News

New York -- The Deloitte Consumer Spending Index remained flat in February 2014, showing only a marginal change. The Index tracks consumer cash flow as an indicator of future consumer spending.

The Index, which comprises four components, tax burden, initial unemployment claims, real wages and real home prices, ticked down slightly to 3.9 from 4.0 last month. Highlights of the Index include:

Tax Burden: The tax rate stayed at 11.8%, consistent with recent months.

San Francisco -- Guess Inc. saw fourth-quarter profits slide 4% on softer sales in the three-month period.

Net income fell to $69.6 million from $72.5 million, and revenue for the quarter ended Feb. 1 dipped to $768.4 million from $815.1 million. Revenue results still beat Wall Street expectations of $758 million.

A $325 million expansion underway at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., promises to make the 4.2-million-sq.-ft. retail institution even more of a destination.

Tiffany & Co. has appointed Ralph Nicoletti as its next EVP and CFO, effective April 2. He steps into the CFO role following current chief operating officer and CFO James N. Fernandez’s plans to retire in July.

Nicoletti will be based in New York and responsible for the company’s worldwide financial functions and information technology. He will report to chairman and CEO Michael J. Kowalski

Google has tapped Payoneer, a leading global payments company, as a payments provider for Google Trusted Stores. Payoneer will power the program’s customer payouts, providing bank transfer services that enable Google Trusted Stores to send payments to people in the countries where it currently operates.

The Google Trusted Stores program identifies online merchants that Google deems trustworthy for consumers. Google stands behind the merchants that have earned the Trusted Store badge with a $1,000 lifetime purchase protection for shoppers.

Waban, Mass. -- Sam's Club and Amazon.com deliver the best customer experience in the retail industry, according to the 2014 Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual ranking of companies based on a study of 10,000 U.S. consumers. Sam's Club and Amazon.com continue their reign as the highest-rated retailers for the third straight year, each earning an "excellent" rating.

San Diego – Nine-in-10 (91%) women conduct online research prior to making a purchase, and 92% are willing to pay more for competing products that receive positive online reviews. A new consumer survey from Interactions, “Retail Perceptions - The Power of Persuasion,” also found that 30% of women use a mobile device to conduct research and 37% of mobile users say they conduct research during their shopping trip.

By Dave Richards, Accenture

We shop almost every day – picking something up at the drug store or buying lunch, clothes shopping or getting groceries, looking for a gift or checking out a promotion – and we are doing this on the way to work, at work, at night while watching TV, online, at a store and increasingly across mobile devices. There is one thing that unites consumers in all of these instances: we expect the experience to be unified, personalized, constant, connected and, above all, seamless.