Retail Industry Archive

Sears Holding has comprehensively reorganized its electronic commerce functions, including its websites and Sears2go mobile phone platform, under an initiative dubbed ShopYourWay developed to help consumers understand and use the expanding array of goods and services the retailer provides in store, online, even through PDAs. And, in fact, those goods and services will be expanding even more...

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Call it the Employee Free Choice Act or the card check bill, but if new legislation amending labor laws to make it easier for unions to organize does squeeze through the United States Senate, it could have some interesting and unintended consequences for Wal-Mart, among others. The bill already is having an impact on Wal-Mart as Citigroup analyst Deborah Weinswig lowered her rating on the...

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Fresh & Easy is bulking up its bargain initiatives in support of the 98-cent Produce Pack program it launched to offer value-conscious consumers an inexpensive alternative to canned and frozen fruits and vegetables. In a suburban Phoenix store visited earlier this week, the produce pack display was positioned adjacent to the front door at the head of the produce department. It greeted...

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Kroger has become a more complicated retailer over the years, yet, despite the range of major initiatives it has pursued, it has remained focused on its customers and how it can address their needs while still taking care of its own. Kroger’s 53 cents-per-share earnings beat the analysts’ consensus estimate by two cents, doing so by providing price breaks that were attractive to the...

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Kroger, one of the country’s largest supermarket operators, is proving that consumers aren’t shying away from grocery stores during the recession. In fact, the retailer had what few in the industry can boast -– a financial quarter with sales and earnings increases. The necessity to buy food is not the only factor powering the Cincinnati-based outfit, which operates 2,481 stores under the...

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In Phoenix, Neighborhood Market, the Wal-Mart grocery store format, is making a stronger bid to be a community supermarket rather than the convenience grocery store originally envisioned, and price plays a significant role. The upfront convenience product section that conspicuously engaged customers as they entered the store in earlier concept versions has been deemphasized in a Phoenix-area...

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Retailers don’t always get the most out of technology, preferring to stick with old methods and not taking full advantage of what’s possible, but a crisis like the recession can get the once reluctant thinking about how to get more out of what tools they have, and that can be both a short- and long-term benefit, said Chris Curran, chief technology officer, Diamond Management and Technology...

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One complaint about Wal-Mart’s Marketside stores when they debuted last year in Arizona was that a retail concept that was supposed to emphasize high-quality prepared food had a rather bland line up. Wal-Mart has been addressing that concern. A small, 15,000 square food store format, Marketside, with four stores in the Phoenix metropolitan area, was Wal-Mart’s answer to Tesco’s Fresh...

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Technology can weave together operations, promotions and services in a recession to make more aggressive pursuit of the consumer pay off, something that Cabela’s is taking a step further in its role as a banker. Given the rotten state of the financial industry, retailers have been warned — by Deloitte economist Carl Steidtmann for one — that they might have to assume functions...

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William McComb, Chief Executive Officer of Liz Claiborne Inc., predicted on the fourth-quarter 2008 earnings call that the fashion company, whose store labels include Lucky Brand, Kate Spade, and Juicy Couture, will keep losing money in the first half of 2009 as it confronts—like most apparel retailers—a severe pullback in consumer spending. Management protestations to the contrary, a...

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