 47% of total mobile POS shipments in 2013 Worldwide were iOS devices, with Android at 33% and Windows 8 at 12%.

Personalized weather provider Poncho has developed an innovative way to monetize its content through a shopper marketing initiative with the Duane Reade division of Walgreens.

In a pilot program with Duane Reade, users of the Poncho service who sign up to receive weather updates tailored to their preferences via text or email will also receive promotional incentives from Duane Reade. The program is targeted to New York metropolitan area consumers where Duane Reade’s more than 250 stores are concentrated.

Supervalu reduced its organizational structure from three divisions to two and name Kevin Kemp president of the east region and Bill Chew president of the west region.

The company did not indicate what roles Kemp and Chew played in the organization previously, but did note that the east region will be headquartered in Mechanicsville, VA and the west region will be based in Hopkins, MN near the company’s Eden Prairie headquarters.

Gigwalk, a leading provider of crowdsourced solutions to retailers and CPG companies, just surpassed the 500,000th member of its mobile workforce and celebrated the occasion by securing an additional $10 million in funding.