News

New York -- When compared with a baseline shopping period of mid-October of this year, total mobile visits on Thanksgiving and Black Friday increased 93%. Data from multichannel platform provider Usablenet also shows that overall mobile transactions increased 219% and total revenue from mobile transactions increased by 368%.

In addition, average order value increased by 56.3%, conversion rates increased by 93%, and shoppers spent an average of 47 seconds longer on site (the average length of visit was just more than six minutes per site).

UPS is trying to capitalize on this year’s shorter holiday shopping season, which is six days fewer than last year’s, by touting the shipping services its UPS Store offers.

The UPS Store has a network of 4,300 employees at locally owned and operated centers ready to pack and ship everything from fragile glass ornaments to surfboards and golf clubs. The store also offers customers a Pack and Ship Guarantee.

Consumers who prefer packing their own gifts themselves can obviously still ship them via the UPS Store, but are asked to do the following:

By Leslie Hand, research director, IDC Retail Insights

Ascena Retail Group, parent company of Lane Bryant, Dressbarn and Justice, may have just reported same store sales growth across all its formats and achieved Thanksgiving weekend sales objectives, but president and CEO David Jaffe remains cautious in his outlook for the remainder of the holiday season.

As so many other retailers have noted in recent weeks, Jaffe said this year’s highly competitive, promotional and compressed holiday season makes it difficult to know how the next few weeks will play out, despite the company’s recent performance.

Mechanicsville, Va. – Supervalu is shipping goods to its grocery stores across the Eastern region with a much smaller carbon footprint, thanks to the recent addition of 35 Class 8 Volvo trucks that operate on compressed natural gas (CNG). The fleet is the largest of its kind on the East Coast, and the company plans to add another 20 trucks next year.  

By Rodney Mason, CMO, Parago, [email protected]

In its annual survey of holiday spending trends, Deloitte reports that 46% of consumers plan to do their holiday shopping online. That puts online shopping in the number-one position for the first time in the survey’s history. Deloitte also found that nearly six out of 10 shoppers plan to use self-help technologies in-store when holiday shopping.

Kansas City – Applebee’s will roll out 100,000 E la Carte Presto tablets, powered by Intel, on every table and multiple bar positions at more than 1,800 Applebee’s restaurants in the U.S. by the end of 2014. DineEquity, franchisor of Applebee’s and IHOP restaurants, will also consider the tablets, which enable guests to add to their orders, pay and play games from their seats, will also be considered for introduction at IHOP locations.

New York -- There are significant similarities between Millennial and Boomer shoppers. A study of Millennial and Boomer purchasing trends conducted by Radius Global Market Research shows that while there are certainly differences, there are also significant similarities between the groups.