The Shelf Edge

This week, at its annual conference in Dallas, the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) presented the latest Booz & Co. study on the state of the food retail industry. The results are just what you might expect: a lot like last year, only less interesting. Four “trends” were outlined, although I don’t kno

Food retailers don’t like change. That’s not a revelation for anyone who knows this industry. Many of the people in high places running the food industry have been doing it their entire lives. Maybe they started in high school, or it’s a family thing, but they’ve been doing this for many years, and

Name: Quick Response (QR) Code Born: 1996 – Japan Died: 2011 – U.S. Cause of Death: Gross Abuse and Neglect The QR code, that technological wonder that marketing folks have been all agog over, is officially dead. Let’s give it a decent burial, and move on.  QR codes first appeared on the scene a cou

There was a fascinating article in the New York Times last week entitled “How Companies Learn Your Secerets” that talks in part about Target and its ability to find out all sorts of things that about its shoppers based on shopping behavior. The example given about sending baby-related coupons to a h

Super Bowl XLVI is now in the history books. My first thought is that when they came up with using Roman numerals for the games way back when, no one really expected it to go this far. But that’s a discussion for another day. Anyway, the bigger news is—of course—the commercials. The Super Bowl has [

Once again, the holidays are just a memory. Retailers are now taking stock of the recent season, and either counting their money or licking their wounds. Most of the news coverage in December centered on the growth of mobile and online shopping, and how dollars are shifting in that direction. On the

It doesn’t seem like all that many years ago when Amazon.com was touting itself as the “world’s biggest bookstore.” I remember listening to its radio ads in the morning during my commute; who would’ve guessed then that it would come so far as to be a threat to brick and mortar retail, including even

The United States Postal Service is nothing if not consistent. Earlier this month it posted (pardon the pun) a $5.1 billion (with a b) loss for fiscal 2011, and some estimates show that nearly tripling to over $14 billion for 2012. The response? A new television spot touting the safety of mail over

Yesterday The New York Times ran an article about Google’s push to get businesses to mobilize their websites. “The future is in your hand,” the campaign urges. “Mobilize your site and move your business forward.” Google sees the need for mobile websites, which makes a lot of sense. What doesn’t make

The U.S. Census Bureau has targeted Oct. 31, 2011, as the day the world’s population will reach 7 billion people. It’s only been 50 years since the population was “just” at 3 billion. Obviously those are estimates, but you get the point—that’s a lot of babies. When I was a kid, the word “billion” wa