Data & Analytics

Change is constant, as they say, and we’ve all seen a lot of that, especially in the past few years. But as I look 10 years into the future, I think we’re actually in the early days of not just more change, but wholesale revolution, too. “Revolution” is a strong — and possibly overused — term. Why are the next 10 years different? Fundamentally, our customer has changed more in the past three years than in the past 30 and the pace of change is poised to accelerate in the coming decade.

Animated forms that smile and wink add tech twist

A must-see fashion exhibit at The Brooklyn Museum in New York City is doing double duty, offering a retrospective of the 30-year-plus career of avant-garde designer Jean Paul Gaultier, while also providing a showcase for a collection of show-stealing, crowd-pleasing mannequins. But what do mannequins in a museum exhibit have to do with retail?

West Palm Beach, Fla. -- U.S. online retail sales will reach $508 billion by 2020, representing a market share of nearly 14% (or 17%, if food retailing is excluded), compared to expected online sales of $260 billion in 2013. According to a new report from FTI Consulting, this represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 11% from 2012 through 2020.

Leading cloud services provider Akamai Technologies strengthened its ability to protect the Internet with the acquisition of security solutions firm Prolexic.

Optimizing retail store portfolios and optimizing shopping center portfolios seem like two different things. In fact, the two tasks have similarities.

“To retailers, optimization is getting store deployment across the marketplace right,” explained Mike Makinen, COO with MPI, Mall Properties Inc., New York City. “We have a similar strategy. We have a mix of retailers within our shopping center portfolio, and we try to optimize the assortment of retailers, restaurants and service tenants within each center.”

By Ike Boruchow, analyst, Sterne Agee, New York

This year, Black Friday gave us a taste of what to expect for the remainder of the holiday selling season: intense competition, deep discounts, and choppy mall traffic. Earlier store openings drove heavy traffic, which dissipated and then bounced through the day.

Boca Raton, Fla. -- Office Depot, formed by the merger of Office Depot and OfficeMax, announced the appointment of Stephen Hare as executive VP and CFO, effective immediately. Hare replaces co-CFO Mike Newman, who has retired from the company, and interim Co-CFO Deb O’Connor, who has returned to her position as senior VP, finance and co-chief accounting officer.
 

The 80 million strong Gen Y is a retail force to be reckoned with

A generational shift is afoot that’s about to upend the retail landscape.