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Retailers, consumers and prices

August 4th, 2009

Social Media for Business

Posted by: Ian Sherr

facebook-wholefoods1

A new report by Inside Facebook discusses some best practices for retailers hoping to set up shop on the popular social networking site.

Some of the recommendations include letting users shop from within Facebook, including even the ability to share product information with friends.  Another suggestion is to have contests, giveaways and sweepstakes.

But what’s most interesting is the last suggestion: keep it simple with status updates.

Life is Good does. With simple status updates (much like the name of the brand itself), Life is Good elicits more pondering from its fan community. Their most recent update: “Whatever you are, be a good one.”

Expanding that to “conversation in general,” it seems that specific approach is the key between a social networking presence and a successful social networking presence.

One example from outside the industry is NASA, whose Twitter feed for the Mars Phoenix lander was a huge success.

Part of what helped NASA’s Twitter experiment rocket to such success was how personal it felt to the viewers. Throughout the mission, NASA actually took the time to respond to people’s questions and share in discoveries.

These ideas do translate to retail, of course. JetBlue is very conversational on its Twitter feed, offering travel tips and discounts. Dell became e-famous for offering exclusive discounts both through Twitter and Facebook. And Whole Foods suggests recipes, all through social networking.

What’s challenging, however, is that there is not one simple answer for any of these companies. Each seems to have taken some of these basic principles and applied them to their own brand to create interestingly different outcomes.

But each of the successful ones has the same strategy in the end: conversation. Most of the top brands on Facebook all create original content, post comments, or respond to customers through social networking to increase the conversation about their company and products.

July 14th, 2009

Wowing students with indigo laptops, blue flash drives

Posted by: Nicole Maestri

The National Retail Federation has issued its 2009 back-to-school spending survey and the results show that the ringing of school bells won’t necessarily translate into the happy ringing of cash registers.

But the one part of stores where parents and students expect to boost their spending despite the ongoing recession is electronics.

wmtshot4The average family plans to spend $167.84 on consumer electronic purchases for back to school this year, up from $151.61 last year, according to the NRF survey.

Among college kids, spending on electronics or computer-related items is expected to increase to $266.08 from $211.89 last year.

Those trends are not lost on Wal-Mart.

On its own blog, Wal-Mart is talking about its plan to win sales from back-to-school shoppers:

This year Wal-Mart Stores and Walmart.com have teamed up with Dell to offer you a Great deal on Laptops.

Starting this week, when you go and visit your local store you will see Colors everywhere, from Pink, Blue, Red, Indigo, Green, Yellow, White, Orange and everyones new fav. Purple! In total you will see allot {sic] of colors spread out into a array of products from everything needed in the dorm, apartment, bedroom, or the complete house!

For those who many not want or may already have a purple laptop, Wal-Mart is also ready to wow shoppers with “color matching accessories” like speakers, mice, USB flash drives and hard drives.

Looks like even if overall back-to-school sales won’t be cheery, the consumer electronics sure will be!

(Screenshot of Walmart.com)

December 31st, 2008

Check Out Line: Online shopping woes

Posted by: Jessica Wohl

Check Out the drop in online sales.
 
Even online retailers are ready for 2008 to end. After we heard about the abysmal holiday season at stores, comScore said online sales for the holiday period up to Dec. 23 dropped 3 percent. It was the first decline in online spending since comScore started tracking online sales in 2001.
 
The end of 2008 will also mark the first quarter that online sales fell. From Oct. 1 through Dec. 28 e-commerce spending fell 4 percent to $36.8 billion, according to comScore. 
 
CIRCUITCITY/So who were the biggest winners and losers in December? Through Dec. 24, Hewlett Packard’s online traffic in the U.S. rose 28 percent to more than 19.4 million unique visitors.  Apple, with more than 35 million visitors, saw its traffic rise 19 percent.  Meanwhile, traffic to Circuit City’s site fell 21 percent.  Presumably shoppers were spooked after it filed for bankruptcy protection and said it would shut some stores. Dell’s traffic was down 17 percent.  EBay was still the most popular site, though its traffic fell 4 percent to 85.4 million visitors.
 

Also in the basket:

Jobless claims drop by much more than expected

China dairy boss pleads guilty in melamine case

Bratz dolls to get reprieve, manufacturer says

Walmart Pulls Out of Nielsen’s PRISM (Advertising Age)

(Reuters photo)