Year: 2016

Shoptalk 2016: It’s All An Experience

Posted on | by Mariana Fischbach

Shoptalk

Last week the Ketner Group team attended the inaugural Shoptalk conference at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. The much-anticipated conference lived up to its promise, bringing top industry leaders together to discuss the technology disruption currently turning the industry on its head.

Shoptalk offered a three-day jam-packed agenda that in true Vegas fashion ran well into the late hours of the night, bringing with it great networking opportunities, organic thought leadership conversations and even a stellar performance by Wyclef Jean at the conference’s Industry Night.

This year’s sessions also brought a few resonating themes and posed several questions about where the industry will find itself in the next few years. It’s no surprise that the wave of technologies available to retailers today has them scrambling for a roadmap of the perfect combination needed to deliver the greatest customer experience possible.

Both vendors and retailers throughout the show agreed that the customer experience is paramount. No matter if your organization is omnichannel, strictly digital or only brick-and-mortar, at the end of the day shopping is not about channels, it’s an experience, and the technology that you implement throughout should create a memorable experience.

Here are the top interesting takeaways we gathered from industry leaders at this year’s Shoptalk:

  • Buying a product is an experience; all touch points must intersect in order to create this experience.
  • Retailers are now living in an all-channel universe; the Internet will not destroy physical stores, it will just grow to be a part of every transaction.
  • The customer has never been more in charge.
  • What is happening to retailers right now in terms of adopting in-store technology and becoming omnichannel should be considered an evolution vs. a revolution.
  • Technology will not dehumanize the physical store experience—it will enhance it.
  • The principles of retailing are still there, but retailers need to figure out the balance between old and new.
  • Be agile – everything that touches a retailer’s organization touches the consumer.
  • Retail complexity breeds a different opportunity, people will still need to understand what humans want and this will lead to new opportunities to bring together data, artificial intelligence and technology to meet the customer’s needs.
  • Think of artificial intelligence as amplified intelligence for retailing.

All in all, the conversations at Shoptalk demonstrate that while the industry is continuing to adopt technology and change, this is only the beginning. Can’t wait to see what innovative topics Shoptalk brings to the table in 2017!

The Wrong Kind of SXSW Party: Getting Noticed the Right Way at SXSW

Posted on | by Adrienne Newcomb

As we have all heard a thousand times, first impressions are critical. They can make or break you, and whether good or bad, a first impression often becomes a lasting one that is hard to run or hide from.

During the first Saturday of SXSW, my coworker and I found ourselves with some time to kill and wandered the street to explore a few unofficial SXSW activities. Along the way, we came across one event poster that stopped us dead in our tracks.

A photo of Bill Cosby with the caption, “Wanna Party?” was taped to a saran-wrapped telephone pole on the corner of 6th and Congress. We, along with other passersby, were appalled, but I graciously held the corner of the poster down so my colleague could send a quick Snapchat to his girlfriend so she could share in our dismay.

The poster got our attention, that’s for sure, but was it a successful PR and marketing strategy? Did I want to go to the party? Do I remember what next big startup was throwing that can’t-miss party? Certainly not. If anything, if I’d bothered to remember the name of the company, I’d probably intentionally avoid doing business with them or buying their product out of the fear of being roofied while interacting with them.

As anyone who has attended or followed SXSW over the past several years knows, it has become a hot spot to launch a start up or make a big announcement. But it can be hard to break through the noise and captivate tens of thousands of individuals crawling around a ten-block radius of downtown Austin. However, a number of companies and products managed to be heard and caught the attention of festivalgoers and media—in the right way.

Piñatagrams
Unlike the failed Bill Cosby campaign,Piñatagrams’ “Lost Piñata” flyers managed to get positive attention from many at SXSW and gained quite a few mentions on Twitter. Flyers for the missing piñata were found on every street corner with tear off contact info, and the tiny piñatas were spotted around town with their new owners. According to Piñatagrams website, for $19.99, the company offers an alternative to a boring old card, sending an unwrapped piñata filled with a personalized message and candy to the recipient.

The fate of Piñatagrams as a company, and the tiny piñatas when they arrive via U.S. Mail, has yet to be determined, but the startup successfully captured the attention of SXSW without offending the female attendees.

Photo courtesy of Piñatagrams
Photo courtesy of Piñatagrams

Mr. Robot
The buzz of this marketing scheme started well before SXSW proper and it certainly paid off. But then again, it’s hard to miss a 100-foot ferris wheel in the midst of dozens of high rises. The Mr. Robot Ferris wheel attracted the usual SXSW crowds but families flocked downtown to get a free view of the Austin skyline from atop the 10-story Coney Island-inspired ride.

The line were wrapped around the block but Mr. Robot and USA Network will have to wait and compare the pre- and post-SXSW Nielson ratings to truly measure the effectiveness of this immersive Mr. Robot experience.

Vivarin
By day five of SXSW Interactive, I, like most attendees, was dragging and needed to make it two more sessions and a networking event before I could call it quits. But have no fear, Vivarin was passing out “FOMO Relief.” Two hundred milligrams of pure caffeine will surely do the trick. Maybe not, but the sentiment is there.

Vivarin (nothing more than a fancy brand name of caffeine pills) definitely knows their audience, and their street team made sure to get their product in the right hands, AND at the right time. 

And Everyone Still Loves the Mophie Dogs
Mophie employed the “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” methodology and brought back their 2015 SXSW campaign. The company once again partnered with the St. Bernard Rescue Foundation and festivalgoers took a break, charged their phone and petted a dog in need.

SXSW 2016 may be over, and you may have missed the boat on making a big splash, but it’s never too early to start planning for 2017. As you’re brainstorming the next big SXSW publicity campaign, ask yourself, “How can I make attendees remember my brand and my product for the right reasons?”

How to Find a PR Internship

Posted on | by Ketner Group

This blog was written by our intern, Cambria Sawyer.

That whole “chicken or the egg” question may be archaic, but it’s more relevant than you think.

Walking into your freshman year at a university and landing that first internship is not particularly high in the priorities list – but it should be. When it’s all you can do to find time to feed yourself in between classes, class projects and research papers, how can something that seems so far away be so immediately important?

The thing is, when it comes to internship interviews, you need some experience to prove you’re up for the job, which is kind of hard to do, considering you’ve never worked anywhere before. Classic chicken or the egg.

But the puzzle can be solved, and here’s how:

Experience
Get involved early. This is how to get over the “lack of experience” hump.

First things first, join a club. This is why starting early is such a big deal, because it takes a while to absorb enough information from that membership to be worthwhile. For public relations students, joining the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) is an excellent starting point. As a member, you will have the opportunity to participate in third-party mentorship programs, volunteer activities, networking events and PR agency tours. In other words, the good stuff.

The organization doesn’t have to revolve around PR either to be meaningful, but PR is always relevant to any group wanting to stay afloat. Run for an officer position that handles communications, PR or social media for a club. Any way you can get your hands on some real-life application of the things you’re learning in class will make you a stronger candidate.

Resume
You can be the most qualified person they interview and still not get the job. How? The way you present yourself can make or break you, and it starts with the first impression you make, your resume.

First, make sure it’s one page. It shows that you can pinpoint what is important and convey it concisely, and in reality, it’s just easier to read.

Image courtesy of Flikr
Image courtesy of Flikr

Second, make it your own. No need to glue sequins on it or anything, but find a way to personalize it in a way that reflects who you are and helps you stand out, but is still professional.

Third, do not send it off as a Word doc. While converting it to a PDF shows a heightened level of professionalism, it also safeguards the formatting of your resume. It may look fabulous to you on your Mac computer, but your interviewer is seeing awkward spacing and weird margins on their PC.

Interview
There is a reason people interview candidates instead of just look at a resume; they want to see what you’re like.

Here are three steps to ace the interview:

  1. Research. Make sure you become familiar with the company and the interviewer, if you know who it is. If they specialize in something, look into that industry a bit. Read up on the clients they work for and what kind of work they do for them. Check out the interviewer’s LinkedIn page to understand their background and what they do at the company. Your choice to research correlates with the amount of investment and ingenuity you will bring to the job – something an employer definitely wants to see.

    Photo courtesy of Pixabay
    Photo courtesy of Pixabay
  1. Ask Questions. This one is pretty straightforward. Actually have some questions in mind when they ask the standard, “do you have any questions for me?” This shows that you’re engaged, inquisitive and are there to learn more – which is the whole point of the internship in the first place, right?

 

  1. Be Yourself. Sorry for the cliché, but it’s important. Be professional and unique, but not in a way that misrepresents who you are as a person. If you get a job pretending to be someone you’re not, it won’t be a good fit. When you get a job offer from your future employer to whom you were completely genuine with, both you and the company will grow – because that office is exactly where you should be.

 

Happy interviewing!

Gifs: Redefining Interpersonal Communication

Posted on | by Ketner Group

A “gif” is defined as “a computer file format for the compression and storage of digital video images.” (Thanks, Merriam-Webster.) But most recently the term has come to define the looped video used in reaction to a situation or to add “color commentary” to an ongoing conversation between groups of people or to one’s social media post.

Suffice it to say, I am a BIG fan of them.

Since Slack announced its integration with GIPHY two years ago, Ketner Group’s inter-office /giphy tags have provided comedic relief to pretty much any situation we find ourselves in or in one-off conversations we may be having with other team members. I even find myself having entire conversations via /giphy. (Personally I’m partial to Game of Thrones and Beyoncé gifs. Given the recent release of the new season of GoT and LEMONADE, I’m pleased I’ll have a lot more content to work with.)

via GIPHY


via GIPHY

Gifs really are the new expression of emotion or reactions through a two-dimensional medium, be it in interoffice messages or texts with friends. Some might argue that emojis are the current “it” thing, and while I appreciate a good emoji conversation, nothing really says “I-just-secured-awesome-coverage-for-my-client-and-didn’t-break-a-sweat” like Michelle Pfeiffer in Grease 2.


via GIPHY

Or when receiving an unexpected complement, I look to a children’s classic.


via GIPHY

Many brands and companies have introduced their own branded gif keyboards, including Kik with their partnership program, Starbucks with their Frappuccino featured keyboard and Mississippi State’s athletics focused keyboard, to increase their reach with consumers.

With these brands creating their own keyboards and countless others in development, it’s generating a whole new vehicle for us to engage with those brands and use those brands as a means of self-expression, much like we would clothes or accessories. This integrates brands further into our everyday lives, blurring the distinction between marketing and organic content, including GIPHY’s head of business development.

As my parting gift, I’ll leave you with the hilarious fail gifs and let you see if you can figure out which ones are branded.


via GIPHY
via GIPHY

via GIPHY
via GIPHY

via GIPHY
via GIPHY

Scoring a Perfect 10 on Earth Day

Posted on | by Ketner Group

This blog was written by our intern, Cambria Sawyer.

Cause marketing is a lot like college.

I first started to see this connection in my journey as a Ketner Group intern back and forth from the office to the jungle (a.k.a. campus). You see, college is a balancing act.

Professors assign you more hours of homework than you have in a day. Somehow I’ve managed to survive off of cheese sticks and grapes for the past week, but the grocery store is in my imminent future. I need to go to the gym, steel drums practice, a club officer meeting and still go out with friends tonight– and all I want to do is take a nap.

Figuring out how to fit all the pieces together so they make sense and reach a goal is a delicate art; the same type of challenge comes with devising an effective cause marketing campaign.

If you break it down, it has two, equally important parts: the cause and the marketing, but putting the two together is easier said than done. Brands have to be careful when they choose a campaign. It must be simple, interesting and brand-relevant, while not appearing insincere. Digiday explains the stakes well in an article warning brands of “cause fatigue,” where poorly balanced campaigns cause consumers to stop taking corporate social responsibility seriously.

This Earth Day, I want to take a few brands from the apparel and fashion industry and rate them on a 1-10 scale for their Earth Day cause marketing balance skills.

 

Photo courtesy of Amour Vert
Photo courtesy of Amour Vert

Amour Vert
Rating: 4
The sustainable fashion brand’s “Buy a Tee Plant a T(r)ee” campaign is fine, but that’s kind of the point– it’s just fine. While the rhyme is catchy and the cause is admirable, the connection between the fashion brand and planting trees is not particularly strong. Not to mention this is definitely not the first time a campaign identical to this has been launched, so it also looses points on originality. It’s clear to a consumer that this campaign is more about the marketing.

 

Burton
Rating: 8
A brand for the earth-conscious adrenaline junky, Burton takes environmental campaigns to the next level.

Photo courtesy of Burton
Photo courtesy of Burton

Their most creative plan to save the world (yes, they have many) is, in my opinion, the Burton x Mountain Dew campaign, where recycled plastic bottles are converted into the thread Burton uses to make some of its equipment and athletic wear. It’s unique, but still hyper-relevant to what they do as a brand. Where the brand falls short is its lack of focus on a specific campaign. While it undoubtedly earns a perfect 10 conservation-wise for facilitating a whopping 11 separate eco-campaigns, the marketing aspect suffers. As the Harvard Business Review advises, keep it simple. There’s a fine line between impressing and overwhelming your customers.

KEEN
Rating: 10
The footwear brand’s motto is “Follow Your Feet,” so that’s what it’s doing– and it’s awesome. KEEN’s Live Monumental Film Tour campaign began as a cross-country road trip 10 months ago in a yellow RV. As the brand ambassadors travelled 7,500 miles from Oregon to Washington, D.C., a film crew captured their efforts as they received more than 40,000 petition signatures to protect 3 million acres of public land, according to Cause Marketing Forum.

Photo courtesy of KEEN
Photo courtesy of KEEN

The grand finale? A yellow-carpet movie premier of the film on Earth Day and film tour to follow. The campaign directly correlates with the hiking- and travel-oriented merchandise the brand offers. Even if it wasn’t relevant, the idea itself is so intriguing you forget it’s a marketing move in the first place. What’s even better? Two of the five natural areas the KEEN campaign focuses on have been declared as “protected” since the outset of the movement, a tangible achievement consumers can really take to heart when evaluating the brand.

A perfect 10. Nailed it.

To Press Release or Not Press Release, That is the Question

Posted on | by Catherine Seeds
Little Mermaid
Image courtesy of Creative Commons

As PR professionals, our main goal is to drive and secure coverage for our clients. As Ursula the sea witch from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” says, “It’s what we do. It’s what we live for!”

In our last blog, we talked about the value of the modern press release and the benefits releases generate for PR campaigns. But according to our friends at NonProfitPR.org and as PR folks worldwide know, press releases are not always the best course of action and can often be just a big waste of time and money. See below for examples of when to not go down the press release path:

  • Announcing an event
    Many companies, private and public, often use a press release to announce an event such as attendance at a conference or the launch of a propriety event. Even though you’ve taken the time to craft a release and send it to local media, rarely will you see these releases published among general media. Instead, consider listing on a community page or industry calendar. You can also utilize social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to highlight the news of your event and motivate your network into action.
  • Announcing a great story
    When you have a great story to tell, look beyond a press release. Whether it’s to highlight a successful implementation with a customer or a longer feature story on a specific topic or trend, writing a release may give you some coverage, but there could be a better way to highlight this news. This is the perfect opportunity to give the scoop to a journalist to write a more in-depth story and publish your news. Not only do you begin to develop great media contacts, you end up with a great story about your organization.
Image courtesy of Creative Commons
Image courtesy of Creative Commons
  • Sometimes it’s just not newsworthy
    Some companies assume they have to send a particular number of press releases each month or year in order to engage in strategic public relations. It’s never a good strategy to send releases simply to fill a quota. Sending the media lots of non-newsworthy releases (awards, speaking opportunities, small product updates, etc.) could cause journalists to stop reading your news altogether. When this happens, even when you have something truly newsworthy, it’s possible you still end up with no news coverage through no fault of your own. It’s much better to objectively analyze the worthiness of your announcement from a reporter’s perspective and then decide if a release is really the way to go.

There are many ways to have your news heard beyond the press release. From utilizing social networking, industry calendar listings and even pitching directly to journalists, picking the right strategy can provide better coverage and more public awareness, all at a more efficient cost.

Identifying the Value of the Modern Press Release

Posted on | by Aidan Griffin

We hear questions from our clients all the time about when, where and how to use press releases in today’s landscape and wanted to break down how to think about them today. With the rise of digital media, social media and interactive content, the role of press releases has shifted, but their intrinsic benefits are still intact.

The role of the press release:

  • Direct communications: Releases deliver unfiltered messages to the masses, supporting lead-generation, sales conversions and public visibility.
  • Search engine optimization (SEO): Investors, customers, potential employees and other target groups can learn about and discover your company through keyword searches.
  • Long-term content: Releases become permanent parts of a company’s public record, findable and downloadable for the foreseeable future.

Reaching those who matter, directly and on message

Press releases provide factual, direct information to a maximum number of media covering your company, customers and market. Press release distribution, whether over the wire or to a select list of relevant media, gives your company a formal touchpoint with media who are consistently challenged to keep your company top of mind. Press releases themselves won’t cut through the noise of the market, but they provide PR pros with the ammunition to leverage their relationships with reporters to deliver the visibility your brand needs to grow.

Additionally, each news outlet that picks up your press release is going to have its own dedicated readership—which means that you’ll have a new set of eyes seeing your brand for the first time  every instance a press release is published. These users will be reading your press release, getting an idea of your business and, if they’re interested, visiting your site—that’s extra referral traffic that serves as icing on the cake.

Get Googled

Press releases have natural SEO benefits, including:

  • Natural links from multiple, and high quality, outside sources: It’s hard to get quality inbound links. Whatever your content creation strategy (blogs, video content, social media), it’s a challenge to get your content syndicated through third parties. Alternatively, news sources constantly need new material to publish and each one that picks up your release gives you much needed link source diversity. It’s also much easier and far more likely that a high quality website will post a drafted release than write an original story – on your customer win, product news, event attendance, etc. When Google sees this, you get preferential treatment by association.
  • Opportunities for keyword linking and name recognition: Press releases also give you the key opportunity to associate your company name with relevant keywords and subjects. Releases can include the company name and market keywords to increase the likelihood that searches will result in the company page showing up due to co-occurrence and co-citation, as well as the recent semantic search updates to Google’s algorithms.
  • Online reputation management: Press releases that include your brand name in the title tend to rank well in search engines for searches of your brand name. Since you can control the content of a press release, this gives you some degree of control over your online reputation (at least as far as what users see when they Google your brand name).

Formal reference points – beyond the data sheet

Press releases act as a form of online brand management and marketing. Storing copies of your press releases on your website provides potential customers with all the necessary information about your company. Customers that need product information or client references can easily find them in the press release without spending their time poring over technical specifications or looking for customer reviews you can’t control. Simple media alerts don’t have this sort of long-term brand management potential.

Expectations for press releases

The primary question to ask when asking a PR agency to draft a press release is: “Is a press release the most effective way to get my point across?” While it may be slightly more expensive, is it important to control my message, have instant and worldwide syndication, boost search results and provide a library of news for potential clients visiting your website? If so, then a press release will usually deliver maximum value, even if a barrage of media briefing requests do not come your way.

Sources

  • DeMers, Jayson. “Where Press Releases Fit In Your 2015 SEO Strategy.”Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 29 Dec. 2014. Web. 02 Apr. 2016.
  • Tan, Miranda. “Why Press Releases Are More Important than Ever.”LegalZoom. N.p., 24 Nov. 2015. Web. 02 Apr. 2016.

MEET THE NEW GUY: AIDAN GRIFFIN JOINS THE KETNER GROUP TEAM

Posted on | by Aidan Griffin

Aidan HeadshotHello world, it’s me, Aidan. I’ve somehow been lucky enough to find myself among the experts at Ketner Group, surrounded by some extremely creative, intelligent and kooky people for the last few weeks and am glad to report I couldn’t be happier to be here.

I’d like to take a moment to introduce myself. I’m joining Ketner Group as a senior account executive, having begun my PR career in 2013 at Lois Paul & Partners (LPP), where I climbed the ranks from intern to account executive and learned the ropes of public relations and the fascinating nuances of the technology industry.

During my time at LPP, I served enterprise technology clients in a broad range of roles, from writing content to pitching news and thought leadership stories to managing social media accounts and ring-leading happy hour efforts. It was a great introduction to the breadth of experiences a PR pro can have and gave me the practice and confidence to expand on my favorite aspects of PR at Ketner Group.

I grew up in Boston and graduated from UMass Amherst with a degree in Political Science and History – the natural launching point to a career in retail and technology public relations. I’m still a political junkie at heart and my favorite books to read are biographies and historical fiction. Sometimes I wonder where my content creativity comes from with such practical interests like that…

While I generally believe I’m a well-adjusted, rational human being, my blood still flows thick with Masshole when the Pats, Bruins, Celtics and Sox battle our rivals. I love being on the move and am always looking for the next big adventure, cheap flight or new hobby – I currently play Gaelic Football (an Irish blend of rugby, soccer and basketball) and like to golf or hit the archery range when I’m feeling more precise than energetic.

I have a younger sister who decided I was cool enough (for once) to join me in Austin once she graduated from college, and I regularly find myself volunteering to dog-sit her little mutt, Scottie Pippen, when she goes out of town. Her job often requires (allows?) her to organize events involving legendary Texas BBQ joints and with the amount of leftovers that find their way into my fridge, there’s no way she likes her job more than I like it.

I’m excited to be on board here with Ketner Group, and here’s to having many, many more months as fun, challenging and interesting as the first!

SXSW 2016: The Customer May Always Be Right, But What The Heck Do They Want?

Posted on | by Mariana Fischbach

SXSW Interactive 2016 blazed through Austin this past week in typical disruptive fashion, bringing the tech industry’s brightest minds into town for a five-day festival that was all business during the day and all party during the night.

No matter the application, the topic of how to engage customers was at the forefront of the most prominent conversations. From machine learning to data analytics to mobile, all technology pointed to one focal point – the customer and their engagement.

However, during all of the discussions one thing became apparent: while we now have technology that can help us track and study customers’ actions throughout the engagement cycle, we cannot yet decipher what prompted the customer to begin the engagement process with a particular brand.

Zappos Product Manager Kandis Yaokum best described it during the panel session titled “Future of Cool: Predicting What’s Next in Fashion”. Sitting alongside ThoughtWorks Senior Retail Consultant Rachel Brooks, Google Fashion Data Scientist Olivier Zimmer and Shoptelligence Founder Laura Khoury, Yaokum discussed how data analytics is helping fashion retailers predict what will be the industry’s next big trend. When Yaokum was asked “what kept her up at night?,” she answered that it was not knowing why a particular customer decided that a certain product was the “cool one” to buy and what stirred the initial curiosity to engage with a brand.

All the panel members described how data analytics is historical by nature, and can help deliver better insights into overall trends that can help predict the future. However, understanding what sparked a customer’s initial attention is still something that technology cannot yet decipher.

It seems we are at an inflection point, however; additional sessions all pointed to a better understanding of the customer and different ways we can look at the convergence of brand and technology to spark and measure customer’s attention. Key themes that emerged included:

It’s all about psychology: a brand’s engagement with a consumer should have personal and organic connection.

  • Marcela Sapone, founder of the New York based startup, Hello Alfred, discussed that how brands make you feel is all about perception, and brands can use this perception alongside technology as a metric to continue innovating and building a better product.

Going beyond the product – A physical store setting should be more about the overall experience and providing content customers can immerse themselves in.

  • STORY founder Rachel Shecthman discussed how the retail store should be utilized as a media channel to create an experience that immerses customers in the overall story and gives them something to do. We should think about physical stores as living labs and places of entertainment that are enabled by technology.

Democratizing access to luxury: luxury is now defined as a combination of access, experiences and usability.

  • Discussing wearables, Uri Minkoff and Decoded’s Liz Bacelar emphasized how luxury items should be both about usability and functionality and how the wearables of the future will be more about portraying emotion than tracking health data.

ALL customers are individuals.

  • Refinery29’s Phillipe von Borries discussed how all brands should look to people as individuals instead of grouping them into a block such as a generational age group. The power, he says, lies in niches – people who are defined by their overall passions and hobbies.

At the end of the day, the customer is the key driver, and brands that look to incorporate innovative technologies and tactics into their overall customer experience philosophy will continue to spark their attention.

#RetailRoundUp February 2016

Posted on | by Ketner Group

As we know, the retail industry is definitely dynamic. From what we’ve seen so far, 2016 is gearing up to be an exciting one, so we’ve curated a list of the most notable and interesting pieces of retail news that have caught our attention for February’s #RetailRoundUp.

And the nation’s favorite fashion retailer is… via RetailingToday

For the fourth year in a row, Nordstrom has been the top choice as the nation’s favorite fashion retailer in Market Force Information’s study. While this comes a little surprise due to their high satisfaction ratings, Nordstrom has also earned high scores for their atmosphere, quick checkout speed and helping shoppers finding correct sizes. Marshall’s snagged the number two spot, H&M and Ross Dress for Less tied for third, Kohl’s grabbed fourth and Macy’s rounds out the top five.

The study also found that though H&M’s mobile app was the most used, followed by Target and Walmart, consumers mostly use retail apps only to check prices and promotions rather than using them to make purchases.

Pay with Amazon: Another way to threaten traditional retail via Retail TouchPoints

With over 50 million Americans subscribed to Amazon prime services and their Q4 sales increasing 22%, Amazon appears to always be the talk of the retail industry. The online giant’s newest endeavor is through the growth of its digital wallet service, which allows customers to shop with third party merchants using their Amazon credit cards and shipping details.

The success of Amazon’s digital wallet service has proven to be widely successful – over the past year, the retailer has reported a 150% year-over-year increase in payment volume, a 200% increase in merchants using the services and with more than 23 million consumers using the service since 2013. These numbers continue to prove why this e-commerce super giant is here to stay.

8 things shoppers dislike about mobile via FierceRetail

Though the use of mobile is on the rise, retailers might not be meeting consumers’ expectations when it comes to the mobile experience according to Bizrate Insights. Through their recent survey, Bizrate Insights discovered that the number one complaint of the mobile experience by consumers is the size of the screen. One-third of consumers dislike having to pinch and zoom in on webpages leading to accidental clicking of wrong links due to hyperlinks being close together. Additionally, 25% of consumers are annoyed of slow load times, due to overloaded pages.

Other concerns of mobile consumers include the use of small text, being forced to enter information, data concerns and the unavailability of products.

Staples pioneers omnichannel B2B retailing via RIS news

B2B buyers options in terms of sales channels are often either limited or even outdated. Staples Advantage is leading a change by offering B2B buyers similar options as consumer purchasers. This will include the ability to order online and pick up in store, a mobile app featuring scanning options, the ability to order print jobs online for pick up at the closest store and more.

Staples understands that though business buyers and consumers are different in purchasing patterns, the expectations when it comes to the online shopping experience are relatively similar. With Staples Advantage, the company hopes that they can appeal to business buyers with their offer of flexibility to buy products on mobile devices.

Stay tuned for our recap of the highlights from eTail West, since we have a few clients going to the show!