A new feature I am going to try to maintain on the blog, is a weekly summary of the news you would have heard this week if you followed my twitter stream @retailgeek:
Consumer
- Retail sales climb a health 4.2% for January – LA Times
- More confident consumers start using credit cards again. Bloomberg News
- Online Retail Spending Reaches A Record $43.4B In Q4 2010; Up 11% Techcrunch
- The Return of the Aspirational Shopper; more shoppers are ready to splurge. via WSJ
Mobile
- 26% of mobile Apps downloaded in 2010 were used just once Localytics
- 8.8% of retailers have a mobile commerce site, 75.9% expect to launch one soon. Milo
- eBay generated more than $2B in worldwide mobile sales in 2010.
- Global SMS traffic will grow from 5 trillon to 8.7 trillion messages by 2015.
- JCP issues iPads as a sales assist tool for jewelry sales clerks.
- Apple Initial Sales via Mary Meeker Slides on Techcrunch:
| Product | 3 Quarters After Launch | |
| IPod | 236,000 units | |
| IPhone | 3,700,000 units | |
| iPad | 14.800,000 units |
- In 10 Quarters there have been 10 billion apps downloaded from iTunes versus only about 624 million songs. Mary Meeker Slides via Techcrunch
- Smartphone market now bigger than PC. According to IDC, 101 million smartphones were sold in Q4, versus 92 million PCs. via Businessinsider
- Worldwide smartphone sales grew 72% in 2010 to 1.6 billion units. via Gartner
- USA Today’ Adds Microsoft Tag 2D Barcodes to print edition. via Mediapost
Retail
Best Buy has launched a new Buy Back program. For an extra fee at the time of purchase, Best Buy will promise to buy the product back in the future, at a pre-arranged price. Buy a $400 phone with the Buy-Back option, and sell it back for $160 in 12 months. Many consumers will think of this as a $240 purchase rather than a $400 one. Like a lease for a new car, consumers can start thinking about paying for the utility they get for an purchase instead of having to pay for the full life of the product. These programs have been around for a while via companies like Tech Forward, but this is the first a major retailer has really promoted it, via a SuperBowl ad no less! Read Barry Judge, Best Buy’s CMO’s thoughts on the Buy Back Program here. Will Best Buy start selling previously owned products as well?
Leave a Reply