Store Systems

Minneapolis – Target says that online traffic continues to grow at double-digit rates, with mobile sales growing more than 100% for the holiday period. Target.com experienced two of the strongest days of sales in its history on Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday.

In addition, Target was recently ranked as the most-browsed retailer on mobile over the past six months, according to a new report from Mobiquity.

Target’s online traffic continues to grow at double-digit rates, with mobile sales growing more than 100% for the holiday period.

New York -- Beginning on Friday, Dec. 20 at 7 a.m., 37 Macy’s stores in select cities across the country including Macy’s Herald Square in New York City; Union Square in San Francisco; and State Street in Chicago, will stay open overnight for four days in a row of non-stop shopping until Christmas Eve on Tuesday, Dec. 24 at 6 p.m.

In addition to the 24-hour stores, mostly all stores nationwide, except furniture galleries and select locations, will offer extended hours each night until 2 a.m. through Dec. 23.

New York -- The initially predicted “super weekend” (Dec. 21 and Dec. 22) will now become a “monster weekend” for brick-and-mortar stores, according to RetailNext, whose analysts predict a low single-digit uptick in traffic for brick-and-mortar stores, which will translate into an estimated 5% sales growth this weekend, resulting from improved conversion. The impact of last weekend’s snowstorm, coupled with the online shipping cutoffs, makes this weekend for brick-and-mortars even more substantial.

More than half (54%) of shoppers believe the best holiday discounts will be in December and 83% will continue to comparison shop for gifts throughout the month, according to PriceGrabber’s December Winter Holiday Shopping Survey.

The survey of 3,299 U.S. online shopping consumers shows 87% of consumers will conduct most of their holiday shopping in December this year (compared to 78% in 2012).

Amsterdam, Netherlands – Staples Europe has launched new websites in both Germany and Netherlands. The sites offer a refreshed look and feel and many new features, such as personalized shopping with product recommendations based on customer preferences.

New features also include an updated search engine and filtering tools, easy reordering for frequently used products, quick checkout with a mini-cart that makes it easy to insert coupons, save addresses, and review orders, and a new store locator and ship-to-store functionality.

Store growth is the ultimate goal of most chain retailers. The more locations you have, the more revenues you (generally) bring in. But sometimes adding new stores creates its own new challenges.

When San Francisco-based Philz Coffee determined about four or five years ago that it wanted to start adding to its base of five coffee shops in the Bay Area, first with more stores in California and eventually hundreds of locations throughout the U.S,, the retailer knew its existing enterprise systems would not support that type of aggressive growth strategy.

Westlake, Ohio -- TravelCenters of America said it has completed its acquisition of 31 convenience stores/gas stations in Kentucky and Tennessee for $67.9 million. The deal was first announced on Nov. 14.