What are you thankful for?
MSA
MSA would like to wish all of its American colleagues a Happy Thanksgiving… and a very Black Friday and Small Business Saturday! As we head into this season of thanks and giving and shopping, the MSA staff has put together a list of the things we're thankful for this year. How about you?More

Now available! Order your copy of 'Marketing Cultural & Heritage Tourism'
MSA
MSA is pleased to present its latest publication: "Marketing Cultural & Heritage Tourism." Packed with 195 pages of valuable ideas and case studies, you will learn how to build your business in the fast-growing global tourism market, increase museum visitation and museum store sales by targeting high-spending travelers, and discover partnership strategies to leverage local tourism partners and minimize your investment. This valuable resource includes cultural and heritage traveler research, data and trends to help you understand and capture the travel market. MSA members and affiliates save $10 off the listed price: just use code MSA. Order your copy today!More

Congrats to the winners of the first MSA renewal prize drawing!
MSA
Congratulations to our first round of renewal winners! Louise Meeks of the Texas Memorial Museum, Austin, Texas, won $100 MSA Dollars and Doug Kline of Museum Masterworks Inc., Richmond, Va., won a free website banner ad! If you haven't yet done so, make sure you renew by Dec. 31, 2011, for your chance to win either a 2012 MSA Conference registration (a $399 value!) or a spot in MSA's Product Showcase (a $325 value!) at the 2012 Expo. Renew online by logging in to the MSA website and then clicking on the "Click Here to Renew for 2012" graphic.More

MSA Southwest Central Chapter plans its winter meeting
MSA
Detailed meeting information with a complete agenda for MSA's Southwest Central Chapter has been posted to the MSA website. Download the registration form and start making plans to see your local colleagues in Dallas in January! More

Retailers going all out this holiday season
The Kansas City Star
This holiday season, retailers are rushing more than ever before to get your business. Black Friday — the day-after-Thanksgiving traditional start of the holiday shopping season — is turning into Black Thursday as more stores open at midnight or even earlier Thanksgiving evening. They also aren't waiting until Thanksgiving to release their doorbuster discounts. They're putting them out days and even weeks ahead.More

Counterfeit bills passed more as holidays approach
Orlando Sentinel
As the holidays approach, shoppers and merchants alike can expect crowded parking lots, long checkout lines and frayed tempers. One thing most people aren't expecting to run across is counterfeit currency. But according to the U.S. Secret Service, counterfeiting cases tend to rise around the holidays. And the increase may be even more pronounced this year amid the down economy.More

Stores working to convince consumers to buy this holiday season
New York Post
Not jolly, nor merry. "Careful" is the way experts are characterizing both shoppers and retailers this year. 'Tis the season, but there has to be a reason to spend. So instead of just discounting their offerings, stores are simultaneously trying to convince shoppers that being merry is a good thing. And just in case that doesn't work, they are also doing the usual: Cutting prices, extending store hours and making it easier to pay. More

Holiday shopping going mobile
Retail Customer Experience
Twice as many shoppers plan to use smartphones or tablets this year to purchase gifts than last year. In a survey of 1,215 mobile device users, Webroot, an Internet security provider, assessed people's preferences for using mobile devices versus traditional means for researching and buying holiday gifts, and for planning and booking holiday trips. The study also explored how people secure themselves on their mobile devices.More

Shop Local Saturday
Homer News
Before the Thanksgiving meal has had time to settle, before the sun rises the morning of Nov. 25, holiday gift-buying fever has struck. So popular is the day that it has its own name: Black Friday, a nod to profits that catapult businesses out of the red and into the black. A Black Friday website helps shoppers find sales. An iPhone app helps deal-hunters map out their shopping sprees weeks in advance. Eager to get shoppers' attention, some businesses, like Toys R Us and Wal-Mart, even open their doors late on Thanksgiving evening. What are small businesses supposed to do?More

More Canadians will do their shopping in the US this holiday season
Marketwire via MarketWatch
Black Friday, the day following American Thanksgiving, traditionally marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Many Canadians are planning to head south with their gift list in hand this year. According to a recent survey, 18 percent of Canadians plan to shop in the United States this holiday season, up 5 percent from last year (13 percent). The survey also found that Canadians are planning to spend almost $1,397 each this year on holiday shopping, travel and entertaining.More

1 in 3 online consumers to use a tablet by 2014
eMarketer
Tablet devices, in their current incarnation, have only been available for a couple years, but the iPad has propelled them to rapid increases in ownership and usage. eMarketer estimates that by the end of 2011, 33.7 million Americans will use a tablet device at least monthly — a rise of 158.6 percent over last year, the year the iPad was released. Growth will slow to double digits beginning in 2012, but the number of users will rise to nearly 90 million, or 35.6 percent of all internet users, by 2014.More

More stores moving to digital receipts
CreditCards.com
With the holidays approaching, more retailers are rolling out digital receipts in an attempt to streamline the inevitable glut of post-holiday returns. But not everyone is happy about it. Some remain critical of the change, fearful of what retailers will do with a growing body of personal spending data. But, from a retailer's perspective, digital receipts offer several benefits. For one, they provide added convenience for customers, who require receipts for such things as product warranties and tax records, in addition to store returns. More

M-commerce sites require the right ingredients for success
Internet Retailer
Retailers developing mobile commerce sites should consider three factors when designing sites, all with an eye on spurring a consumer to make a purchase and come back again to spend more.More

Is Google Wallet geared towards small businesses?
Small Business Trends
Recently, Google announced that it would phase out its Checkout product in favor of its new, shiny Google Wallet platform. Wallet is designed both for online payments, the way Checkout was, as well as mobile payments at select retailers.More

Retailers enliven catalog offerings through apps
The New York Times
Many retailers, as varied as Saks Fifth Avenue and Wal-Mart, are putting out new iPad apps in time for the holiday season. These apps do away with scrolling through pages of items online and aim to make shopping more entertaining.More

Layaway programs grow in popularity at Illinois stores
Algonquin Patch
More retailers are going back to the past this Christmas season and offering layaway to help customers manage their holiday gift buying.More

How to sanely slash prices like a crazy person
ClickZ
There is no way to eliminate the massive price cut practice. But at least we can get much better at it. If you are in a position to slash prices for the holidays (or any other time), you should follow a few good rules that will help you use the tactic to drive business, but maintain the ongoing value that your brand has captured.More

8 tips to take your brick-and-mortar business online
Small Business Trends
The Internet is here to stay, no doubt about it. Still, many small businesses haven't moved online. Some may not feel the need yet. Others may be scared because the territory is unfamiliar. Whatever the case may be, here are some simple steps you can take to move your brick-and-mortar business online — something you must do if you want to be able to compete in the long-run.More

5 ways to make your store sensational
Retail Customer Experience
Like it or not, if you want to bring more customers in, it makes sense (and dollars as well) to make your establishment sensational. That's because statistics make it clear that more and more people are shopping on the Internet. The Internet works for those who are time-deprived, and also those who want to save the last penny. But, luckily, they are not your customers. There are lots of people who like to shop in stores.More

Why you should care about online sales tax legislation
Retail's BIG Blog
Think the debate on online sales tax only applies to online retailers? Think again. From brick-and-mortar to multichannel to online pure plays, if you're in retail, you need to know about three legislative proposals currently under consideration by Congress. Why? Because if passed, online sales tax collection changes will significantly impact your business, be it online or offline.More

How Google Street View might open the e-com door for small retail
Retail Customer Experience
If you use Google maps, then you're probably familiar with Street View. As the name suggests, Street View allows users to literally fly down to street level and have a 360-degree look around. In April, Google began expanding the concept to include 360-degree photography of interior business spaces within Street View functionality. Now the program is officially rolling out in Australia, Japan, the U.S., and New Zealand and is focusing exclusively on small businesses including restaurants, bars and retail stores. Businesses who want to have their location photographed by a "Google-trusted" photographer have to apply. More

Skirball holiday shop benefits women's cooperatives
Los Angeles Times
It's the colorful cotton braids hanging off the children's aprons for sale in the Skirball Cultural Center's holiday pop-up shop that make them hard to resist. And it's those braids that make the aprons more than just useful for keeping clothes clean. The aprons made by the women of the Sankofa Center for African Dance and Culture in Ghana have memory braids marking the life of a child lost to HIV-AIDS. There are also aprons for adults and matching potholders. An African proverb in the fabric pattern means: "A single tree cannot stand strong alone." Those are among the hand-crafted items in the Skirball pop-up holiday shop; their sale benefits about 80 artisans and cooperatives of women around the globe, including the Downtown Women's Center in Los Angeles.More

Indigenous Visions at Heard Museum Shop in Phoenix
Arizona Central
Here's your chance to get inside an artist's head. At the Heard Museum's new series, Indigenous Visions, launched in October, guests mingle with artists in a casual setting. The monthly gathering includes about five Native American artists, some of whom have works on display in the museum or for sale in the shop.More

The workforce of the future starts now
Center for the Future of Museums Blog
Taking a broad view of the "museum workforce," the following numbers include everyone who draws a museum paycheck — from the director of the Met to the custodian at your local historical society — and not just the professional staff. The best available data shows that the present workforce is: 80 percent white, 52 percent male, full of people who attended college (70 percent), but only 11 perent have a master's degree or doctorate. For a useful point of comparison, 87 percent of museum studies graduates in 2009 were women and 70 percent were white.More

Errors in O'Reilly's book to be discussed at Lincoln Presidential Museum
Examiner.com
Although Bill O'Reilly has acknowledged that his new book Killing Lincoln contains minor errors which have been corrected, the Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, Ill. will bring a panel of Lincoln scholars together to discuss the book and its errors on Dec. 7. Media coverage continues to focus on the decision of the Ford Theater gift shop to not sell O'Reilly's Killing Lincoln.More