Browsing: retail

News
Clean up in aisle five: the evolving world of retail
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Nielsen’s latest figures on online shopping show more Kiwis are clicking to buy. And from holographic retail assistants to interactive zombie gaming to mobile apps that allow users to purchase items via QR codes, retailers and marketers are donning their digital thinking caps to find the most creative ways to lure and retain customer attention in the colliding world of bricks, mortar and online retailing. Deirdre Robert shops on.

News
Sales of the century (and a half): Briscoes clocks up 150, offers massive red hot blue ribbon savings
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The Briscoes lady—AKA Tammy Wells—has been invading New Zealand’s living rooms and mailboxes for almost a quarter of a century and, after thousands of ads about massive savings and red hot sales, the ‘You’ll never by better’ slogan has been well and truly etched into the nation’s consciousness. And this week the Kiwi retailer marked a significant milestone as it celebrated 150 years of business. PLUS: some classic old ads.

Awards
Selling well: Ideaworks shares the retail love with Bird and Butler breakfast
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It’s pretty tough out there in retail at the moment, with the internet affecting bricks and mortar and economic malaise affecting everyone. But there are plenty of savvy retailers making it work and a couple of international retail gurus—Jon Bird, IdeaWorks’ chief executive based in Sydney, and UK retail expert Martin Butler—are visiting next week to share some of their secrets.

Opinion
Insights from the shop floor
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Shopper marketing is very du jour at the moment. And, given the importance of the last stages of the purchase cycle, rightly so. But James Hurman thinks it works better when the strategic thinking is done inside the customer experience.

News
Ford and JWT turn the retail tables with self-reflexive sale campaign
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Negative commentary tends to flow freely in this industry and typically anonymous commentors are pretty quick to put the boot in on the comment wall if they don’t like something—or have an axe to grind. Unfortunately, praise for good work is always less forthcoming, but if a story about a new campaign is well-read and only has a few comments, it generally means readers are digging it. That seems to be the case for JWT’s just-released reality advertising campaign for PlaceMakers and while the agency rubs its hands with glee about that one, it has also recently sent another nice piece of work for Ford into the wild: a retail campaign that pokes fun at retail campaigns.

Opinion
Why are the malls not empty yet?
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Apparently retail is dead. Online shopping is destroying it and, if you believe the hype,all the malls will soon be full of tumble-weeds. Due to constantly improving and sophisticated e-commerce, e-tailers like Amazon, or little online ‘stores’ set up and run through TradeMe it would seem that consumers have very little incentive to shop at brick and mortar stores any more. The social aspects of shopping are now being attacked by start-ups like Svpply. And group buying and the tipping point theory are still there as well. So why are the malls are not empty yet?

News
Lasoo spreads the pre-shopping love even further with new catalogue viewing platforms
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The printing presses may be slowing down across the board, but online channels are starting to take up some of that slack. And, in an effort to capitalise on the mobile and online momentum and make it easier for retailers to get their wares in front of modern shoppers, Reachmedia has released the next version of its catalogue viewing platform, which effectively takes catalogues, resizes them and publishes them in a Facebook environment and on mobile apps. 

News
Picking growth: Hotfoot gets its hands dirty for new Go Gardening campaign
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There’s been a bit of green-fingered, grow-your-own food renaissance around the developed world in recent years, to the point where the approximately $600 million New Zealand gardening market is one of the few retail sectors currently moving in the right direction. To help those numbers keep growing, Hotfoot and Tangible Media have chucked a bit of fertiliser on the Nurserymen and Gardeners Industry Association and launched a one-year long Go Gardening campaign that aims to get more Kiwis in the garden.

News
Fairfax Media Supreme and Morton Estates Retail Awards: Progressive Enterprises
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In the extremely competitive grocery game, market share is king. And a minor change equates to millions of dollars in gained or lost revenue. Progressive Enterprises, which operates 158 Countdown, Foodtown and Woolworths supermarkets around the country, had been losing share to its main rival Foodstuffs since 2007. So something had to be done. And to do it, it had to take some big risks and break an age old grocery paradigm. 

News
Digital dimes eat into analog dollars as online shopping comes of age
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The attraction of lower prices, convenience and broader product ranges is swelling the ranks of Kiwi consumers choosing to shop online, both locally and on international websites. And, according to a report on the Australian and New Zealand online shopping market published by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Frost & Sullivan, almost half of the New Zealand population will do just that in 2011, with each shopper spending an average of almost $1,400. 

Opinion
Smart phones, smart apps, smarter people: Greg Radford on the rise of the digitally connected shopper
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If there is one ‘new wave’ trend engaging retailers and businesses at the moment, it’s the burgeoning pool of knowledge, insight and digital tools that shoppers are now drawing on to shop smarter and save more. And while it’s often claimed New Zealand is 12 to 18 months behind global trends, it was staggering to learn at the recent eTail Conference in Palm Springs that retailers in the USA have more like a three to five year lead on their Kiwi counterparts.

Opinion
Seeing signs: a how-to guide to ‘place-based media’
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It’s about time we faced up to reality. We have a burgeoning digital signage industry in Australia and New Zealand that’s set to become part of a $2 billion global industry, but there are a great many confused brands and retailers. Recent Trans-Tasman research conducted by n.gage has uncovered 71 percent of brands and retailers are willing to look at digital signage models if they can understand the return on investment. However, a staggering 86 percent felt trans Tasman digital signage companies, on the whole, were not addressing digital signage from a holistic business viewpoint. So just how do we help these brands and retailers assess the role of digital signage at retail?

Awards
Conference speakers to weave magic, unlock secrets of retail
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The retail sector’s troubles over the past few years have been well-documented, but there’s one thing the New Zealand Retailers Association is particularly excited about: its National Conference, which will feature two distinguished international keynote speakers, a who’s who of local retail boffins and even the team from Rugby World Cup 2011.

News
Survey shows it’s the money, not the thought, that counts
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As we all know, it’s the thought that counts. But that really doesn’t matter at all if it’s a crap thought. As such, the amount of cash you splash is what counts in these consumerist days. And Kiwis’ Christmas shopping habits have been unwrapped (geddit?) in a new survey that has discovered stuff you probably already knew.

Opinion
Stop shouting, start listening
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With less than a month until Christmas the festive retail market could best be described as challenging. The latest consumer confidence survey by ANZ – Roy Morgan suggests most consumers remain cautious about their spending plans this festive season. And, despite personal tax cuts, 38 percent of those surveyed in November said they were worse off financially than a year ago. So now, more than ever, it is essential that our advertising and marketing is effective.

News
Fly Buys: get your points without pants
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With Kiwi consumers increasingly heading online to do their buying, Loyalty New Zealand has added another five e-tailers to its Fly Buys e-stores list, which brings the total to 23 after the service was launched late last year. 

News
Telcos, energy and retail sectors fork out for more TV time
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The third quarter ad revenue results for the major television broadcasters were released not long ago and showed things were slowly moving back to the level of the glory days. At the time, we couldn’t get hold of New Zealand Television Broadcaster’s Council chief exec Rick Friesen, but he called back and, while he wasn’t able to discuss results of specific broadcasters, he was able to shed some light on a few interesting sectoral trends.

Not Rick Friesen

News
Top Shops share retail war stories as Prenzel takes Auckland honours
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How does $15,000 of free advertising from the New Zealand Herald and Easy Mix 98.2 sound? Pretty good if you’re the Prenzel Shop in Botany, which snatched the winners loot after beating out 121 other finalists at the 2010 TOP SHOP Retail Excellence Awards. The Prenzel Shop, which retails New Zealand made foods and liqueurs, was described by the judges as “a store that compels you to buy things you never dreamed you needed”.

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