Data & Analytics

FORT WORTH, Texas — RadioShack's sales and earnings fell in the first quarter, as the company struggles to deliver an effective mix or products and services to its customers. 

Port Washington, N.Y. -- Price trumps sales and special deals, customer service, and convenience as a factor in deciding where to shop for the majority of U.S. consumers, according to a survey by The NPD Group.

It’s an intriguing scenario: This summer, a weekend soccer player will enter Adidas’ store in downtown Manhattan to buy a pair of top-of-the-line F50s. He will turn down offers of help and saunter to the right of checkout where four 46-in. touch-screens are stacked. He will tap the play button on a video showing two pros putting the $270 shoe through its paces on the pitch and then removing the digital MiCoach tracking device in the sole and plugging it into a computer to review their performances.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Big Lots has lowered its comparable-store guidance for its first quarter, and now expects them to be slightly negative compared with its prior guidance issued on March 2. The company's prior guidance estimated first-quarter comps would be up 2% to 4%.

Deerfield, Ill. -- Walgreens launched a new online tool called “Find Your Pharmacist,” that allows customers to select a pharmacist by matching their health care needs with the areas of expertise, specialties, languages and clinical backgrounds of Walgreens pharmacists.

New York -- Modell’s Sporting Goods announced that Daniel Sheehan joined the company as COO in April 2012. With over 27 years of management and information technology experience, Sheehan is responsible for store operations, distribution, loss prevention, e-commerce, information technology, visual merchandising and human resources.

By Joel Alden, Hana Ben-Shabat, Bobby Wehmeyer and Basil Wuson, A.T. Kearney

To continuously delight customers, most retailers constantly alter product assortments, adjust prices or service offerings and refocus customer experiences. But how often are these actions based on meaningful consumer insights? When the phrase “consumer insight” is misused to refer to simple market research or interesting tidbits of information, then resulting business actions are often hit-or-miss.

Palo Alto, Calif. -- Women’s clothing retailer Chico’s FAS has chosen HP Performance Optimized Data Center (POD) technology as part of an HP Converged Infrastructure to increase productivity by providing employees at more than 600 stores nationwide with access to the company’s virtual private cloud.

By creating a scalable private cloud to meet the company’s need for expansion, Chico’s has improved operational efficiencies while also increasing agility, HP said.