Store Systems

The number of retail chief marketing officers (CMOs) using mobile in their holiday marketing keeps growing.

According to the new BDO Retail Compass Survey of CMOs, 65% of 100 retail CMOs surveyed will tap into mobile, up from 49% in 2014 and the third straight year of growth. And of those using mobile, 34% will focus most heavily on delivering mobile coupons. Respondents plan to focus 12% of their marketing efforts on mobile technology.

For the second time this year, Target’s e-commerce site crashed due to exceptionally high levels of activity related to a major sales promotion.

The Target site went down the morning of Cyber Monday, Nov. 30. According to reports, the crash was actually a controlled restriction of the site by Target in response to extremely heavy volumes of visitors looking for holiday bargains.

The stereotype of younger consumers spending all their time glued to smartphones may have some validity, at least when it comes to shopping.

Chain Store Age recently spoke with Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowe’s Innovation Labs, who discussed the mission and activities of the retailer’s proprietary technology development center.

As we begin 2016, supermarket retailers continue to adapt to changing consumer demands, industry issues and regulations affecting their businesses. Some grocers are expanding their footprints, others are narrowing to specialty formats, and some seem to be doing both. All are facing increased competition and high expectations around freshness, convenience and transparency.

Early indicators point to retailers having an historically strong Cyber Monday.

According to the Adobe Digital Index, as of 10 a.m. ET on Monday, Nov. 30, Cyber Monday online sales had already reached $490 million. Considering Cyber Monday online sales in 2014 reached a total of around $2 billion, and early Cyber Monday sales were tracking ahead of the prior year by 14%, this is a very possible start to a record-breaking day.

Several retailers, including Neiman Marcus, had site issues this past Black Friday weekend. Here is some advice from the folks at Dynatrace, an application performance management software company, on the top three things retailers can do when things go bad online.

Even as digital commerce keeps growing, retailers are losing a sizable amount of potential online business.

According to the new Pymnts.com Checkout Conversion Index (CCI), retailers stand to lose as much as 36% of online sales due to frictions that remain from discovery through checkout, and could lose additional sales during payment processing.