Costco members tend to be a fiercely loyal bunch. They love to sing the warehouse club’s praises and, most importantly, they love to shop there. But even Costco can’t buck the trend of physical stores finding customers are spending more time and money elsewhere these days, it seems. [More]
Retail Services
Walmart Starting Holiday Layaway Early Again So It Can Sell More ‘Star Wars’ Stuff
By 9.1.16
You want Star Wars merchandise this holiday season? Walmart has Star Wars stuff, which is the entire reason the retailer is kicking off its holiday layaway program a full two weeks early for the second year in a row. [More]
Kmart Holds ‘Grand Re-Opening’ For Millennial-Focused Illinois Store
By 8.31.16
What do millennials––a generation loosely defined as “anyone younger than Consumerist’s senior staff”––want from the physical stores that they still visit? Discount chain Kmart hopes to solve that mystery, re-opening an existing store near its headquarters as a “revitalized and refreshed” concept store intended to attract younger shoppers. [More]
Amazon No Longer Marketing Private Student Loans To Prime Members
By 8.31.16
Just a month after Amazon announced it would partner with Wells Fargo to offer Prime members a discount on private student loans, nearly all traces of the criticized program have disappeared. [More]
Amazon May Or May Not Be Trying To Overtake UPS And FedEx
By 8.31.16
When you see a UPS or FedEx truck in your neighborhood on a weekday, or a U.S. Postal Service truck on a Sunday, they’re probably there with some kind of delivery from an online retailer, and that retailer is likely to be Amazon. As more of our everyday shopping happens online, someone will need to bring those items to our doorsteps, but it may not necessarily be the carriers we’re used to. [More]
Study: The “Better” Walmarts Are In Higher-Income, Whiter Areas
By 8.31.16
All Walmarts are, bluntly, not created equal. Some have better customer service than others and are just plain more pleasant shopping experiences. And if you’ve felt like the Walmarts in richer ZIP codes are more likely to be the nicer ones, well, one study says you’re right. [More]
Sears Bringing Paint Back To Store Shelves Nationwide
By 8.30.16
Now that home improvement materials are selling like hot cakes, Sears is hoping it can capitalize on the DIY trend by selling paint for the first time in four years. [More]
Amazon Echo Will Let You Control Sonos Speakers
By 8.30.16
The Amazon Echo has a decent voice-controlled “assistant” in Alexa; too bad the speaker itself isn’t so great. Meanwhile, Sonos makes decent, web-connected speakers but without any voice control. You see where we’re going with this? [More]
Airbnb Hosts Having Difficulty Refinancing Homes
By 8.30.16
Until recently, home loans generally covered two types of properties: primary residences or investments. That was before services like Airbnb allowed anyone with an extra room to make a bit of extra money by renting it out for short periods of time. This blurred line between “my house” and “my investment” is causing trouble for some homeowners when they go to refinance their mortgages. [More]
Amazon Testing A 30-Hour Work Week For Some Employees
By 8.30.16
The dream of the four-day workweek is alive at Amazon, where the company is testing out a plan that has certain teams of workers on a part-time schedule. [More]
Want To Sell Big Name-Brand Products Through Amazon? There’s A Fee For That
By 8.29.16
It’s no secret that online marketplaces like Amazon have a problem with third-party sellers offering counterfeit copies of name-brand products. The company’s latest effort to cut off the stream of fakes involves charging a fee to sellers who want to include certain big-name brands in their stores. [More]
Amazon Angers Smaller Sellers With Suspensions
By 8.29.16
The pages of Amazon are full of third-party sellers using the e-tail giant as a storefront, but a number of small-scale sellers say there’s a growing rift between themselves and Amazon over accounts that the sellers claim are being suspended with little notice and few options for recourse. [More]
Pre-Cut Veggies Sold In Walmart, Publix, 6 Other Stores, Recalled Over Listeria Concerns
By 8.29.16
Picking up a package of pre-cut, pre-washed fresh vegetables at the grocery store can make preparing dinner (lunch or breakfast) a bit easier. Unless, of course, you could get sick from those convenient vegetables. Walmart, Publix, and six other retailers have recalled packages of pre-cut veggies over listeria contamination concerns. [More]
Amazon Wants To Show You Cars Online, But Won’t Actually Sell One To You
By 8.25.16
In yet another effort to strengthen its grip on e-commerce and infiltrate shoppers’ lives even more deeply, Amazon.com has just launched a new online car-browsing tool. [More]
As Sales Continue To Drop, Sears Borrows $300 Million From Its Own CEO
By 8.25.16
As more shoppers go online — or turn to retailers that don’t feel like they’ve just given up — same-store sales at Sears and its corporate kin Kmart have continued to sink, leading the once-great department store chain to borrow $300 million from the hedge fund owned by none other than Sears Holdings CEO Eddie Lampert. [More]
When Do Identical Products Have Two Different Prices At The Same Store? When They’re Sold At Target, Obviously
By 8.24.16
Target’s pricing and labeling incompetence is so legendary that we now use the term “Target Math” to describe a situation where any retailer baffles customers by, for example, advertising a “sale” that is more expensive than the everyday price, or where percentages are irrelevant, or when the economy of buying in bulk is turned on its ear. The latest fuzzy math from Target involves charging two different prices for identical items, including infant ibuprofen and acetaminophen. [More]
Where Did The Target Prescription Bottles Everyone Loves So Much Come From, Anyway?
By 8.24.16
We didn’t realize how much affection consumers had for Target’s ClearRX prescription bottling system until the bottles went away after CVS purchased Target’s pharmacies. Maybe customers themselves didn’t realize how attached they were to those bottles until they were consigned to memory, but with the CVS takeover of Target’s pharmacy business, they’re now gone. Why are people so attached to a prescription bottle, though? [More]
Sears Trying New “Fashion-Forward” In-Store Concept
By 8.24.16
Sears may be closing stores faster than we can keep up, but the once-great retailer is apparently not ready to throw up its hands and give up. The department store chain has embarked on yet another tactic it hopes will finally be able to drum up some sales, righting the sinking ship. The plan this time? Showcase foreign apparel brands with a store-within-a-store concept.
