Data & Analytics

Goodlettsville, Tenn. -- Dollar General Corp.’s first-quarter profit and sales missed Wall Street estimates as the retailer cited an “unfavorable’ winter, increased competition and economic challenges. The company said Tuesday its profit rose to $222.4 million, from $220.1 million year ago. The retailer also reiterated its plans to open 700 stores in fiscal 2014, and remodel, to varying degrees, another 900 existing locations.

Net sales rose to $4.52 billion, from $4.23 billion. Same-store sales rose 1.5% in the quarter.

By Anand Medepalli, VP of Solution Strategy, JDA Software Group Inc.

There will be more changes in retail the next 10 years than what has been seen in the last 50 years. Maybe that’s why omnichannel retailing is a hot topic. Omnichannel retailing centers on providing a seamless shopping experience regardless of channel to deliver a unified and customized shopping experience.

Kraft Foods Group has named George Zoghbi as vice chairman of operations, R&D, sales and strategy, a newly created position. He will report directly to CEO Tony Vernon.  

The company said that it created the new role to “bring together the expertise of several key areas under one leader, including research & development, which creates innovative new products and manages quality improvements, to the manufacturing and sales teams that make and ultimately deliver Kraft's products to customers.”

Sweetwater, Fla. -- Ikea announced it had completed the installation of South Florida’s largest solar array, which will be plugged-in officially atop the future Miami-Dade Ikea store opening this summer in Sweetwater, Florida. Combined with rooftop arrays in Orlando, Tampa, and Sunrise, this fourth solar project will keep Ikea as the state’s largest non-utility solar owner.

Finance executive Sven Wehrwein is the newest member of the Quantum Retail Technology board of directors.

The Minneapolis-based retail technology company said Wehrwein’s addition to the board brings growth expertise and knowledge of corporate finance.

By Bill Schild

New York - The vast majority (80%) of consumers aged 20-40 in the U.S. and U.K. believe total privacy in the digital world is a thing of the past, but nearly half (49%) said they would not object to having their buying behavior tracked if it would result in relevant offers from brands and suppliers. A new study of 2,012 consumers by Accenture also shows.64% of respondents said that when they are physically in a store, they would welcome text messages from that retailer alerting them to offers matching their buying preferences.

Bella Vista, Australia – Australian supermarket chain Woolworths is deploying technology from Galleria to enhance promotional merchandising operations. Woolworths plans to implement Galleria’s Foundation Services (GFS), Promotional Display Optimization (PDO) and Store Operations Workbench (SOW) to help operationalize an enhanced promotional merchandising strategy to improve the customer experience across their enterprise