‘The Daily Wrap:’ Best Buy, Starbucks, Wal-mart
Best Buy has created a real-time research tool
called VOCE (Voices of Consumers Through Employees).
VOCE feedback, which is logged in real-time into an intranet system, is able to track verbatim and directional insights into consumer sentiment and employee insight, including reactions to products, services, policies, store layout or displays.
M-commerce
- Starbucks has integrated PayPal into its mobile app as a funding source for the stored-value cards which are connected to the app.
- Text still reigns with mobile marketers.
Mergers & Acquisitions
- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has made a cash offer of $2.32 billion USD to buy a controlling 51% of South Africa's Massmart Holdings Ltd., its first foray into the growing retail market in sub-Saharan Africa.
Stats & Research
- Black Friday boasts $648 million in U.S. online holiday spending, up 9% from a year ago.
- More people are planning to shop Cyber Monday than Black Friday.
- Mobile advertising will increase 10-fold by 2015, according to Informa.
- One in six UK online retail visits ends in a purchase.
- The Deloitte Consumer Spending Index continued to decline in October 2010.
- The U.S digestive health ingredients market is in the growth stage and is currently valued to be $265.9 million; and is expected to grow to $495.3 million in 2015 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.2%.
- The cost of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” song items has spiked, according to the 2010 PNC Christmas Price Index.
Marketing & Advertising
Store Openings & Closings
- Touted as the largest kosher supermarket in the United States, Seven Mile Market has reopened at the site of a former Safeway in Pikesville, Md., almost doubling its original size.
Environmental & ‘Green’
- On the first day of the Cancun Climate Summit, the Consumer Goods Forum announced two major initiatives on climate change: to work toward ending deforestation, and to phase out the use of refrigerant gases with high global warming potential.
