Target Corporation

Going “green” will become increasingly important for multichannel merchants as consumers’ spending habits continue to be influenced by environmental concerns. According to the 2007 Annual National Shopping Behavior Survey by KPMG, a vast majority of holiday shoppers expressed a willingness to pay more for ecofriendly gifts and took note of the countries where items were made. The recent survey of 815 shoppers was conducted randomly by telephone. Here are some highlights of the survey: * 88 percent of respondents said they were very concerned about the environment, with 74 percent saying they buy environmentally friendly products; * 60 percent of those respondents were willing

Did anybody else get an inferiority complex over the Thanksgiving weekend? I’m referring to the hoopla that surrounded Black Friday on Nov. 23. Like just about anything else in America, Black Friday gets bigger every year, and this year really went over the top. It got me thinking about the future: Does this “holiday” have to be a retail-only one? I certainly read enough about it. I saw plenty of TV news clips of those crazy, sleep-deprived shoppers lining up outside the stores in the wee hours of that Friday morning. I sifted through enough Circuit City, Kohl’s, Macy’s and Wal-Mart circulars about their

People On the Move Coldwater Creek: Dennis Pence, who cofounded this multichannel women’s apparel cataloger 23 years ago, retired as CEO on Oct. 30. He’ll retain his role as chairman, however. President/COO Daniel Griesemer was promoted to president/CEO and will serve on the company’s board of directors. Griesemer joined Coldwater Creek six years ago. dELiA*s: The multichannel teen/tween apparel company has named Chris DiChiaro as the divisional merchandise manager of its Alloy division. Prior to joining dELiA*s, DiChiaro spent seven years as the vice president of merch-andising of intimate apparel for Victoria’s Secret Direct. dELiA*s also announced the hiring of Lee Bissonnette as senior director of

According to STORES magazine’s inaugural Favorite 50 survey, conducted by BIGresearch, consumers are drawn most to Web sites that offer a variety of choices. Topping the publication’s rankings for customers’ favorite online retail companies was Amazon.com, whose broad product array connects with consumers. Following Amazon’s site was another site full of possibilities, eBay.com. The rest of the top 10 is below, followed by a list of all catalog companies ranked in the top 50. 3. WalMart.com 4. BestBuy.com 5. JCPenney.com 6. Target.com 7. Kohls.com 8. Overstock.com 9. Google.com 10. Sears.com The following catalogers were also on the list (followed by actual rank): LandsEnd.com (13),

The fate of Wal-Mart, Target and other big retailers often represents a benchmark for how smaller multichannel marketers will perform, sales-wise. But if their sales performance in April was any indication, then it’s not a good time right now for anyone. Below are highlights of several key big retailers’ April sales totals. * Overall, the UBS-International Council of Shopping Centers’ sales totals of 53 retailers showed a 2.4 percent decrease, the largest decline since 1970 * Wal-Mart’s same-store sales fell 3.5 percent * Target Corp.’s same-store sales decreased by 6.1 percent * Federated Department Stores’ (Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s) same-store sales dropped 2.2 percent * Gap Inc.’s same-store sales sunk by

Does your company market products through comparison shopping engines? Comparison shopping engines (CSEs) are sites such as Yahoo! Shopping, Shopping.com, Gifts.com, Pricegrabber, NexTag, MSN Shopping, Google Base and Shopzilla. CSEs aggregate SKU data from retailers for online shoppers. Some retailers avoid CSEs due the technical hassle of sending product data to the engines and retrieving corresponding advertising cost reports. But today, the National Retail Federation (NRF) announced a new data format intended to simplify communication between retailers, agencies and CSEs. The beta test of the standard took place last week when engineers at Channel Intelligence used the format to submit product data for