Consumer Product Safety Commission Using Social Media
from NBC4i
The latest warnings and recalls could soon be shot straight to your hip -- on your mobile device. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is turning to social media to get its message out faster -- and to more people. The CPSC is now on YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and posting podcasts -- sending their updates on the recalls and warnings on everything from appliances to baby products. More

U.S. Retailers to See Some Cheer this Holiday Season
from MarketWatch
Retailers are expected to see a one percent increase in same-store sales in November and December, according to trade group International Council of Shopping Centers. Factoring in January, sales may rise 1.5 percent, their best performance in three years, ICSC said. Last year, they dropped 5.8 percent in November and December and declined 5.4 percent including January, marking their worst performance on record by both measures, ICSC said. More

Holiday Jobs Look Scarce as Pessimism Grips Retail
from The Wall Street Journal
Retailers typically bulk up their staff by up to 10 percent in the fourth quarter, the period that typically accounts for their biggest sales and profits of the year. But nearly half of the nation's 25 biggest retail chains expect to hire fewer holiday workers this season than they did last year, another sign that retailers aren't counting on recession-strained shoppers to relax the tight grip on their pocketbooks this year. More

Retailers Give the Christmas Shopping Season an Even Earlier Start
from Boston.com
The leaves may have barely begun to fall, and the still-strong sun banishes thoughts of December. But like it or not, the holiday shopping season, in all its gift-giving cheer and consumerist frenzy, is already underway. It began even earlier than usual this year, with a few stores displaying Christmas items in July. The accelerated arrival of ceramic Santa Clauses and faux-pine wreaths at retail outlets is a much-lamented phenomenon known as Christmas creep. And as retailers jockey for a piece of increasingly limited holiday budgets in a make-or-break game of one-upmanship, it shows little sign of retreat. More

Affluent Shoppers May Bring About Recession's End
from The Tennessean
A financial turnaround for the country may be driven largely by affluent shoppers' attitudes and whether their desire for the good life outweighs lingering worries about money and jobs, many analysts and retailers say. Store owners, for their part, are attempting multiple strategies -- from redesigning stores to slashing prices to, yes, even raising prices -- to get wealthy shoppers to open up their Birkin bags and start spending more again. More

Study Shows Rise in Consumer Confidence
from Retailing Today
The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers found that the final index of sentiment for September 2009 rose to 73.5 percent from 65.7 percent in August, indicating that the economy is improving and consumer confidence is on the rise. More

Tourism Campaign Luring Black Travelers to Philadelphia
from The Philadelphia Inquirer
What Philadelphia wants is well-traveled, technologically savvy, energetic African Americans to sample the City of Brotherly Love's nightlife, culture, and rich history. To get those travelers here, the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. is launching an aggressive campaign today called Philly 360. While the tourism group has marketed to African Americans since 1997, this is the first time it is targeting the emerging and coveted group of urban African Americans under 40 who travel. More

The Kinds of Employees You Want to Hire
from Business Week
There are two kinds of employees. Some believe they can make things happen, and the others believe that things happen to them. The first group believes that the outcome of their life and career is more or less in their own hands, and they wouldn't have it any other way. The other group sits and waits around for someone to take them somewhere. This distinguishing feature is captured by something called a "core self-evaluation." After more than a decade of research, psychologist Tim Judge has discovered that virtually all superstar employees -- from rainmakers in the field to line workers on the floor all the way to big guns in the boardroom -- have one thing in common: a high core self-evaluation. Judge describes core self-evaluation as "a person's fundamental bottom line evaluation of their abilities." More

Transactional Email Overhaul: 5 Strategies to Revive an Older Program
from MarketingSherpa
Many marketers know the value of well-placed promotions in transactional emails, but the automated nature of those sends might make it tempting to simply set up a program and ignore it. See how one marketer is reinvigorating a transactional email program that had been on autopilot for too long. More

Small Improvement in Retail Won't Last, Analysts Say
from Hernando Today
The recent retail trends for September show a slight improvement due to Labor Day appearing further down in the calendar. The long wait for the holiday caused schools across the nation to start later than usual -- so discount and apparel chains have benefited. Those improvements are not likely to be sustained and the upcoming holiday shopping season is still expected to be well below the desired level, said Patricia Edwards, a retail analyst and founder of Storehouse Partners in Seattle. More

Consumer Participation in Loyalty Programs Up Amidst Recession
from the CSP Daily News/Magazine
Despite the recession, U.S. consumer participation in rewards programs is on the rise across all demographic segments, according to recently released COLLOQUY research. The study reports a 19 percent participation growth by the general population since 2007. More

For Retailers, H1N1 Preparedness is the Best Shot in the Arm
from Retail’s BIG Blog
Each year in the U.S., seasonal flu kills approximately 36,000 people. The 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak has demonstrated how rapidly a new strain of flu can emerge and spread around the world. And as we approach the 2009 flu season, many people have begun to ask me about the H1N1 virus and my thoughts on its potential to become a full-blown epidemic. “Are people worried?” they ask. “How can I make sure my employees are healthy?” “Will this keep people out of stores?” “What are businesses doing to prepare?” Get advice for how to deal with this year’s flu season in the linked article. More

What’s in a Retail E-Mail?
from eMarketer
With social media presence rapidly becoming a must for online retailers, Email Data Source and Goodmail Systems studied how often retailers were including social media marketing links in their e-mail campaigns. Large majorities of the top 100 companies according to Internet Retailer had a profile on Facebook, Twitter or both. Formerly hyped technologies such as blogs and RSS feeds were much less popular among these online retail leaders -- fewer than one in five used either. But many of those that had a Facebook or Twitter account did not promote it. More

Online Shoppers Can’t Be Dumped into Categories
from Internet Retailer
As the web provides more choices in how to shop, online shoppers are increasingly showing independence in how they like to shop across multiple categories of product and price, Drugstore.com Inc. CEO Dawn Lepore says. For years, e-commerce experts have attempted to help online marketers and merchandisers by defining groups of online shoppers within categories such as working moms, value shoppers, brand buyers, and impulse buyers, Lepore said. But experts are "missing the bigger story," she said. "Increasingly, online shoppers refuse to be categorized." More

Assessing the Value of Product Recommendations
from MultiChannel Merchant
If you're making a purchase at a grocery store, you may be tempted to buy a candy bar or a gossip rag when you check out. But what about an e-commerce purchase? Internet merchants can recommend related products at the checkout, too. But what to offer and how to do it can be a challenge. Personalized product recommendations on Puma North America's e-commerce site have helped grow its online sales, according to Julian Chu, head of e-commerce for apparel merchant. More

Even Bad Online Reviews Boost Sales
from CNN Money
Online reviews have been spreading ever since Amazon.com pioneered them in 1997. But today's customer feedback software is growing more sophisticated, more personal and more affordable for small businesses. "People want to talk among themselves," says Jacqueline Anderson of Forrester. Adds Larry Freed, CEO of ForeSee Results: "If they leave your site to look for reviews, they most likely won't come back." More

Van Gogh Museum Offers iPhone Users App on Dutch Artist’s Life
from Bloomberg
Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum created an application that allows users of Apple Inc.’s iPhone to access information about the Dutch painter’s life and art. The application, called “Yours, Vincent,” is available for free download through Apple’s iTunes App Store from Oct. 6, the museum said in a statement posted on its Web site. The software is linked to the museum’s show “Van Gogh’s Letters: The Artist Speaks,” which will run from Oct. 9 to Jan. 3, 2010. More