Data & Analytics

City of Industry, Calif. -- Hot Topic reported Wednesday that same-store sales for the nine-week holiday shopping period of November and December edged up 1.2%. The company upped its fourth quarter guidance based on the results.

In related news, Hot Topic has named Cindy Levitt as VP, general merchandise manager, effective Jan. 16.

New York City -- Jesta I.S. said Wednesday it has partnered with Americaneagle.com to offer a pre-integrated front-end e-commerce solution designed to deliver an integrated and comprehensive merchandising suite that allows retailers to rapidly deploy a solid merchandising infrastructure and a comprehensive e-commerce solution.

“Increasingly, we are seeing a higher demand for a full end-to-end integrated e-commerce solution,” said Jerry Boduch, director of business development at Americaneagle.com.

Roseville, Calif. -- Retail life cycle price optimization solution-provider Revionics said it has partnered with K-VA-T Food Stores for a price optimization solution.

K-VA-T will deploy Revionics  Price Optimization and Revionics Promotion Optimization, which includes Revionics' category planning tools, weekly price maintenance capabilities and optimized prices across all pricing zones, each week.  

Goodlettsville, Tenn. -- Dollar General plans to open 625 stores and add more than 6,000 new jobs in 2012. The locations will be spread among Dollar General’s 38-state operating area, and include the new markets of California, where it will open 50 stores and a distribution center, and Massachusetts. The discounter will also open a distribution center in the Golden State this year.

Redwood Shores, Calif. -- 7-Eleven Mexico has selected Oracle Retail Merchandising to create a platform for improving retail operations and driving growth across its 1,400 stores throughout the country.

Customer experience analytics firm ForeSee today released the results of their seventh annual Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index, and Target was ranked 29.

The difficulties Target experienced with the relaunch of its website early last fall and subsequent fall off in traffic couldn’t have come at a worse time, as total retail online sales hit new highs during the holiday season.

Online sales increased 15% to $35.3 billion From Nov. 1 through Dec. 25 compared with the same time period the prior year, according to the online measurement firm comScore.

The analysts at Morningstar combed through 330 consumer sector companies and came up with a list of 10 names that comprise the firm’s new “Consumers’ Choice List. 

Target chairman, president and CEO Gregg Steinhafel drew a proverbial line in the sand last month when he noted the company’s same-stores sales performance in December would be better than the company’s modest showing in November.

Actually, what he said was, “For the month of December, our comparable-store sales results will compare the five weeks ending Dec. 31, 2011 to the five weeks ended Jan. 1, 2011. We expect a low to mid single-digit increase in Target’s comparable-store sales for this period, stronger than our November performance.”

There were no new surprises during November regarding prices at Target and Walmart.