News

The newly created position of chief member officer at Sam’s Club has been filled by veteran marketer Tracey Brown who has been given a wide range of member marketing, acquisition, engagement, retention and analytics responsibilities.

Macy’s and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia are collaborating on another collection for the home, just in time for the spring decorating season.

The retailer is launching Whim, an exclusive bedding and dinnerware collection from Martha Stewart available only at Macy’s. Whim will be available on macys.com and in select Macy’s stores starting March. The collection offers comforter sets, sheets and quilts in playful prints and colors, as well as colorful dinnerware.

Target chairman and CEO Brian Cornell has made some bold moves since arriving at Target last fall, but the most significant revelations concerning long term prospects will come in early March when the company hosts its first investor conference of the Cornell era.

Former GameStop Senior Vice President of Human Resource Mike Buskey was elevated to the role of president of U.S. stores to oversee GameStop’s more than 2,000 locations.

Forever 21 is planning to open 600 new stores in the next three years, and is helping to ensure those stores attract shoppers with Oracle Retail merchandising and assortment planning technology. By more accurately and efficiently predicting what precise individual items (including SKU-level variations) will be in demand in specific locations at specific times, Forever 21 is making stores as customer-centric as possible.

Cincinnati -- Macy’s on Tuesday unveiled a series of senior executive appointments the retailer says will support its new focus on omnichannel advances and overall innovation. Macy’s announced on Jan. 8 it would restructure its omnichannel capabilities and align the organization toward growth via merchandising, merchandise planning, marketing and technology.

Effective Jan. 31, the following changes were made to staffing and priorities:

Los Angeles -- American shoppers feel they can’t trust retailers to protect their credit card and personal information either online or in brick-and-mortar stores.  According to a survey by Bizrate Insights, 62% of shoppers agreed that "Current security to protect credit card and personal information at a retailers’ brick-and-mortar stores isn’t strong enough.”

This was only marginally worse than concerns for security on websites (60% agree) but better that mobile transactions (65% agree).

WAKEFIELD, Mass. — More than 80% of retailers plan to increase their customer experience spending in 2015, according to a new survey from SDL, a provider of global customer experience, and Econsultancy.

Findings from the online survey, called The Retailer’s Imperative: A Strategic Approach to Customer Experience, reveal that North American retailers are past the stage of debating the importance of customer experience management and are now trying to master it.

San Francisco -- The digital sizing station Me-Ality that made headlines for creating a denim size-matching solution inside Bloomingdale’s stores has now launched a new online retail shopping experience that allows shoppers to personalize their favorite brands to their own body shapes.

Scottsdale, Ariz. – Specialty pet retailer PetSense has selected Shopatron as its inventory lookup and analytics partner to support its omnichannel operations, including a new e-commerce site that launched in November 2014. The Shopatron Retailer platform will support more than 3,000 PetSense product SKUs and allows the retailer to see which items were searched for at what location to help guide its merchandising decisions.