Articles about Retail

It's getting to be that time of year when thoughts turn to holiday giving. Amazon has already launched its Black Friday deal site and we've seen Best Buy's answer to that. Now the Amazon attempts to go one better with a special offer.

The online retailer is announcing its eight day holiday special, beginning this Friday November 20th. The company plans to add new deals as often as every five minutes.

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A lot can be said about Amazon's Echo product. People either love it or don't trust it. After all, what you say goes through Amazon's servers to answer the questions and requests, and it works almost instantly.

Now Amazon has a deal for those who want to try it out, but you'll need to act fast because the deal is good for today only. The device normally retails for $179, but today you can get $30 knocked off that price, lowering the product to $149.

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The holiday shopping season is right around the corner or, in some cases, here now. We've already seen Amazon launch its store which contains the "Lightning Deals" it offers each year as an incentive to keep customers coming back frequently.

Not to be outdone, Best Buy is kicking off its festivities now as well. The company announces today that deals will be available immediately both in stores and online.

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You can tell the holiday shopping season has started. There's Christmas displays in the stores, Amazon has launched its store and perhaps, just maybe, the children are being better behaved. It's also the time when stores suddenly pop up, many of them are simple kiosks located in malls.

Motorola took that concept one step further as it announces its first full-blown store, located right in downtown Chicago.

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Halloween is now behind us, the ghosts and goblins have all hid for another year. And for retailers that means one thing -- holiday shopping. The season begins earlier each year and stores are already displaying decorations, in some cases before All Hallow's Eve was even past.

Amazon is no exception, today announcing it is beginning its run up to Black Friday, which is the official kickoff of the money-spending frenzy.

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There is no more iconic street than New York's Fifth Avenue -- okay, maybe there are some rivals such as the Champs Elysee -- but the Big Apple's street has its claim to fame. It's the residence of many famous locations and now one more company is calling it home.

Microsoft is opening a flagship store on the famous avenue, marking its latest location in an ever-expanding footprint.

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Fake Apple stores selling genuine Apple products are popping up around China like mushrooms after the rain.

According to a Reuters report, Apple only has one official store in Shenzhen and five authorized dealers in the area, but China’s southern boomtown has more than 30 stores selling these products.

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Apple announces on Tuesday quarterly results that will for the first time include its wearable. Already, ahead of the big day, speculation soars about Apple Watch sales. Expect drama for sure, as CEO Time Cook explains how supply shortages constrained availability, leaving investors with more questions than answers.

I am more interested in data the company likely won't reveal: return rates. I took back two. The first: I ordered online but sales started, after long delay, in the retail store before the device arrived. Rather than wait another week, I bought there and later returned the other, which the shop specialist sold seconds afterwards to a family that had come in looking for Apple Watch only to be told the Sport sold out. The second: A week later, I exchanged the aluminum timepiece for stainless steel. How many other people returned one for another because of taste or altogether because of dislike? The measure of Apple Watch success is percentage of returns.

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Well, July 15th is behind us and Amazon's promise of deals bigger than Black Friday. If you were looking for Christmas in July, did you get it? I wasn't that impressed with the selection of Lightning Deals and exclusives, but perhaps you were. Or not. My purchase, and call me crazy (some commenter usually does): I plunked down $143.86 for two years of Kindle Unlimited, saving 40 percent off the $9.99 for each of 24 months. The bookstore will become my personal library of sorts. There are many books I would read and reference for my professional writing but not necessarily buy.

Briefly, Amazon offered the 32GB Nexus 6 for $399 and Echo for $129—that's $50 off. The smartphone sold out quick at that price but still remained available for $499 the rest of the day. The other device built up a waitlist before finally being closed out. The 6-inch Kindle sold for $49, discounted from $79, and was still available as Midnight approached here on the West Coast (where I live; BetaNews offices are Eastern Time).

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I best be watchful, for my wife is smarter than she pretends to be. If not, she's the mother of all coincidence. Because by all appearances, the woman used the vendor online tracking everyone suspects to snake a great discount from Amazon. Maybe you can turn to advantage persistant invasion of your privacy.

Our story starts on Feb. 11, 2015, when following days of price comparisons she ordered a 12-pack of one pound Café Bustelo from the Internet retailer. Price: $52.90. As we consumed coffee, she returned to Amazon on March 17, when a shocker waited: Same item cost $69.31. Ah, yeah. That's a 31 percent increase. But by apparently gaming the system, she later purchased for 19 percent less than previously paid.

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From farm to fork, there is no doubting that technology plays an integral role in the way supermarket chains interact with their suppliers, partners and customers. Since the first, secure, online purchase 20 years ago, retailers have come a long way in their use of technology to provide an efficient service and meet the ever increasing demands and expectations of their customers.

Today’s shopper expects to be able to use a number of mediums to interact with a retailer and make a purchase decision -- be it browse in-store or online, make a "click and collect" order to pick up at their convenience or have their weekly shop delivered to their home. All of this needs to happen seamlessly, with any breaks in the chain or inability to interact with a retailer subject to immediate criticism via social media channels or emails. It is therefore imperative that any new technology application or upgrade is set up for success with seamless integration and operation from the start. For, despite the opportunities which can be realized through technology, it can also give supermarkets nowhere to hide if it all goes wrong.

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In America, Black Friday is a retail-focused holiday following Thanksgiving. In other words, the day after we spend time with family giving thanks, we rush to the stores to spend money. Yes, it is bizarre and a bit conflicting, but actually, it is a good thing. Not only is a positive for the economy, but it also brings families together; waiting in line together, fighting fellow shoppers together and spending money together -- at least family is together. It is actually rather nice to see a tired, post-shopping family eating omelettes together at 3am at a 24-hour diner.

Another tradition of Black Friday is buying the newspaper and reading the circulars. Normally, the deals are supposed to be revealed the day before; people would make it a point to buy the newspaper on Thanksgiving. The Internet, however, has birthed "leaked" Black Friday deals, where websites publish the deals weeks in advance. While some people may imagine store employees secretly smuggling the information, others hypothesize that it is the stores themselves leaking the deals. Today, Microsoft takes the approach of openly leaking its Black Friday deals weeks in advance, by emailing them to its customers; however, there is a catch.

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Many of us are guilty of "showrooming" -- the act of using a brick and mortar store like Best Buy or Walmart as a showroom for products we end up buying online. While there is nothing morally wrong about such a practice, I do sometimes feel guilty doing it. In other words, I enjoy saving money by purchasing online, but I would be sad to see brick and mortar stores disappear; I like touching a product before buying.

While the Internet is not about to go away anytime soon, something surprising is happening -- consumers are returning to brick and mortar stores through "webrooming" -- the act of researching a product online and then buying in a physical store.

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Amazon's future plans for delivery have been all over the news recently. From drones to rumors the company will start its own service -- a UPS of sorts. While neither of those has yet come to pass, the company is opening up its delivery options a bit.

Amazon is announcing the expansion of its Sunday delivery service, adding 15 more cities. "In addition to the Los Angeles and New York metro areas where Sunday delivery launched in November 2013, Amazon customers in the following locations are now receiving deliveries on Sunday". The retailer then goes on to name the locations, which include Texas, Ohio, Kentucky, Louisiana, Indiana, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.

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Great news everyone! Spending money on the internet will be getting a bit easier. As if one-click purchases were not enough, Amazon now wishes to make it even easier to lighten your wallet by a bit, introducing purchases through Twitter.

You can’t actually complete the deal this way -- yet -- but you can get the item into your cart, where it will await your next move.

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