News

New York City -- Discounters reported mixed results for December sales, with many, including Target Corp. and Costco Wholesale Corp., posting gains that fell below analysts’ expectations.

Target Corp. said its same-store sales edged up 0.9%, well short of analyst expectations for a  4% increase. The chain said weaknesses in electronics, toys and some home categories offset strength in grocery and apparel items.

Transaction marketing gained widespread acceptance among retailers in 2010, as they began to recognize marketing in the electronic banking channel as a far more cost effective way to encourage repeat business, increase the average transaction sizes and drive same-store sales. It enabled retailers to overcome the marketing waste associated with other channels -- like Groupon -- and consistently provided compelling and measurable return on their marketing investment.

New York City -- Barnes & Noble said on Thursday that its same-store sales rose 9.7% in the nine week holiday period ended on Jan. 1. It was the chain’s best comparable-store sales performance in more than a decade. Total sales for the period rose 8.2%.

The company said it significantly exceeded both online and in-store sales forecasts, led by strong consumer demand for Barnes & Noble's Nook brand of eReading products.

Costco said its worldwide sales increased 11% to $9.19 billion for the five-week period ended Jan. 2 and total company same-store sales increased 6%. Same-store sales at Costco’s U.S. clubs increased 4%, or 3% if the effect of higher year-over-year fuel prices is excluded. Internationally, same-store sales increased 12%, but that figure was aided by currency exchange rates. Excluding the impact of exchange rates, international same-store sales increased 8%.

Berwyn, Penn. -- Retailers are likely to experience high demand for winter goods during the upcoming week. Beginning this weekend and carrying through next week, virtually all of North America should prepare for below normal temperatures, according to Planalytics. Most locations east of the Rockies can expect temperatures to trend 10°F to 20°F colder than both normal and last year, with the main exception being the Southwest where temperatures will trend normal to slightly above normal.

Not that anyone ever forgets Walmart is a really big company, but every now and then a fresh reminder surfaces. That was the case this week with an announcement by Datacert, Inc., that Walmart had selected its Passport technology platform to help manage domestic legal processes and systems. Big companies that make a lot of money tend to get sued a lot, and in Walmart’s case the situation is magnified by the fact that it has more than two million employees interacting each week with 200 million customers in its 8,000 stores.

Rain and snow dealt the club channel a blow during December, as Costco was impacted by heavy rain in California and BJ’s felt the sting of blizzards in the Northeast. Sam’s was impacted too, but Costco and BJ’s have a higher concentration of stores in those areas so it is likely the effect was less.

New York City -- On the heels of a strong November, some department store retailers reported surprisingly weak December revenue. Results were impacted by a blizzard in the Northeast, which took a bite out of sales after Christmas.

The results raised some worries that the holiday season might be less stellar than some had hoped. Still, much of Wall Street still predicts that November and December spending will show the largest annual increase since 2006.