Data & Analytics

New York – Aeropostale Inc. is reportedly working with investment bank Barclays plc to investigate options including selling the company to a private equity firm or a regular equity sale. According to Bloomberg, Aeropostale CEO Tom Johnson is already trying to reverse four consecutive quarters of losses through new products and the closure of up to 40 stores.

In November 2013, major investor Crescendo Partners sent Aeropostale a letter demanding the company sell itself. Aeropostale and Barclays did not comment in the article.

Tampa, Fla. -- The global market for advanced services based on mobile context insights could be worth as much as $44 billion annually. A research report for Syniverse from economists at the Surrey Energy Economics Center (SEEC) values the market for operators providing services to brands based on end-user context data and proposes a sustainable long-term market structure with balanced, mutual benefit between operators, brands and consumers.

New York -- Bryan Sartin, director of Verizon’s RISK Team, will discuss the link between security breaches and automated building management systems at Chain Store Age’s 50th annual SPECS Conference, March 9-12, 2014
Gaylord Texan Hotel Grapevine, Texas.

Sartin heads the Research, Investigations, Solutions, Knowledge (RISK) Team at Verizon Enterprise Solutions. The Team has 106 full-time investigation staff who come from law enforcement, military, military intelligence, and specialty engineering.

Target continues to cope with the fallout of a data breach, which, as expected, hurt the company’s fourth-quarter results.

The company incurred $61 million in expenses related to the breach during the quarter, but was able to bring the total impact to $17 million after applying a $44 million insurance payment.

But the retailer added that it is not only unable to estimate future expenses related to the data breach but also warned that those costs may adversely affect operations results in the first quarter and full-year 2014 and future periods.

A slowdown in firearms and ammunition sales as well as severe winter weather affected Big 5 Sporting Goods’ fourth quarter same-store sales.

Net sales increased about 2% to $248 million from $243.6 million, while same-store sales declined 0.5%. During the quarter, net income rose 30% to $5.2 million from $4 million compared to the same period in the prior year.

During the fiscal year, net income almost doubled, rising 87% to $27.9 million from $14.9 million. Net sales improved 6% to $993.3 million from $940.5 million and same-store sales rose 3.9%.

Dollar Tree’s fourth quarter results were affected by the extra week in last year’s fourth quarter as well as continued economic challenges.

On a year-over-year basis, net income during the fourth quarter declined about 7% to $213 million from $228.6 million, and during the full year fell about 4% to $596.7 million from $619.3 million.

Management consulting firm Kurt Salmon has named Tom Cole as a partner in its Retail and Consumer Products Group.

MasterCard and Syniverse are partnering to deliver a number of mobile and payment services for consumers to use when traveling abroad. The two companies are currently in pilot-phase for an opt-in service that will enable card transactions for users only when they have their mobile device switched on in a specific geolocation abroad.

Hispanic consumers are outpacing non-Hispanics in their adoption of mobile, social and online sources for local shopping, according to BIA/Kelsey's Consumer Commerce Monitor study released this week.