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Tyson Foods CEO Bond Resigns

Tyson Foods CEO Dick Bond is leaving the meat company effective immediately, at a time when Tyson and other meat companies are having a tough time of it, having been hurt by high feed prices and slowing economies, reports Reuters.

Leland Tollett, chairman and CEO from 1995 to 1998, will serve as interim CEO until a permanent successor is selected.

“After seven years of helping lead or leading...
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Consumers Swarm to Discounters for Grocery Items, Don’t Switch Back

Though consumer prices have fallen, those who started buying grocery itmes at discount stores have not switched back to their traditional grocery stores, reports the Gannett News Service.

Because canned foods and other staples are still cheaper at discount retailers like Dollar General and Wal-Mart, many are going more often to those stores for food and beverage purchases. Some 36% of consumers...
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Online Outperformed Brick-and-Mortar in Key Retail Categories

Online retail spending outperformed offline in several key product categories during the holiday shopping season, according to online spending data by comScore and SpendingPulse.

The study compared comScore e-commerce data to overall (online and offline) consumer spending data published by MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse Unit for the period Nov. 1 - Dec. 24 vs. the year-ago...
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Customer Reviews Are Here to Stay

As online shoppers continue to turn to one another for advice on what to buy, businesses are finding out the benefits of incorporating customer reviews on their sites, writes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

“It is as if all online shoppers have an instant community of friends, recommending the good and warning about the bad,” observed Michal Ann Strahilevitz, marketing professor at San...
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Apple CEO Jobs Suffering from ‘Hormone Imbalance’

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said today (Monday) that he is being treated for a “hormone imbalance” that has caused him to lose an inordinate amount of weight—but he’ll be staying on as CEO, reports MarketWatch.

Jobs’s statement, directed at the “Apple Community,” comes a day before the keynote address he would have delivered at Macworld had he not pulled out late last year—triggering speculation about...
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Borders Announces New CEO, Management Changes, Holiday Sales Results

Borders Group today announced several management changes—including the appointment of a new CEO—to more aggressively drive a turnaround of the company within today’s challenging economy.

Effective today (Monday), Ron Marshall, who most recently was Principal of Wildridge Capital Management, a private equity firm he founded some three years ago, has been appointed president and CEO and will...
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‘Wal-Mart’s Worst Nightmare’

British megaretailer Tesco is challenging Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, on its home turf, the US—though Wal-Mart is fighting back using Tesco’s own tactics, writes BusinessWeek.

Wal-Mart countered Tesco’s Nov. 2007 launch of Fresh & Easy—a chain of 10,000 sq. ft. convenience stores in California, Nevada, and Arizona—with its own similar-format Marketside, in Arizona.

Still, “Tesco is...
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Dell Execs Depart, Global Restructuring in Works

Dell’s president of global operations Michael Cannon as well as CMO Mark Jarvis are leaving the company in what the computer maker is terming part of a global restructuring.

Cannon and Jarvis joined Dell in 2007 after founder Michael Dell returned as chief exec to halt the company’s decline.

Jeff Clarke will replace Cannon on Jan. 31. Erin Nelson will replace Jarvis during the current fiscal...
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Q4 and Holiday Online Retail Sales Decline

Online retail spending reached $25.5 billion during the holiday season’s e-commerce period—Nov. 1 to Dec. 23 (the last day to purchase online with the possibility of delivery by Christmas Eve)—or a decrease of 3% versus the corresponding shopping days in 2007, according to comScore.

comScore had expected year-over-year sales to be flat, said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

“This marks the...
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Retailers Beware: Worst Is Yet to Come, but Hope on Horizon

Retailers that survived the 2008 holiday season shouldn’t pin their hopes on the new year, as retail sales will remain weak throughout 2009 and won’t rebound until 2010, TNS Retail Forward forecasts.

For 2009, sales growth for the year (excluding automobiles and gasoline) is forecast to approach 2% compared with the 2.3% average growth for 2008 through November, based on data reported by the US...
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