Target

Too weird, too pretentious, too expensive and, in the end, too out of step with what today's arbiters of style deem cool. Those have been among the many critiques of Target's multidesigner collaboration with luxury retailer Neiman Marcus, a partnership that was hyped to the hilt, and wound up as a major bust.

This helpful guide offers cross-channel retailers the opportunity to learn from experts in their space on a variety of topics critical to running a successful (i.e., profitable) business, including mobile marketing, operations and fulfillment, search engine marketing, and much more!

Michael Francis has been named to the newly created post of chief global brand officer at DreamWorks Animation. Francis, the high-profile former chief marketing officer at Target as well as president at J.C. Penney, will be responsible for worldwide branding initiatives, licensing and consumer products, and franchise management. "Michael has spent nearly three decades as a superstar in retail, and his expertise in building franchises is second to none," DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg said in a phone interview. 

Top toy lists are typically the purview of major retailers like Toys"R"Us, Wal-Mart and Target, but this year Google unveiled its own list of hot toys. It's no ordinary list. Consumers are able to view the toys in 3-D, using a cursor to turn an item in circles and view it from all angles. There are also listings of online stores and nearby stores, as well as reviews.

Looking through all of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday articles on the business wires over the past week has left me in a bit of a haze. Mobile sales are up. Store sales are down. Online sales are up. Promotions worked. Promotions didn't work. It can all get very confusing. How did Cyber Week pan out for your brand?

Target launched a new blend of entertainment and shopping this past October with a three-part series short film that simultaneously merchandises the complete outfit each actor is wearing. The user interface features the main target.com menu, a video player screen, the merchandised product list on the right side of the video and shopping cart favorites at the bottom of the video.

Wal-Mart, like many other retailers, will be opening its doors extra early this Thanksgiving in the hopes of cashing in on deal-hungry shoppers. The retailer announced last week that rather than waiting until Friday, a day when retailers traditionally offer massive markdowns, Wal-Mart stores will open at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. Some of their employees, however, are less than keen to head to work on the federal holiday.

In a bid to capture the first rush of holiday shoppers, Amazon.com has opened an online store for Black Friday offers 22 days before the national shopping event will take place. Many online retailers won't post their offers until Cyber Monday, which takes place the Monday following Thanksgiving. But many will go ahead and post their offers on Black Friday to compete with brick-and-mortar retailers, several of whom opened their stores to shoppers at midnight on Black Friday last year in an effort to beat out the competition.

This holiday season, shoppers will be able to buy Spanx "shapewear" at the brand's new stores, Brookstone gadgets at other retailers, including Target, and Uniqlo clothing on the Japanese retailer's new website.

We're nearly a year into Ron Johnson's tenure as CEO of J.C. Penney, and the results aren't encouraging. The retailer's share price has fallen more than 10 percent under the former Apple and Target executive, and now, a new report from BIGinsight suggests that female shoppers are fleeing the retailer in droves.