Monday, October 22, 2012
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Benefits of Category Management
CATEGORY MANAGEMENT has benefited the consumer through improved assortment, lower prices, reduced out of stocks and ease of shopping. This is made possible by the collaboration between retailers and suppliers to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of demand/supply chain management.
The overall business process flows through seven steps: category definition, role, assessment, strategy, tactics, plan implementation and review. While the overall process is similar across different retail formats, it requires adaptation for different merchandise characteristics and data availability.
Category Management has been a topic of growing importance to the consumer products industry ever since point-of-sale (P.O.S) scanning allowed an accurate assessment of product movement. Starting with shelf space allocation in line with product movement, category management has evolved to include a variety of concepts for managing the demand chain.
The term describes an emerging organizational design for distributors. The distributors buying and merchandising functions are integrated through teams responsible for developing category business plans both internally (procurement, merchandising and operations) and with suppliers. These plans are aimed at improving the overall performance of the category.
The process also describes the reorganization of the suppliers customer interface and internal profit centers. It represents organizing around customers and categories instead of geographers and brands.
And most importantly, Category Management allows distributors and suppliers to partner while creating and managing consumer-focused plans to manage the entire demand chain.
Monday, August 6, 2012
Walmart Neighborhood Market in Jacksonville
Walmart Neighborhood Market planned at San Pablo Food Lion
It is the retailer’s third Duval County site plan for a Neighborhood Market in a closed Food Lion.
Plans show a 49,433-square-foot Walmart Neighborhood Market at 1650 San Pablo Road S. The engineer is CPH Engineers.
As the Daily Record previously reported, City reviewers also have been looking over preliminary plans for Walmart Neighborhood Markets in Arlington at 8011 Merrill Road and in Mandarin at 10550 Old St. Augustine Road.
Early this year, Food Lion closed its Florida stores. There were 20 in Northeast Florida, including a dozen in Duval County.
Sources have said Wal-Mart plans five to nine Neighborhood Markets in Northeast Florida. The stores are typically 42,000 square feet in size, a quarter of the size of the average 185,000-square-foot Supercenter, according to Wal-Mart.
Developers plan more Dollar General and Family Dollar stores, too.
MVG Development of Ponte Vedra Beach filed preliminary construction plans for a Dollar General at 13857 N. Main St., near Duval Station Road. The 9,026-square-foot store is planned on 3.23 acres.
MVG also is working on a Dollar General at 8913 Normandy Blvd. The 9,100-square-foot store sits on 2.57 acres.
Meanwhile, developer Twin Rivers Capital LLC of Charleston, S.C., filed for review of a Family Dollar on 2.51 acres at 4302 Moncrief Road. The 8,320-square-foot store carries a construction cost of $350,000.
As the Daily Record reported Tuesday, discount grocers are expanding throughout Jacksonville, with Save-A-Lot expected to open in two former Food Lion stores in North and West Jacksonville, as well as one in St. Augustine.
Save-A-Lot, a subsidiary of grocery giant Supervalu Inc., joined Walmart Neighborhood Markets, Dollar General and Family Dollar, among others, in expanding in Northeast Florida.
Save-A-Lot has nine Northeast Florida stores, including seven in Duval County, according to www.save-a-lot.com. Save-A-Lot stores average 15,000 square feet in size, according to the company.
In addition to the Moncrief Road location, Family Dollar, already with 43 stores in Duval County, plans stores at the current site of Warren Motors at 233 E. State St. and in Arlington at 1612 St. Johns Bluff Road N. Warren Motors intends to move to the Brentwood area.
Dollar General operates 25 stores in Duval County and, in addition to the Normandy Boulevard and Main Street locations, plans another at 7700 Merrill Road.
Carol Dole, associate professor at the Jacksonville University Davis College of Business, told the Daily Record this week that the popularity of the stores was easy to identify.
“Very briefly, it’s the economy. They’re addressing that segment of the labor force that is being hit harder with unemployment,” Dole said.
kmathis@baileypub.com
@MathisKb
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
PayPal Acquires card.io
PayPal Acquires card.io
I’m excited to announce that PayPal has acquired card.io, a San Francisco-based company that provides technology for developers to capture credit card information by using the camera on a smartphone.
We first met with the team at card.io when we were working on integrating their technology into the PayPal Here mobile app. While working with them, we were simply blown away by the creativity and drive of their employees. They are a passionate and independent team that likes solving large, complex problems and we wanted them to join our team. Great people make great products and great products are what make companies great. The employees at card.io will be joining the PayPal global product team in San Jose to help us create new experiences to make it even easier for consumers and merchants to use the PayPal digital wallet. The current card.io technology will remain available to developers for use in their own applications.
The card.io team is joining PayPal for the same reasons that the Zong team was excited tojoin PayPal last year - to get the opportunity to work on projects that will accelerate innovation at a scale that’s just not possible at a startup.
We can’t wait to get them involved in helping us change the future of shopping and payments.
–Hill Ferguson, Vice President of Global Product, PayPal
Monday, July 30, 2012
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Digital Receipts with NFC Technology
NFC, (Near Field Communication) technology is making its mark in a big way in the point-of-sale industry, particularly when it comes to payments. But Proximiant, a Silicon Valley startup, recently launched a new smartphone app utilizing NFC that focuses on digital receipts rather than payments, building on the concept of digital receipt solutions.
The basis behind NFC is that it allows the users, both the retailer and the consumer, to complete transactions by transmitting secure digital content between a POS system and a smartphone without the need to transfer private information between the two parties. Until now, though, the retailer still had to obtain the consumer’s personal information to transfer digital receipts if they were to go paperless.
With Proximiant’s “tap-and-go” digital receipt solution, consumers simply touch their smartphone to the transceiver connected to the POS system and instantly receive an itemized receipt of their purchase, regardless of type of payment. These digital receipts are then stored for convenient tracking of purchases. Other benefits to the consumer include:
two minutes. Plus, they support numerous marketing efforts and promotions without requiring customers to sign up for anything, enabling retailers to convert casual customers to loyal customers without IT or overhead. Furthermore, retailers can integrate loyalty programs and coupons which can be automatically sent to consumers, based on their location and past purchases.
There are more mobile receipt solution apps available to consumers to organize and store receipts digitally by scanning paper receipts, such as Lemon (click to read article), Receipt Wallet, and Mobile Receipt for iPhone, which all invite consumers to take advantage of a variety of benefits such as:
As for the negative side of this tap-and-go mobile receipt solution, Proximiant has currently only integrated the system with a dozen Bay Area retailers as a test run, although they expect to be in multiple metropolitan areas by spring of 2012. Furthermore, NFC-enabled phones are not widely available at this time. But, until they become more prevalent, Proximia has come up with a bridge solution which incorporates tags into the equation. Retailers can offer consumers without NFC-enabled phones tags that can be carried in a wallet or hooked to a key chain which permit consumers to take advantage of the same tap-and-go capability.
“The product is a win-win for both retailers and consumers,” said Proximiant co-founder and CEO Fang Cheng. “Proximiant is the most efficient and secure way for retailers to extend their existing point of sale to an array of mobile loyalty and marketing programs without any IT overhead or customer signup process. For consumers, it makes shopping much more enjoyable and less of a hassle. The device saves companies an overhead investment and it saves customers from the time-consuming and expensive signup process.”
The basis behind NFC is that it allows the users, both the retailer and the consumer, to complete transactions by transmitting secure digital content between a POS system and a smartphone without the need to transfer private information between the two parties. Until now, though, the retailer still had to obtain the consumer’s personal information to transfer digital receipts if they were to go paperless.
With Proximiant’s “tap-and-go” digital receipt solution, consumers simply touch their smartphone to the transceiver connected to the POS system and instantly receive an itemized receipt of their purchase, regardless of type of payment. These digital receipts are then stored for convenient tracking of purchases. Other benefits to the consumer include:
- Loyalty programs
- Store coupons (redeemed right from your phone)
- Privacy
- Security
- Organization (no more lost receipts!)
- Refunds and exchanges
- Record keeping
- Deal reminders based on time or location
- Social networking
- Tax solutions
- A greener planet
two minutes. Plus, they support numerous marketing efforts and promotions without requiring customers to sign up for anything, enabling retailers to convert casual customers to loyal customers without IT or overhead. Furthermore, retailers can integrate loyalty programs and coupons which can be automatically sent to consumers, based on their location and past purchases.There are more mobile receipt solution apps available to consumers to organize and store receipts digitally by scanning paper receipts, such as Lemon (click to read article), Receipt Wallet, and Mobile Receipt for iPhone, which all invite consumers to take advantage of a variety of benefits such as:
- Stored images
- Recorded data about the receipt
- Spending reports
- Record keeping
As for the negative side of this tap-and-go mobile receipt solution, Proximiant has currently only integrated the system with a dozen Bay Area retailers as a test run, although they expect to be in multiple metropolitan areas by spring of 2012. Furthermore, NFC-enabled phones are not widely available at this time. But, until they become more prevalent, Proximia has come up with a bridge solution which incorporates tags into the equation. Retailers can offer consumers without NFC-enabled phones tags that can be carried in a wallet or hooked to a key chain which permit consumers to take advantage of the same tap-and-go capability.
“The product is a win-win for both retailers and consumers,” said Proximiant co-founder and CEO Fang Cheng. “Proximiant is the most efficient and secure way for retailers to extend their existing point of sale to an array of mobile loyalty and marketing programs without any IT overhead or customer signup process. For consumers, it makes shopping much more enjoyable and less of a hassle. The device saves companies an overhead investment and it saves customers from the time-consuming and expensive signup process.”
Friday, January 27, 2012
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