News

New York - Companies seeking to get closer to their customers simply need to remember and acknowledge their birthdays. A new online survey conducted by analytics and marketing technology provider Fulcrum finds that nearly three-out-of-four (74%) consumers who received birthday messages from a company they do business with thought more positively of the company afterward.

Bitcoin, the nearly anonymous, peer-to-peer online currency, has been getting attention lately. The attention has not been necessarily positive, as bitcoin was the preferred currency of the recently closed down Silk Road “darknet” site that served as a virtual global marketplace for narcotics and other illegal goods.

New York -- Overall spending over Black Friday weekend was expected to hit $57.4 billion, according to the National Retail Federation, which is down 2.8% from last year’s $59.1 billion. It was the first spending decline on a Black Friday weekend since 2009. But there was some good news for retailers: Online sales soared over the holiday weekend.

The NRF estimated that 141 million Americans shopped during the four-day weekend, up 1.2% from a year ago.

Walgreens has opened the nation’s first net zero energy retail store, in Evanston, Ill. (A net zero building produces energy equal to or greater than it consumes.)

The new Walgreens features two wind turbines, nearly 850 solar panels and a geothermal heating and cooling system burrowed 550 ft. into the ground. Combined, the store’s energy-saving technologies and systems are expected to reduce its electricity consumption to 200,000 kilowatt-hours per year, which is about half of an average Chicago-area Walgreens’ store energy footprint.

Tablets, headphones and gaming hardware were the most frequently purchased consumer electronics products during a weekend which saw more than half of CE sales occur online.

The Consumer Electronics Association said 55% of U.S. adults who bought consumer electronics on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday did so online, well ahead of the 45% who did so in 2012.

Leading cloud services provider Akamai Technologies strengthened its ability to protect the Internet with the acquisition of security solutions firm Prolexic.

SodaStream International named veteran entertainment industry executive Scott Guthrie as regional general manager of the Americas reporting directly to CEO Daniel Birnbaum.

CommonKindness president and co-founder Sarah Schloemer has been named the winner of a Silver Stevie Award in the Young Entrepreneur of the Year category in the 10th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business.

The Stevie Awards for Women in Business are the world’s top honors for female entrepreneurs, executives, employees and the organizations they run. All individuals and organizations worldwide are eligible to submit nominations: public and private, for-profit and nonprofit, large and small. The 2013 awards received entries from 18 nations and territories.

Change is constant, as they say, and we’ve all seen a lot of that, especially in the past few years. But as I look 10 years into the future, I think we’re actually in the early days of not just more change, but wholesale revolution, too. “Revolution” is a strong — and possibly overused — term. Why are the next 10 years different? Fundamentally, our customer has changed more in the past three years than in the past 30 and the pace of change is poised to accelerate in the coming decade.

Big Lots has added three general merchandise managers as the company continues realigning the merchandising organization into three customer-centric categories: food and consumables, furniture and home décor and seasonal, toys and electronics.