News

SAN DIEGO — Sony Electronics is expanding its retail footprint by opening three newly remodeled Sony Stores and several brand new Sony Gallery experiences. The company also unveiled a smaller-store format called Sony Gallery.

Following the debut of the redesigned Sony Store in the Simon Mall Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, Calif., Sony announced it will open three new concept stores located in Miami, San Diego, and Orlando, Fla. The remodels will bring the total of U.S. redesigned stores to eight.

NORTHFIELD, Ill. — Kool-Aid’s latest brand campaign, called "Smile. It's Kool-Aid," introduces a new look and feel for the brand as well as for its spokespitcher, Kool-Aid Man, in time for its launch of Kool-Aid Liquid Drink Mix.

Owned by Kraft Foods Group, North America's fourth largest consumer packaged food and beverage company, Kool-Aid partnered with Saatchi & Saatchi New York and VSA Partners of Chicago to revamp its image. 

PLANO, Texas – Dr Pepper is on a quest to find one one-of-a-kind fan to feature in its upcoming advertisements. 

MILWAUKEE — Kohl’s is scheduled to return to Summerfest this year with its Captivation Station, an educative program geared toward children and families. Also returning to the festival will be the free-admission program Kohl’s Family Day, scheduled from noon–3 p.m. Sunday, June 30.

CINCINNATI — A major initiative unveiled by Kroger could have the retailer’s suppliers scrambling to ensure palm oil used in products the retailer carries are obtained from sources who meet strict harvesting guidelines.

Kroger issued the following policy statement:

Palm oil has become the world's leading oil crop and today accounts for roughly one-third of the global vegetable oil production. This oil has grown in popularity within the food industry as a cooking oil, shortening, margarine, milk-fat replacer, and as a cocoa-butter substitute.

PLANO, Texas — JCPenney has drawn $850 million from its $1.85 billion revolving credit line and will use the proceeds to fund working capital requirements and capital expenditures, including replenishing inventory in anticipation of the completion of for its newly overhauled in-store home departments, which are due to be unveiled next month.

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. — Kmart and Shop Your Way are teaming up with New York Times bestselling author Sandra Lee to support the Share Our Strength Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry campaign. The national fundraising initiative encourages people to host bake sales in their communities to help end childhood hunger in the United States.

SEATTLE — Online retailer Amazon has launched its 50+ Active and Healthy Living Store, which features hundreds of thousands of nutrition, wellness, exercise and fitness, medical, personal care, beauty, entertainment items and more — all in a single destination for customers in the 50+ age range.

The torrent of customer feedback unleashed by e-commerce and social media is a good thing, as long as companies are able to mine the data to identify problems and improve operations.

To help retailers and consumer packaged goods companies address that challenge Empathica, a customer experience management solutions provider, and Semantria, a provider of multi-lingual text analytics, have joined forces to offer new natural language processing capabilities.

New York -- A report released Friday found that confidence among American consumers declined in April to a nine-month low. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment declined to 72.3 in April from 78.6 a month earlier, lower than Bloomberg’s earlier estimates that called for a flat reading.

The decline reflects consumer pessimism about the economy and continuing effects from the increased payroll tax.