Newsletter Articles: Pricing
Pricing has been on my mind a lot lately, not least because Paula and I just wrapped up writing our 7th annual pricing benchmark (check back on our home page on 4/11 – it’ll be there). But I also came across a recent article from Stores Magazine that really cemented something for me. Two things, [...]
NRF’s Big Show is not the only conference that falls in January. And so less than a week after my time in New York City, I found myself winging off to Phoenix Arizona for FMI’s Midwinter Executive Conference. While there, I had the opportunity to address members of their Independent Operator Program. I also got [...]
I try hard not to use this soapbox for personal customer service issues with retailers. And honestly, even though I know myself to be one tough customer (I just know too much for my own good), I have had few issues bad enough to worth bringing up in this public square. However, sometimes things happen [...]
One good thing about vacations is they really do clear your head. So along with bringing back lots of photos of blue-footed boobies from my most recent holiday, I also brought back a fresh perspective. And those thoughts revolve around promotions. Promotions have become like the weather. Everyone talks about them, but it seems no [...]
There has been a flurry of news stories in the last couple of months about pricing and promotions, of which two stand out very strongly in my mind. One is JCPenney’s report that they are returning to “sale” terminology instead of the cute “best price” attempt. The other is Supervalu’s repositioning on price – the [...]
This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend one of Monsoon Commerce’s two user conferences: MonCon East, in Philadelphia, PA. It was my first exposure to Monsoon Commerce, and I was impressed with its broad suite of products, large customer base, and the rather unique challenges those customers face. Monsoon caters to the small [...]
I have been waiting patiently and not so patiently for retail enterprise apps providers to come up with an answer to retailers’ most pressing cross-channel commerce questions – particularly around fulfillment. Up until now, I count only two major players, and that’s IBM and Manhattan. However, with what JDA showed at their Focus user conference [...]
I wrote recently about a couple of trips to Europe that I took that underscored some of the differences that I see between the evolution in omni-channel in the US vs. the evolution in Europe. I identified six: differences in demand forecasting, inventory localization, cross-channel inventory optimization, personalization / relevancy, store labor, and finally, price [...]
I’ve started looking at the results from this year’s Pricing benchmark. I must say, early analysis of this data has yielded some surprising results. Continued uncertain economic conditions and increasing consumer price sensitivity has shifted industry focus dramatically. Respondents are far more apt to ignore the wealth of customer data available to them and look [...]
Last week I wrote about my take on Ron Johnson’s new strategy for JCPenney. I wrote the article over the weekend and it published on Tuesday, January 31. JCP’s new strategy, Phase 1 went into effect the very next day. So naturally, I was at the mall on Wednesday, checking to see how much of [...]