Har har, have you heard about the new “man aisle” that a New York City grocery store has set up? If you haven’t, you can read about it here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here. In other words, the story is everywhere today, and the Westside Market couldn’t[Read More…]
When we last left off, the nation’s number-one retailer had not weighed in on the proposed swipe-fee settlement. Now it has. In a statement released Tuesday, Walmart said it was “disappointed” in the settlement, because it would not “prohibit credit card networks from continually increasing hidden swipe fees, which already cost consumers tens of billions of dollars each year… We[Read More…]
It could cost you to use a credit card at Kroger soon. But Target says, not in its stores. Target has announced its opposition to this month’s multi-billion dollar settlement between retailers and credit card companies, which would allow retailers to pass on credit card “swipe fees” to their customers. Previously, retailers have had to cover the cost themselves, in[Read More…]
First, it was Sudafed. Then powered baby formula. Then, bizarrely, Tide detergent. Now you can add aluminum foil to the items that may only be available behind the counter at your local store. Really. Fox 10 News in Phoenix reports that some local CVS stores are pulling aluminum foil off their shelves and making them available only by request. Signs[Read More…]
If you’ve ever found yourself wandering the aisles of a store, looking for someone – anyone – who works there and can tell you where to find what you’re looking for, your problem is solved – there’s an app for that. “Mobile retail navigation service” aisle411 has announced that it’s completed mapping all 7,907 Walgreens drug stores in the United[Read More…]
Kroger is telling us not to worry – they’re not going to start charging credit card customers more. They just won’t charge them less. The country’s biggest grocery chain is publicly mulling how to respond to last week’s multibillion-dollar settlement in a case pitting retailers against credit card companies. Visa and MasterCard were accused of price-fixing, in setting the fees[Read More…]
As Walmart continues to grab a greater share of the grocery market, it’s also casting a laserlike focus on a growing number of individual competitors, in carefully-selected cities across the country. But increasingly, devotees of those competitors are saying that all is not as it seems. Walmart introduced its first “Walmart Challenge” ad campaign in Charlotte, North Carolina back in[Read More…]
Imagine a scenario in which grocery prices aren’t marked on the shelves, your cashier has to closely examine every single product you buy, and none of your coupons will scan. Sound like a nightmare? Actually, it’s the way things were just 40 years ago. The Cincinnati Enquirer points out that it was July 1972 when a Kroger supermarket in town[Read More…]
Are you still buying your groceries at a grocery store? How quaint! Supermarkets are poised to lose their position as America’s preferred grocery-shopping destination. And it’s not only big-box discounters like Walmart and Target that are taking their business. The Wall Street Journal reports that supermarkets’ share of U.S. grocery sales fell to 51% last year. And Forbes cites a[Read More…]
Remember Webvan? Having groceries delivered to your door was going to be the next big thing, during the dot-com boom a decade ago. It didn’t quite work out that way. Southeastern supermarket chain Publix made its own effort to get into the home-delivery game in 2001, with PublixDirect. That effort went bust two years later. Publix tried e-commerce again in[Read More…]
