davidiangray's blog

Retail continues to lead the Canadian news this week, and not because Target is opening 17 more stores.

Shoppers have been telling pollsters that they intended to bump their spending this season, but the reality will be muted.

The best indicators, of course, are actual sales figures. Moneris is Canada's largest payment processor.  They share their data periodically through December.  This tells us Black Friday had an impact to kickoff Holiday shopping, but the 6% gains were not sustained through the month, which flattened out to 2% growth over the Nov 29- Dec 19 period last year.

Because we were not flocking across on this day in the first place.

Make no mistake, this is smart marketing on the part of Canadian retail.  Led by the usual promotion-minded big boxes (such as Future Shop, The Brick, Sears, Toys R Us and so on), a "Black Friday" header gives a more exciting focus to what would be a normal run of Holiday Season deals.

However, our annual tracking survey of Canadians, in partnership with Vision Critical sheds some light on shopper response through 2011. 

A few short years back, Best Buy was on the "best-of" preso list of many retail experts.  Now the same folks are predicting its early demise. This is the nature of the current fast-changing retail environment.

A great Canadian success!  Here is my take on CTV news:

www.ctvnews.ca/video

Vancouver's Robson Street is one of Canada's most visible high streets (along with Bloor in Toronto and Rue Ste. Catherine in Montreal).  In the late '90's it was really the only notable shopping street in town; now it vies with other emerging shopping districts. Yet in the public eye and for a number of global retailers it remains the place to be in Vancouver.

Have you evaluated "Pop-up" for your retail or consumer business? What about your social enterprise?  www2.macleans.ca/2012/05/10/pop-up-goes-the-shop/

Target launched a small pop-up store in Toronto today featuring a portion of the Canadian-born Jason-Wu line.  The store had long lines and moved most of its product.  And garnered tremendous national media coverage (so call this a "win" for buzz building).

CTV News Clip

Bonnie Brooks, President and CEO of Canada's iconic department store The Bay, will be applying her turnaround success to storied Northeast US upscale department store Lord & Taylor.

The question in Canada is: how relevant is the department store model outside of a few downtown flagships?  The question in the US is: how to differentiate amidst numerous competitors and an ailing economy?

The following is an interesting podcast from Terry O'Reilly's new show Under The Influence on branding and consumers (on CBC Radio).  Entitled, Men Are From Sears, Women are from Bloomingdales, the premise is that genders follow archetypical patterns when shopping. Specifically, it suggests some reasons for the 'truthy' observation that men hate shopping.

Give it a listen (after the short 'ad' for another show).