News

Target is leaving no digital stone unturned this year as its looks engage with shoppers in the lucrative back-to-college market.

Facebook is testing a new “buy” button designed to help businesses drive sales through Facebook in News Feed and on Pages. With this feature, people on desktop or mobile can click the “Buy” call-to-action button on ads and page posts to purchase a product directly from a business, without leaving Facebook.

Many teachers spend some of their own money on back-to-school supplies and to capitalize on the trend Walmart has introduced a 10% rebate program.

With back-to-school season in full swing, Lands' End Kids has enlisted seven PopSugar Select mom bloggers to curate a collection of "First-day Faves," each to be featured in a new digital popup shop every week at landsend.com/firstdayfaves.

Featured items will be offered at a 25% discount.

New York -- Spanish apparel giant Inditex, plans to have radio frequency identification technology in place in its nearly 2,000 Zara stores around the globe by 2016. The technology has already been installed at all of Zara's distribution centers and at more than 700 Zara stores.

Green Bay, Wis. — Shopko launched on Thursday its new fashion blog, TREND.spire, which takes current looks for women, all available at Shopko and Shopko.com, and illustrates how to pull everything together.

The fashion blog at trendspire.shopko.com is updated weekly and a video, with a sneak peek of just some of the outfits, can be found here. Even more inspiration and information will be on Shopko's Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram pages.  

By Jonathan Marek, senior VP, Applied Predictive Technologies

Seattle - Starbucks Coffee Co. is reportedly planning to pilot mobile ordering in an undisclosed U.S. geographic location before the end of 2014. According to Re/Code, the pilot will let consumers place orders through the Starbucks mobile app.

Starbucks definitely intends to roll out mobile ordering chain-wide at some point, and has created a cross-departmental team to work on issues such as how long a hot beverage can stay warm. The retailer expects the program to boost customer loyalty.

Ann Arbor, Mich. – Almost nine-in-10 (88%) of consumers consider speed of delivery to be more important during the holiday season than at any other time of the year. According to the Holiday Fulfillment Report from CFI Group and EBay Enterprise that surveyed more than 500 consumers, 96% of respondents said guaranteed delivery dates are important when choosing which online retailer to purchase from.