For the holiday selling season in CE, Target wants to focus on “newness in electronics,” CEO Brian Cornell said on a Wednesday earnings call. He avoided specifics, saying he didn't want to “go through the details of our plans.” Within CE, “we’re looking at categories where we think we’re uniquely positioned to win, so working very closely with our suppliers to ensure that we have the right newness, that we’re ready with the right presentation,” he said. There are “a lot of exciting things in the pipeline,” he said. Many CE categories “are waiting for new innovation and we’re working closely with our key suppliers to make sure that we’re going to be bringing that innovation to the guest and featuring it throughout the fourth quarter,” he said.
Roughly two-thirds of parents and 56 percent of students plan to do most back-to-school shopping at mass merchandisers, and 85 percent of respondents expect their back-to-school shopping to be in brick-and-mortar stores, said a Market Track survey done last week. Mobile shopping is showing continued growth with 27 percent of respondents having made back-to-school purchases on a mobile device, while 40 percent have or will use their devices to compare prices and hunt for discounts, the report said. The online survey canvassed 1,000 adult consumers responsible for back-to-school shopping for children.
July sales at electronics stores fell 1.2 percent from June and 2.9 percent from July 2014, the National Retail Federation said in a Thursday report. All retail categories improved over June, except for general merchandise and electronics, NRF said. Overall retail sales in July, excluding autos, gas and restaurants, increased 0.3 percent from June and 3.4 percent from July last year, it said. “July’s results further cement our expectations that we’ll see continued sales and spending growth through the remainder of 2015,” NRF said, but consumers “remain cautious about their spending and are timid when it comes to leveraging credit to support their purchases. ... Given the renewed growth in the labor market and incomes and sustained low gas prices along with the improving housing market, we are still optimistic that retailers will eventually benefit from a more confident consumer.”
H.h. gregg will hire more than 550 full-time and part-time in-store sales associates ahead of the holiday season, the retailer said in a Monday announcement. As the holiday shopping season continues to creep earlier into the calendar year, the retailer is looking to have stores “fully staffed and associates trained and ready to greet shoppers getting a jump on the holiday rush,” it said. "The annual Black Friday surge will always be there, but we are seeing a trend in recent years of holiday shoppers showing up much earlier than the traditional Thanksgiving-time rush," said Chris Sutton, marketing vice president. The “hot-ticket item” for holiday 2015 is expected to be 4K TV, said the retailer. Each of the 227 h.h. gregg locations will be hiring and positions include entry-level to senior management, it said. H.h. gregg will address additional hiring needs in the months leading up to November, it said.
Garmin is opening brick-and-mortar stores in high-traffic areas in the Miami area, it said Thursday. Customers will be able to talk with Garmin associates and get product demonstrations, the company said. The flagship location is a 2,600-square-foot store in Miami in the Lincoln Road Mall, offering “concierge-like service” and showcasing Garmin’s wellness, running, cycling, golfing, marine, automotive, aviation and outdoor recreation devices, it said. A smaller kiosk will showcase Garmin gear in the upscale Aventura Mall, it said. The company will maintain its Michigan Avenue store in Chicago.
Best Buy began taking pre-orders for the 360fly action camera as part of an exclusive in-store and online retail partnership. Manufacturer 360fly bills the device as the only single-lens camera capturing stitchless 360-degree video with interactive and virtual reality viewing capabilities. The 360fly shoots 240 by 360-degrees of seamless, HD-quality video, the company said. Viewers can immerse themselves within the video by clicking and dragging or swiping on any mobile device, it said. Users can upload footage for editing via 360fly Android and iOS mobile apps, allowing them to shoot, edit and share content without a PC, it said. The camera is water- and shock-resistant. Best Buy will sell the $399 camera in about 900 stores starting in mid-September.
Value is the overwhelming driver for consumers planning back-to-school shopping, said a study from Synchrony Financial, formerly GE Capital Retail Finance. The study of spending across six categories, use of technology, and retail and payment preferences was done July 7-14 with more than 2,000 participants in three groups: parents of children in grades K-1, parents of college students, and college students. Price is an overriding concern for parents, even though most report they plan to spend the same or more this year, while college students are focused on items they need, the study said. Some 83 percent of college students plan to reuse products, where possible, and 63 percent will refer to last year’s spending as a guideline. Across all categories, shoppers plan to hunt for deals online, although most supplies will be bought in-store, it said. Shoppers’ focus on value and time spent comparing prices online “reinforces the importance for retailers to have integrated strategies that provide relevant offers and the best multi-channel experience,” said Toni White, chief marketing officer, Synchrony Financial. Of the six categories, clothing and shoes account for about a third of the expected total back-to-school spend by parents, followed by electronics, Synchrony said. College students spend primarily on electronics, clothing and dorm room items, it said. Many shoppers rely on their smartphones to shop, with more than half of college students using their phones to comparison shop and more than one-third of K-12 parents searching for coupons and online deals with their phones, the study said. Social media enables 46 percent of college students to compare prices, and more than 30 percent of parents watch for deals on brands they follow, it said.
SK Telecom is using CSRmesh technology in a range of smart LED lightbulbs that double as Bluetooth Smart beacons to create an intelligent CSRmesh network for stores. A virtually unlimited number of smart lightbulbs can be controlled and networked in a retail store to enable location-based shopping offers and other targeted information to be sent to smartphone users in precise locations in the store, said CSR. The bulbs, which fit into a building’s existing lighting fixtures, are fitted with a module based on the CSR1010 chipset, it said. CSRmesh enables Bluetooth low-energy (LE) devices to receive and act on messages and to extend the range of the Bluetooth LE network by repeating the messages to surrounding devices, it said. Current in-store beacon systems require the installation of wireless sensors around a store, which Anthony Murray, CSR senior vice president-business group, said is expensive and time-consuming. Adding the beacons to light bulbs -- the first such implementation -- offers “complete coverage” because light fixtures are already spread evenly throughout a store, said Murray. The LED beacon relies on a permanent main power supply so the service provider doesn’t have to manage the power needs for individual battery-powered beacons, said CSR. The SK Telecom smart LED beacon technology includes LED lightbulbs, the CSRmesh v1.2 protocol layer with beacon capability, and iOS and Android mobile support, it said.
Caution should be used by those who use a credit card at a local retailer, gas station, restaurant or bar, because the black market demand for user and credit card data has made point-of-sale (PoS) system compromises a lucrative business, said a blog post from Level 3 Threat Research Labs Friday. “As PoS systems are targeted with greater frequency, new families of malware are developed and extended at a breakneck pace.” High-profile compromises are often either a result of lax security policies and procedures or a very sophisticated targeted attack, the blog said. “With PoS malware continuously evolving and becoming more difficult to detect, the security community, as well as retailers, has a real challenge on its hands.” Merchants should have their PoS and support systems behind a properly configured firewall, with logs and alerts enabled, the blog said. Merchants should also disallow remote access to PoS networks, control access within local networked environments and ensure their software is up to date, it said. PoS malware is lucrative for malware developers around the globe and U.S. merchants are transitioning to chip and PIN technology at a slow pace, it said. “As more American merchants implement chip and PIN for credit card transactions it will be interesting to see how the malware developers adapt.”
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and the Technology Policy Institute recommended the FTC not bring action against Nomi Technologies, which provides in-store retail analytics (see 1504230036), in comments filed with the agency Tuesday. Technology Policy Institute President Thomas Lenard said in comments that although Nomi’s privacy policy once said a consumer could opt out of its analytics services at retail establishments, which was not accurate, an opt-out option was available on its website and Nomi “wasn’t legally required to offer either the global or the in-store opt-out.” ITIF Vice President Daniel Castro and Research Assistant Alan McQuinn said in comments that Nomi’s mistake in its privacy policy was “fairly insignificant” and there was “no evidence of consumer harm.” ITIF said the “FTC’s actions will ultimately do more harm than good.” The Application Developers Alliance agreed Nomi’s privacy policy was inaccurate, but said the “inaccuracy was de minimis and no consumer harm was alleged or apparent,” in comments to the FTC. ADA “believes that the penalty against Nomi is disproportionate and heavy-handed” and may “encourage companies to simplify their data practices and privacy policies to a degree that will always ensure their legality but will also transmit very little information to the consumer.” NetChoice Policy Counsel Carl Szabo said in comments to the FTC that the agency failed to show a violation of the FTC Act and could disincentivize businesses from giving consumers more control over their privacy. The Chamber of Commerce also submitted comments asking the agency to “vacate the proposed consent order and in its place formulate a policy to guide its decision to prosecute unfair and deceptive trade practices based on the spirit of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement and Fairness Act of 1996 and the Commission’s own 1997 civil penalty leniency policy.” The commission voted 3-2 to issue the complaint and accept the proposed consent order, the FTC said in a news release announcing its proposed consent order with Nomi in April. Chairwoman Edith Ramirez and Commissioners Julie Brill and Terrell McSweeny issued a joint statement in favor of the order; Commissioners Maureen Ohlhausen and Joshua Wright issued separate dissenting statements. Ohlhausen noted in her dissent that Nomi is a “young company that attempted to go above and beyond its legal obligation to protect consumers but, in doing so, erred without benefiting itself,” a Nomi spokesman told us previously. “Commissioner Wright believes that Nomi did not violate the FTC Act,” the spokesman said. Nomi continually reviews its privacy policies to “ensure that they follow best practices and had already made the recommended changes in pursuit of that goal by updating our privacy policy over a year and a half ago, while we were still an early-stage startup that was less than a year old,” the spokesman said. FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director Jessica Rich said it was “vital” for companies to “keep their privacy promises to consumers when working with emerging technologies, just as it is in any other context.” Rich said if consumers are told they have choices about their privacy, the company “should make sure all of those choices are actually available to them. Nomi’s tracking technology provided aggregated information on how many consumers passed by a store instead of going in, how long consumers stayed in the store, the types of devices used by consumers, how many repeat consumers a store had and whether the consumer had visited that store at another location, the FTC said. The FTC accepted comments until May 25 and said it would decide after the comment deadline whether to make the proposed consent order final.