Omnichannel

Chicago -- Nearly a quarter (21%) of consumers said that they are likely to return or exchange at least one of the presents that they received this holiday season. Additionally, male respondents expressed a greater interest in returning or exchanging gifts (30%) than female respondents (20%) by as much as 10%. That’s according to a survey by Retale, a location-based mobile platform connecting shoppers with their local retailers

Omnichannel access to the best merchandise in the world is the objective behind a new digital initiative at Neiman Marcus that has the retail embedding high resolution screen in shoe department tables.

The upscale department store operator worked with touchscreen technology provider T1Visions to create the interactive retail tables which are now live at Neiman’s Austin, Chicago and Los Angeles area stores.

Washington, D.C. – The holidays were at least moderately happy for in-store retailers. According to the Applied Predictive Technologies (APT) Index, in-store sales for the 2014 holiday shopping season were up 0.7% although sales decreased on Black Friday and Super Saturday weekends.

The number of transactions: actually declined 0.4%, but this was more than offset by a 1.1% increase in average purchase amount. Black Friday weekend retail sales were down -3.5%, while Super Saturday weekend retail sales were down -1.7%.

San Luis Obispo, Calif. – Despite getting a lot of attention, ship-from-store and in-store pickup may not be on most retailers’ short-term to-do lists. In a new e-commerce study conducted by distributed order management solutions provider Shopatron in December, 59% of retailers said they did not have plans to deploy new order fulfillment solutions like ship-from-store or in-store pickup.  

Staples is taking the next step in creating the largest curated ecosystem of “smart home” devices.

The company has announced that its home automation system, called Staples Connect, will now offer ambient alerts for the home and office. The alerts provide audio and visual notifications outside of the Staples Connect app and through compatible devices in the home or office.

Stamford, Conn. – High-end furniture and accessories retailer Lovesac has deployed NetSuite to run mission-critical business processes including financials/ERP, inventory and order management, CRM, and POS across its 60 stores in shopping malls across the U.S. All these processes are connected within NetSuite's single unified cloud solution.

Burlington, Mass. -- Demandware said that Abercrombie & Fitch Co. is using Demandware Commerce to power global expansion across Asia. The retailer recently launched 10 new e-commerce sites for its Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister brands with the Demandware platform, serving China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan. All of the sites are mobile-optimized through responsive web design.

By Greg Van den Heuvel, Pitney Bowes Software

Black Friday traditionally marks the first day of the holiday shopping season. During the most recent holiday season, millions of Americans have participated in the shopping frenzy, which according to CMO.com, accounts for nearly 40% of all annual sales. Black Friday weekend alone accounted for 133 million American shoppers, diving deep into discounts, hoping to land the best deal and get a head start on their holiday shopping.