February, good month/bad month
With February done and dusted, Retail Technology Innovation Hub brings you the month’s winners and losers
Good month for…
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J.Crew appointed Adam Brotman as its President and Chief Experience Officer. He will report to CEO Jim Brett, who last year replaced Mickey Drexler in the retailer’s top job. Brotman spent nine years at Starbucks and as Chief Digital Officer worked on such projects as its mobile ordering and payment service. In his new role, he will be tasked with helping J.Crew turnaround a business that has been struggling in the face of fast fashion ventures and pureplays.
Aldi is the UK’s favourite supermarket for 2018, according to Which? research involving 6,800 shoppers. The discounter knocked Waitrose from the top spot, which it held for three years.
Iceland and Ocado are the UK’s favourite online supermarkets, according to the same research.
Data science venture, Starcount, is to partner with Marks and Spencer as part of the struggling retailer's five-year transformation plan. The aim of the tie up is to help enhance customer understanding and insight through personalisation of M&S’ loyalty and CRM programmes including Sparks Card, which currently has over six million members.
Lidl was once again crowned the UK’s fastest-growing grocery retailer by Kantar Worldpanel. For the 12 weeks to 28th January, the discounter experienced a market share increase of 0.5 percentage points and saw sales climb by 16.3% compared to the same period last year.
Fraser McKevitt, Head of Retail and Consumer Insight at Kantar Worldpanel, comments: “Traditionally focused on own-label lines, Lidl has actually seen fastest growth among its branded products, which are up by 28% and now account for 12% of all sales.”
Not to be outdone, Aldi increased sales by 16.2% to hold a market share of 6.9% – up 0.7 percentage points. Whilst Ocado continued its rapid sales growth – up 7.8% – weighing in with a market share of 1.3%.
Amazon announced a record breaking fourth quarter, racking up $60.5 billion in net sales, a year-on-year increase of 38%. Net income hit $1.9 billion, significantly more than the $1.83 expected by financial analysts.
Bad month for…
A German man has been fined €208,000 for putting veal liver (costing €47) through a self-service checkout as fruit. Munich's district court convicted the 58-year-old businessman, who has not been named, of theft and based the penalty on his monthly income of €24,000.
The Daily Mail…Center Parcs announced that it was pulling its advertising from the Daily Mail after an ad appeared in a controversial online article by columnist Richard Littlejohn that rounded on diver Tom Daley and husband Dustin Lance Black, who are expecting a child.
In the article entitled 'Please don't pretend two dads is the new normal', Littlejohn writes: “What makes diver Tom Daley and his husband think we want to look at the ultrasound of their yet-to-be-born baby? For a start, one foetus looks pretty much like all the others, just as all babies look like Winston Churchill. Yet there they were this week, all over the newspapers and on social media, posing proudly with the grainy image taken inside a womb. Daley posted it on Instagram on Valentine's Day, complete with emojis of two men, a child and love hearts. As John Junor, late of this parish, used to remark: Pass the sick bag, Alice.”
Center Parcs reacted to a tweet asking: "My son so wants me to book at your parks, but how can I do that if you support homophobia?" It stated: "We take where we advertise very seriously and have a number of steps to prevent our advertising from appearing alongside inappropriate content. We felt this placement was completely unacceptable and therefore ceased advertising with the Daily Mail with immediate effect. We apologise for any offence this may have caused."
Tesco apologised after labelling a fancy dress costume as Dark Panther, instead of Black Panther.
The costume on its website is of T'Challa, the main character in the hit Marvel movie who goes by the superhero name of Black Panther. Not Dark Panther. Tesco said it was “extremely sorry for any inconvenience caused” after people flagged up the mistake on Twitter. It added: "We are correcting the description of this product on our website and are reviewing our processes to ensure this doesn't happen again."
There was a major blow for PayPal, with former parent company, eBay, announcing a new primary payment processor.
The Sainsbury’s online groceries service was down on Sunday, 4th February and the morning of the 5th. The retailer had said that it was offline for maintenance work, but there appeared to be more to it than that. ‘@sainsburys When do you expect grocery website to be working? Off all morning. Trying to order for housebound mother. #frustrating,’ a disgruntled customer tweeted, to which Sainsbury’s replied: ‘We're trying to get it up and running ASAP. Orders can still be placed and amended until 11pm the night before delivery’.
Another customer chimed in: ‘It says planned maintenance. Who planned to do it at peak time?! Don’t have time to do this during the week!’, whilst one pointed out: ‘Still not up and running. This isn't planned maintenance, this is something has gone wrong. Looks like it's off to Tesco for me’.
Poundland’s controversial pre-Christmas Elf Behaving Badly social media campaign was labelled "irresponsible" by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The retailer was told the series of ads must not appear again and that it must ensure its advertising is presented with "a sense of responsibility" and in a way that "did not cause serious or widespread offence".
One image featured the elf dangling a teabag over a female doll, simulating a sex act. The ASA ruled that this and eight other images breached its code of practice for advertisers. These were, it said, available on "ungated" websites and therefore viewable by anyone, including children. Some of the posts may also have been seen as demeaning to women, it added.
A total of 84 complaints were received by the ASA. Poundland argues that the campaign is all about double entendres, and that Twitter and Facebook had policies designed to prevent under-13s from creating accounts. It has posted a message from the now locked up elf, stating, “At least it’s only 84 people who had a sense of humour failure compared to the tens of thousands who got the joke and liked and shared my posts online.” It has also backed an online petition entitled, Clear Poundland Elfie's Name, declaring that, “Britain’s the home of saucy postcards, carry on films and panto”.
And tea bagging jokes on social media, apparently…
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