Order Your Copy of the Indispensable Industry Guide for Cultural Retail Operations!
from MSA
If you need data to support next year's budget requests for your museum store, the 2009 MSA Retail Industry Report is a must-have resource! For example, if you are looking to increase your marketing and promotional budget, you might be interested to know that 1) one-third of stores report that they have a marketing or promotional budget (34%) and 2) the median percent of total sales that make up the marketing budget is only 1%. But how does marketing impact sales? You will find details about the correlation between gross sales and marketing budgets in the 2009 MSA Retail Industry Report. To get your report, call (303) 504-9223 or go to www.MuseumStoreAssociation.org. MSA members save $100! More

Welcome New MSA Members
from MSA
MSA would like to welcome several new museums and vendors to the Association. For the most up-to-date listings, MSA members can log in with their User ID and password to access detailed information and search the online directory at www.MuseumStoreAssociation.org. More

Two New Positions Posted to MSA's Job Source
from MSA
Two new positions have been posted to Job Source, MSA's online resource for the most up-to-date job listings in the cultural commerce industry. More

10 Ways to Prepare Your Website for Christmas
from SmartCompany
It's that time of the year again -- with just 77 sleeps until Christmas, it's time for online retailers to start panicking about their key selling period. Good design, strong traffic infrastructure and perfect search engine optimization are just a few of the problems online retailers face coming up to Christmas. More

Weak Holiday Shopping Season Looms
from Adweek
If consumers had a nickel for every forecast of how frugal they'll be in their holiday shopping this year, they could afford to be more lavish about it. Some new surveys add to the growing body of gloomy holiday-shopping predictions. More

New U.S. Census to Reveal Major Shift: No More Joe Consumer
from Advertising Age
The 2010 Census is expected to find that 309 million people live in the United States. But one person will be missing: the average American. "The concept of an 'average American' is gone, probably forever," demographics expert Peter Francese writes in 2010 America, a new Ad Age white paper. "The average American has been replaced by a complex, multidimensional society that defies simplistic labeling." The message to marketers is clear: No single demographic, or even handful of demographics, neatly defines the nation. There is no such thing as "the American consumer." More

M-Commerce's Big Moment
from Business Week
It has never been easy making mobile commerce predictions. Researchers who tried to forecast how much we would spend on goods and services via cell phone came up with all sorts of projections that were wide of the mark. Early in the decade, published reports cited forecasts that by 2006 more than one quarter of U.S. cell phone users would use the device to buy content and physical goods. Turns out that by the end of the second quarter, only about seven percent of U.S. consumers bought goods or conducted financial transactions via cell phone. Yet, m-commerce may finally be hitting its stride. More

Social Media Requires New Metrics to Support Retailer Investment
from Retail TouchPoints
Twitter, Facebook, blogging and other forms of social media are hot topics, even in a recessionary economy. Retailers should take a measured approach to these activities, and ensure that sensible, business-oriented goals are put in place based on the traits of their business. At the same time, retailers must remember that in a social media world, it's not "all about them" -- it's actually about the customer first. More

Retail RFID Today, As Seen Through the Eyes of an Expert
from STORES Magazine
When it comes to RFID in retail, "There is much more happening than would be apparent to a casual observer, and it has been this way for almost two years," says Marshall Kay, founder of Wilmette, Ill.-based consulting practice RFID Sherpas and former director of the North American RFID program for Kurt Salmon Associates. "Item-level RFID is drawing increasing interest from luxury retailers and big-box discounters alike. This reflects a growing recognition of the many ways that value is generated once an item is tagged." More

Pandemic Concerns Are Real: Is Your Store Prepared?
from STORES Magazine
What would you do if a virulent new strain of influenza swept through one of your larger markets, causing such widespread infection that you had to shut down part of your operations -- or even close some or all of your stores for a period of time? How would you respond if you couldn't get key merchandise to your stores because your supply chain was impacted by a widespread and serious public health epidemic, or if you had to curtail business travel because of serious nationwide or international outbreak? Most large retailers have, or are rapidly putting together, contingency plans for such scenarios. But the level of preparedness among many small, mid-sized and independent retailers isn't nearly as clear; these merchants are certainly not as prepared for pandemics as they are for a tornado, hurricane or flood. But with the emergence of the H1N1 virus, retailers not game-planning for such an event could be making a costly mistake. More

Loss Prevention: Exposed
from Retail Merchandiser
Fraud can have a sharp, negative impact on retailers in the best of times. In today's economic environment, it can spell disaster for the financial stability of retailers. According to a recent study by Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, U.S. organizations lose seven percent of their annual revenues to fraud. What is the solution? How can retailers address fraud exposure? More

Behind Every Green Retailer is Smart Technology
from Retail Merchandiser
Retailers of all shapes and sizes are continually working to become more eco-conscious, and technology is key to becoming a greener business. From telecommuting to paperless operations, technology is an innately green component of retailers' businesses that can minimize environmental impact and maximize business growth. Read on to learn about tips for streamlining your green efforts. More

Closing the Deal at the Virtual Checkout Counter
from The New York Times
Shoppers rarely drive to the mall, load up their carts and then abandon them in the middle of the store. On the Web, though, it happens all the time. In online stores, it is much easier for shoppers to fill their virtual shopping carts -- and much easier for them to get distracted by an e-mail message or comparison shopping on other sites. Then there are the design flaws and technical glitches that can get in the way of closing a sale. E-commerce companies are trying a variety of techniques to push shoppers through the virtual checkout line. More

SEO Marketing Tips: Optimize E-mail Campaigns
from Ecommerce-Guide.com
Wendy Lowe, director of product marketing for Campaigner, an e-mail marketing solutions provider, says that SEO and e-mail are a great compliment to one another. She continued, "Using SEO best practices can really help you hone in on what customers are searching for." If you want to optimize your e-mail content for search engines, Lowe offers these five tips that can help small businesses get started quickly. More

Economists: Recession is Over, But Recovery Will Be Tepid
from The Austin-American Statesman
More than 80 percent of economists surveyed say the U.S. recession is over and an expansion has begun, but they expect the recovery will be slow as worries about unemployment and high federal debt persist, according to the National Association for Business Economics. That consensus comes from leading forecasters in a survey released Oct. 12. More

House Lawmakers Challenge Credit Card Fee Increases
from The Wall Street Journal
Credit card companies were put on the defensive Thursday on Capitol Hill, as lawmakers angry with consumer fee increases put in place in recent months said they were open to considering changes to interchange laws. More

Retailers "Fight Another Day" as U.S. Shoppers Begin to Return
from Bloomberg
U.S. retailers will need to focus on managing cash and keeping costs under control as consumer spending returns slowly, according to industry executives. While consumers are growing more confident about spending, a recovery won't be immediate, retail executives and advisers said. U.S. holiday sales for the last two months of the year will probably fall 1 percent to $437.6 billion from the same period in 2008, the National Retail Federation said on Oct. 6. Last year's decline of 3.4 percent was the first drop since the Washington-based NRF started tracking holiday sales in 1995. More

Disney's Retail Plan Is a Theme Park in Its Stores
from The New York Times
At a time when many retailers are still cutting back or approaching strategic shifts with extreme caution, Disney is going the other way, getting more aggressive and putting into motion an expensive and ambitious floor-to-ceiling reboot of its 340 stores in the United States and Europe -- as well as opening new ones, including a potential flagship in Times Square. More