News

Portland, Ore. – Fifty-seven percent of consumers purchased digital gift cards in December 2013 and 43% purchased physical cards. Data from prepaid product and transaction services company InComm also shows that 80% of consumers purchased digital cards in the six days leading up to Christmas and 20% of consumers purchased physical cards in the six days leading up to Christmas

The opportunity to win a $100 gift card and appear in a television commercial is being used by Meijer to entice parents to upload photos of their kids to the retailer’s Facebook page.

As part of a contest called “Star with Sandy,” Meijer is giving customers until February 6 to submit photos of their kids or themselves when they were young riding a mechanical horse named “Sandy” that can be found at each of Meijer’s 204 stores in five Midwestern states.

Foster City, Calif. – Global credit and debit card issuer Visa Inc. has publicly called for adoption of secure payment technology in response to recent high-profile retailer data breaches. In a short statement contained within a financial release, Visa CEO Charlie Scharf said Visa wants to move U.S. retailers toward PIN-and-chip cards that use the Europass, Matercard, Visa (EMV) standard, and away from the more commonly used magnetic stripe cards.

Philadelphia -- Urban Outfitters, Inc. has selected TXT Integrated Retail Planning from TXT Maple Lake to support end-to-end retail planning across regions, brands and channels, from strategy through to assortment execution. The solution will help Urban Outfitters, Inc. manage the whole spectrum of its retail planning processes: strategic, merchandise planning, store grading, open to buy (OTB) and assortment planning, both pre-season and in-season.

Overstock said that it’s still adjusting to changes Google made to its search engine algorithms, which reduced the online retailer’s ranking in some search results during some periods. As a result, the company has had to emphasize other marketing channels, such as sponsored search.

Although sponsored search has generated revenue growth for the company, Overstock said that the move also incurs higher associated marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue than it had to pay prior to Google making its changes.

Camp Hill, Pa. - For the four-week period ended Jan. 25, Rite Aid’s same-store sales grew 1.8%. Front-end same-store sales decreased 1.3%, attributable to a decrease in flu-related over-the-counter drug sales.

Total drug sales for the month increased 1.5% to $1.94 billion, compared to $1.91 billion in the same period a year earlier.

Research Triangle Park, N.C. -- ChannelAdvisor Corporation, a provider of cloud-based e-commerce solutions, is expanding its Webstores Amplifier with support for Bigcommerce, an e-commerce website platform that allows small and medium businesses to quickly set up online stores. The ChannelAdvisor Webstores Amplifier simplifies product creation, automatically synchronizes inventory and standardizes fulfillment across multiple online channels and retail websites for its customers.

Samuel Adams is ready to share Rebel IPA with drinkers across the nation. The IPA offers consumers citrus aromas along with piney, resinous notes that come from West Coast hops.

Rebel IPA was one of the first beers to be developed in the Samuel Adams nanobrewery, a small batch, 10-gallon brewery system that operates within the confines of the Samuel Adams Boston Brewery.