News

Kmart announced the start of its 2013 St. Jude Thanks and Giving campaign, which incentivizes Shop Your Way members to make donations to the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for childhood cancer in exchange for reward points.

Members of the Shop Your Way loyalty program who donate between now and Dec. 28 will receive a coupon for 5% of the price back in points that they can use toward their next purchase. The offer lasts through Jan. 31, 2014.

Redwood Shores, Calif. – Cross-channel experiences are vital to customer experience. Recent customer experience studies of retail executives — by Oracle Corp. and Tata Consultancy Services — show that to 50% and 47% of respondents, respectively, cross-channel experiences are vital to providing overall customer experience.

The Hillshire Brands Company will be hosting a panel — “Using Social Tools to Inform Strategies” — at Social Media Week in Chicago Tuesday, Sept. 24. Moderated by entrepreneur and TV personality Bill Rancic, the panel will explore the significance of social insights that impact owned, earned and paid media strategies, and discuss approaches to leveraging the right mix of tools to garner these insights.

Staples Europe has launched a Staples.es website aimed at helping small businesses locate and purchase products.

The site has a new look and feel and offers many new features to improve the overall shopping experience including personalized shopping with product recommendations based on customer preferences, an updated search engine and filtering tools, streamlined reordering for frequently used products, and quick checkout with a mini-cart that designed to ease inserting coupons, saving addresses and reviewing orders.

Kroger CEO David B. Dillon, a 37-year Kroger veteran, will retire Jan. 1, 2014, and will continue to serve as chairman of the board through Dec. 31, 2014. Succeeding him will be W. Rodney McMullen, Kroger's president and COO.

McMullen joined Kroger in 1978 on a part-time basis on a stock crew and has been president and COO since 2009 and a director since 2003. He previously held a variety of senior management positions including vice chairman; EVP of strategy, planning, and finance; and CFO.

Chico, Calif. – Online home improvement retailer Build.com is using Adobe Marketing Cloud as the cornerstone of its digital marketing strategies, diving deeper into visitor data to better understand what they are looking for, how they navigate online, where they are coming from, and what drives purchase decisions.

The Home Depot has elected Helena B. Foulkes to the company's board of directors. Foulkes will be a member of the finance and leadership development and compensation committees. Her appointment gives the company 11 directors, 10 of whom are independent.

Grocery Manufacturers Association has launched www.FactsAboutGMOs.org, a new website about genetically modified food ingredients designed to put consumers’ concerns about their safety and environmental impact to rest.