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Retailers Moving
Christmas A Little Closer
by Sarah
Mahoney, Wednesday, August 11,
2010, 3:29
PM
Call it the
year of the Creeping Christmas: Retailers --
especially those with a major online presence --
are pushing holiday sales messages earlier this
year, according to the just-released annual
holiday benchmark report from Experian Marketing
Services.
Marketers are expected to
advertise Black Friday sales sooner, and extend
them over greater time periods, Bill Tancer,
Experian's general manager of global research,
tells Marketing Daily . "Timing is going to be
much more important, given the economy," he
says. "Knowing when consumers begin thinking
about holiday purchases can provide marketers
with a big advantage over the competition."
Target is pushing that concept to
the extreme, and launched a "Black Friday in
July" sale on its Web site last month. While
that might seem small -- one chain, after all,
hardly counts as a trend -- Tancer says it did
send ripples of shopping interest through the
online world. "During the same period last year,
there were only two search terms used often
enough to be measurable -- 'Black Friday' and
'Black Friday 2009.'
"But this year, there were not
only more searches, but under many more terms.
'Black Friday' and 'Black Friday 2010' came in
first and second, but 'Black Friday in July'
came in fourth, and even though Walmart wasn't
doing a Black Friday event, its name came up in
searches more often than Target's." Experian
expects intense Web searching under "Black
Friday" to begin early in September this
year.
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Equipment
Maintenance
Do keep plenty of
disk space available on your C: drive free for
Windows to use. If you do not have
enough free space you will choke Windows and it
will start dumping data to your hard drive, or
it will just get really, really, slow. Use the
ADD/Delete tool in the Windows Control Panel to
delete unneeded programs from your
drive. |
The Price Isn't Right
Thanks to the Internet, companies
have lost control of their pricing power. Here's
how they can get it
back.
By DETLEF SCHODER And
ALEX TALALAYEVSKY
Everyone knows
that companies have rock-bottom prices they're
willing to offer in emergencies. Think goods and
services whose value is about to expire: hotel
dates, plane tickets, last season's fashions,
packaged food.
But until recently, not many
people knew what those prices were. Keeping them
under wraps is a key part of how companies
maintain pricing power.
Well, the
secret is out. Now, thanks to the Internet,
consumers are able to figure out those prices.
And that is creating huge headaches for the
companies.
Online shoppers today aren't
just buyers; they're also product reviewers,
technical consultants and scouts for legions of
fellow shoppers hunting for bargains. Many use
Web sites where links are posted for online
coupons and cash-back offers-deals that some
companies didn't intend to circulate so widely.
Others go to sites where people discuss how to
find the lowest bids acceptable on
travel-service auction sites. Even shoppers for
big-ticket items like cars get an edge from
sites that reveal prices paid for new and used
cars.
Further assisted by
search engines and so-called shopping bots that
find the lowest prices for any number of
products, shoppers today have unprecedented
power to buy products at the sellers' rock
bottom. But if they come to expect such prices
all the time, companies could see their
long-term pricing power erode and profits
slashed.
Here are eight tactics companies
can use to limit the ability of bargain hunters
to find their deepest discounts and lowest
acceptable prices.
Continue
Reading: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870410720457446933
1141323104.html?mod=dist_smartbrief
Source: The
Wall Street Journal
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Tim Richmann
Director
of Financial Services
Tim is the newest
member of Advanced Retail Management Systems
team. Tim brings over twenty-five years of
accounting, Controller and CFO experience to
ARMS. Prior to joining ARMS, Tim worked in
various industries including concrete, nuclear
pharmaceuticals, transportation, and medical
IME. Tim is also an adjunct faculty member for
Metro State College at Denver teaching
Managerial Finance.
Tim transplanted from
Omaha after completing his bachelors in business
administration from the University of Nebraska
and subsequently obtained his MBA from Webster
University in 2002. Tim is married and has one
step-daughter. He enjoys woodworking, golf, fly
fishing and all that Colorado
offers.
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On a Tight Budget? How to Land a
Client
By EMILY MALTBY
It's a common
conundrum for business owners when sales aren't
pouring in.
To
get more customers, you need to market and
advertise. But when cash is sparse, it's tough
to allocate dollars toward promotional efforts,
especially when there's no guarantee of a
return.
Amid the economic downturn,
nearly half of business owners say they're
straining to find efficient or innovative ways
to market their products or services, according
to a March survey of 734 entrepreneurs by
American Express OPEN, the company's
small-business division.
Active Healthcare
Lisa Feierstein has
targeted specific customers to use her firm's
respiratory products by offering free screening
and education sessions. Here, she runs a sleep
apnea support group conducted last
fall.
For many, the outlay of cash is simply too
risky. "It's a Catch-22. When business is slow,
entrepreneurs don't have as much money [but] one
of the things you need is more advertising,"
says Greg Gould, director of the Maine Small
Business Development Center in Portland. "You
should be spending more in a slow economy, not
less."
To minimize the potential drain on
the budget, some business owners are trying
creative or highly targeted means of reaching
potential clients, Mr. Gould says. (Please read
how numerous entrepreneurs are trying to land
clients in the gallery at bottom.)
For
example, Mr. Gould is seeing more owners
aggressively aiming to reach a specific
demographic. A small company selling baby toys,
for instance, might comb wedding announcements
and send catalogues or brochures to recently
married couples, rather than placing a generic
ad in a newspaper or a magazine. Otherwise, "you
might be paying to reach people you may not want
to reach," he says.
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looking for a Point of Sale system about
Advanced Retail Management Systems. When
you refer a retailer to us that participates in
a 1 hour web presentation for Retail Pro,
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Retailers use Web tools aimed at
younger shoppers
by
Max
Jarman
Shoppers and retailers
are turning to cellphones, "haul videos,"
virtual dressing rooms and social-networking
sites such as Facebook and Twitter to make the
most out of this year's back-to-school shopping
season.
With billions of dollars at
stake, retailers are going after back-to-school
shoppers where they are spending an increasing
amount of time - on their cellphones and on
Facebook, MySpace and Twitter social-network
sites.
They are launching
applications, or "apps," for smartphones,
running promotions and contests on Facebook,
setting up sites where customers can show off
their purchases online or superimpose their
clothes on a customer sitting before a webcam.
Shoppers are relishing
the novel ways to shop and the instant tips they
get about special promotions and deals.
"It's the best way to
reach teens," Staples Inc. spokeswoman Karen
Pevenstein said of the new kit of marketing
tools being embraced by retailers.
Young shoppers are
expected to spend more than $200 billion of
their own and their parents' money this year,
making them one of retailers' most sought-after
demographic
groups.
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