Retail Stores

While U.S. consumers shopped this July and August, they weren't buying clothes and notebooks for their children but rather items for the home. According to findings from IBM, the biggest retail gains this back-to-school shopping season came from home goods purchases, which increased 30 percent in July and more than 25 percent in August over their respective months in 2011.

In the past year, several major online-only boutiques have announced plans to open brick-and-mortar stores of one kind or another. Amazon.com has announced a forthcoming boutique in Seattle; menswear e-tailer Bonobos has inked a partnership with Nordstrom; and eyewear brand Warby Parker is currently at work on a flagship in Manhattan. One of the biggest e-tailers to make the jump, Gap's designer emporium Piperlime, is also the first to actually open its doors.

The rise of social media has affected the way consumers shop: According to the 2012 Social and Mobile Commerce study, 40 percent of consumers connect with retailers through one or more social networking sites. So tell us, what can retailers do to stay ahead of the curve socially? Bring your best ideas, most relevant articles and favorite blog posts to share with the group.

All of us that are either in or cover the retail industry for a living have undoubtedly heard the sentiment, "You must adapt your business to meet the needs of today's changing consumers." While I agree with this statement for the most part — consumers today have access to more information on your products and more avenues to buy those products than ever before — the last two words I take issue with: changing consumers. Are we really?

Despite an economy that continues to be tough for many consumers, another strong US online holiday shopping season is taking shape. Consumers will turn to the internet to stay within their budgets, locate hard-to-find gifts and avoid crowded stores, according to a new eMarketer report, "Online Holiday Shopping Forecast and Trends." U.S. retail ecommerce holiday sales (excluding travel) will reach $54.5 billion in 2012, up 16.8% over last year, according to eMarketer estimates. This will be the fourth consecutive year that online holiday sales (defined as sales in November and December) post annual growth in the mid-to-high teens

Marks & Spencer's Director of Multichannel Development David Walmsley took the stage at Shop.org to talk about the company's multichannel retail strategies. Marks & Spencer is a food, home and fashion retailer headquartered in London that currently ships goods to eighty-three countries globally. Their biggest challenge is to create an all-encompassing global identity that responds to local needs and demographics. This required close coordination between stores and ecommerce teams to build out their multichannel strategy in a manner that creates a virtuous circle between all customer touch points.

Microsoft has announced plans to open 30 "pop-up" holiday stores across the U.S. and two in Canada, an effort intended to drum up interest in Windows 8 and its Surface tablet ahead of the holiday shopping season. The Redmond, Wash. company operates 23 permanent stores nationwide with another eight opening soon. These locations are mostly on the east and west coasts: The holiday locations are placed in areas without permanent retail stores, with several in the Midwest. With the new locations, Microsoft's retail footprint more than doubles, if only temporarily.

Social Labs today released its findings regarding how online retailers implement Facebook's log-in button. The company examined how the top 500 online retailers integrated the plug-in as an alternative option for their account creation, site registration and site log-in processes. The 14-page study titled "Log In With Facebook and the 2012 Internet Retailer Top 500″ shows the numbers aren't pretty: only 30 out of the top 500 sites, or 6 percent, integrated Facebook with the core of their e-commerce site for the purpose of user account creation.

Holiday retail sales in the U.S. may rise 3.3 percent as more confident consumers increase their trips to the mall, according to researcher ShopperTrak. Store visits during the busiest shopping period of the year are expected to rise 2.8 percent after declining last November and December, according to an e-mailed statement from the Chicago-based firm that tracks so-called foot traffic in thousands of U.S. stores. Sales gained 3.7 percent during the same period in 2011, the company said.

That nightmare showrooming scenario may be closer to a bad pipedream than reality. The use of cell phones in a store is much more complicated than simply having a shopper hijacked by Amazon or the super store down the road. According to a new research survey commissioned by mobile marketing and technology company Vibes with Research Now, nearly half (48%) of those who scanned text messaged for more product information in-store said the key result was that they felt better about their purchase.