Keep your eyes open—and your wallet closed—while checking out these changes affecting the food-shopping experience.
Walmart
Walmart Goes Old School, Promises “Low Prices. Every Day. On Everything.”
During the recession era, Walmart made a distinct shift upscale in an attempt to woo more affluent consumers. The move proved to be a disaster, and the world’s largest retailer has suffered through an extended sales slump amid accusations it betrayed blue-collar shoppers everywhere. To bring the masses back, Walmart is now promising to …
Why a Messy, Cluttered Store Is Good for Business
When trying to sell a home, the number one rule is to declutter and make the place as clean and open as possible. (See the house staging tips on this list.) For a while, retail stores have followed the same concept, utilizing super-wide aisles, minimalist design (relatively speaking), and smaller shelves, with fewer items on those …
Retail News: Introducing No-Minimum-Purchase, No-Membership-Fees, No-Catches Totally Free Shipping
During last year’s Christmas season, several major retailer introduced simple and easy free shipping promotions, with no minimum purchase or annoying coupon code required. While these promos were short-term and have since disappeared, consumers have come to expect—demand, really—free shipping, and I’m not the only one wondering when …
Why Retailers Prefer “Ship to Store” Over Plain Old Shipping to the Customer’s Home
During the past winter holiday shopping season, free shipping was a big trend. Retail giant Walmart, for instance, offered free shipping on some 60,000 items. Now, instead of continuing to expand free shipping services, Walmart is ramping up its “ship-to-store” program, in which shoppers order merchandise online that they’ll later pick …
Consumer Research Roundup: 7 Studies Explaining Why You Buy, Why You Have No Free Time, and Why a Designer Good Purchase Can Snowball
Also, there are theories as to why the layout of IKEA stores is so damn confusing, and why the presence of a Walmart in your neighborhood may have caused you to gain weight.
Walmart’s Identity Crisis, and the Betrayal of the Blue-Collar Shopper
The world’s largest retailer is suffering through its worst-ever sales period on home turf. Why?
Big-Box Banking: Why the Unbanked Are Cashing Checks at Walmart
Walmart, Kmart, and Best Buy are among the big retailers offering customers what are known as “alternative financial services”—allowing consumers to cash checks, pay utility bills, and transfer money without a traditional bank account. And hey, while consumers are in the store cashing a check, it might be possible they’ll be tempted …
The Holiday Season’s Ugliest Moments
Shoppers, workers, needy kids, the fashion world, and even Santa have had a rough go of things this holiday season. Here’s a look at some of the uglier scenes.
How SmartPhones Level the Playing Field for Shoppers
Comparison shopping has never been easier. Forget about store circulars, let alone physically going to multiple stores to scope prices. With a smartphone and a price-comparison app, scouring the competition is as easy as entering a single store and punching in an item’s model number or scanning the bar code, then waiting a few moments to …
5 Things We Learned from the Black Friday Weekend Shopping Experience
Black Friday isn’t just about cheap prices. It’s also about participating in a cultural phenomenon and doing otherwise nonsensical things.
Cancun and Climate: Government Won’t Act, But Business Will
Over the next two weeks, Cancun will be in the spotlight for something other than spring break madness. As host of the annual climate summit that once saw such promise in Kyoto in 1997, Cancun in 2010 is framed by the spectacular failure of last year’s Copenhagen talks and by the stark realization that nearly 200 nations simply cannot …