Shop Talk
Retailers, consumers and prices
Olive Garden owner goes Green
Darden Restaurants, owner of restaurant brands like the Olive Garden, Red Lobster and LongHorn Steakhouse, has joined the Sustainability Consortium — a group of scientists, academics and industry leaders working to “green” consumer products.
Darden, an 1,800-unit restaurant chain considered one of the industry’s best performers, has set a per-restaurant goal of reducing energy and water use by 15 percent by the year 2015. Long term, it aims to send zero waste to landfills.
Darden said it already has cut water use by about 700,000 gallons per year in each of its restaurants, installed energy-efficient lighting and has begun using “power up” schedules that help cut energy consumption.
“Our business relies on a number of natural resources, and these goals are designed to help us be the best stewards of those resources that we can be,” said Ian Olson, director of sustainability for Darden, which operates 1,800 eateries.
Other Sustainability Consortium members include Wal-Mart Stores, Safeway, Best Buy, PepsiCo, Tyson, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Intel and Waste Management.
The technology companies in the consortium said they were committed to creating what they say is a better way to identify the most environmentally friendly consumer electronics.
For its part, Wal-Mart is working on its own index that could be used as an industry standard. The retailer provided seed funding for the Sustainability Consortium.
Social Media for Business
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.
Social media is nothing more than those VO5 commercials from the 70′s, “I told two friends and they told two friends and so on and so on.”
Word of mouth has always been the best advertising tool and it has always been free. If you have a great product or service, people will talk about it. Social media adds the technology aspect to make that communication easier, faster and even less expensive.
Wowing students with indigo laptops, blue flash drives
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.
The 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.
Check Out Line: Online shopping woes
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. 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)
the above comments are absolutely true..just logging into a website, doesn’t indicate great sales…One should check the profits before drawing any conclusions..
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Resident Shop Talk Expert
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