More retailers offering iced coffee

The USA Today looks at the growing popularity of iced coffee and how different companies are taking advantage of this new craze. It's recently surpassed the sales of iced tea for breakfast, with women and teenagers buying the most iced coffee. Starbucks, McDonalds, Dunkin' Donuts, 7-11 and Coldstone Creamery are just some of the retailers offering more iced coffee. Read the full article here.

Image source: Agoosa

Ready to scan your own groceries?

Newsday has a report on how local Stop & Shops in the Long Island, New York area are allowing their customers to scan their grocery items as they shop throughout the store. The store in Hampton Bays uses the ScanIt Motorola Scanner and allows customers to scan their loyalty card into the system, then then take the scanner with them throughout the store. Using their loyalty card, the scanner can then offer them promotions based on their past purchases. Then customers can load their cart as they choose packing their groceries to go home as they shop. Read the full article here.

Piggly Wiggly conforming to their customers needs

Don't have time to shop at the grocery store? No problem if you live in South Carolina and there's a Piggly Wiggly near by. Seeing that the grocery shopping trend was headed online, they created a program called Click N' Shop. Click N' Shop is a way for customers to order what they want online from home, and pick it up at the grocery store at a later time.

Source: SCNow.Com

Walgreens making changes to be customer centric

In a new interview at the In Store Marketing Institute, three Walgreens executives discuss their efforts to become more customer-centric, with their new focus on "customer centric retailing".

Shopper Marketing: What is the new CCR initiative?

Bryan Pugh: We are working to elevate purchasing into a merchandising business, putting the customer at the center of everything we do. Our first change is all of the adjacencies. Instead of laying out the store by how buyers buy the store, we lay it out by how a customer shops. We began rolling out 40 new departments in mid-March.

Read the full interview here.

Internet Increases Consumers’ Confidence to Part with Cash

According to Webpronews.com, online shoppers are loosening the grips on their wallets, but continuing to be cautious about where and how they spend their cash. To secure their business, online retailers need to persuade consumers that they’re offering the best product at the best price. Written by the staff of Webpronews, they covered the recent surge in online searches for store coupons. The Internet is fast becoming the favored place to search for coupons with a rise of 46% in the number of people who never use newspaper coupons. In addition, Hitwise recently reported a significant rise in the use of search terms relating to money-saving techniques. Read the rest of the article, here.

Kroger Sales Jump (Again)

The number one U.S. Supermarket retailer, Kroger has again seen their shares jump amid the volatile recessionary climate sweeping the nation. Today, Reuter's reports that Kroger said net income rose to $349.2 million, or 53 cents per share, in the fourth quarter, from $322.9 million, or 48 cents per share, a year earlier.

For the current year, Kroger expects identical supermarket sales, excluding fuel, to grow 3 percent to 4 percent. On that basis, it had earlier forecast a sales growth of 3 percent to 5 percent.

The company said its forecast reflected an expected 1 percent to 2 percent product cost inflation, compared to its earlier expectation of 2 percent to 3 percent.