With its focus on everyday low prices and savings galore, you might think couponers and bargain hunters would be flocking to Walmart. But a recent survey says that’s not necessarily true. It may seem counterintuitive, but big-box bargain hunters are apparently finding their deals not at low-priced Walmart, but at higher-priced Target. In its report “The Supercenter Grocery Shopper: U.S.[Read More…]
If you’re going shopping this weekend, and paying with a credit card – watch out. Beginning Sunday, stores can charge you extra for it. Under the terms of a settlement reached last year, stores will have the option of adding a surcharge for credit card payments – passing the cost that they already pay to the credit card companies, on[Read More…]
Target’s holiday-season price match policy is now its permanent policy. But while its announcement this morning emphasizes the price-match of online retailers, it also continues an intriguing part of its policy that could change the way that some savvy shoppers do their regular shopping at Target – the store is offering to price-match itself. In a news release today, Target[Read More…]
If selling cheap-chic isn’t working so well anymore, how about glamming up groceries? That’s looking to be Target’s new approach in the new year. Target is unveiling a new ad campaign that emphasizes its food offerings. In one commercial, a model clad in white holds a whisk and crushes an egg in her hand, as plumes of colorful smoke explode[Read More…]
Isn’t it nice of your local grocery store to offer free WiFi? That way, you can use your mobile device to email, go online – and have your every move tracked while you shop. Nice! It’s well known that one of the tradeoffs of having a store loyalty card is that your store knows what you’re buying. Plenty of shoppers[Read More…]
On this day before Thanksgiving, we offer you what you usually don’t get until the day after Thanksgiving: leftovers! Here are some Thanksgiving tidbits to enjoy before the big day: Target’s Turkey is Tops “We aren’t in the business of high-low pricing or gimmicks,” a Walmart executive sniffed, in reaction to competitors’ deals on Thanksgiving staples. Too bad, because Target[Read More…]
Price matching is the hot thing this season. But for all the attention given to Target‘s expanded holiday price match policy, the offer is so limited and cumbersome that even Target admits it expects few people to use it. Target made a splash last month, when it announced it would match select online retailers’ prices. It’s part of an effort[Read More…]
It’s not Walmart. It’s not even Aldi. The new grocery low-price leader is – would you believe – Dollar General? That’s not what Walmart would have you believe. The company trumpeted its price leadership at an investors conference last week, and the Wall Street Journal today headlined a Deutsche Bank price-comparison study that crowned Walmart the cheapest option. But while[Read More…]
Sure, you like your local grocery store, but have you “liked” them? A roundup of the most and least popular grocery retailers on social media sites (see the full list below) can yield some interesting insights, though it also shows that “likes” aren’t necessarily everything. Florida-based Publix was recently criticized (in “Frozen & Refrigerated Buyer” magazine) for being “technology-challenged”: “Yes,[Read More…]
If Walmart and Target can invade supermarkets’ territory by offering groceries, then Kroger is saying, right back atcha. The country’s largest traditional grocery chain is experimenting with offering shoes and clothes alongside its meat and produce. The test is taking place at a Kroger Marketplace store in Mansfield, Ohio. The Marketplace concept debuted in Columbus in 2004, with a 109,000-square-foot[Read More…]
