Retail Marketing - Shopping Center Marketing

Starting Wednesday, February 10, the Nook (by Barne’s & Noble) will be on the shelves of Barne’s & Noble’s retail locations. Until now, the Nook has only been available for purchase online, however to compete with the release of Apple’s iPad (scheduled for March/April 2010), they’re shipping the Nook to their retail stores. It’s said that the retail component of the Nook could lead to market-share gain from Amazon.com’s Kindle, prior to the release of the iPad.

With the emergence of Apple’s iPad, Amazon has taken another look at their pricing structure for their own device, the Kindle. Amazon was paying $12 to $13 per digital book and selling it at the $9.99 price point. They were obviously looking to capture most of the e-book device market share but we could not expect them to take a loss forever. The iPad’s pricing structure has forced Amazon to reconsider quickly. Preemptively, as of January 20, Amazon has switched to a commissioned based system that sees publishers receiving 70% of book revenue.

Voucher Cloud is an app developed by Invitation Digital that allows users to get discount vouchers straight to their mobile, as well as locating nearby businesses with special offers.

To make things easier, Voucher Cloud takes your current location via GPS and serves up the offers closest to you. This seems to work well, though I did get an offer for an Aston Villa stadium tour, and I’m a long way from Birmingham (UK).

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Spin off of Twitter’s question “What are you doing?” Now we get to see your credit card transactions! Good idea?

As the Internet matures, slowly but surely everything we do in the real world is going social. But there’s a limit to how much information we can explicitly share on all the various services. A new service, Blippy, launching today in private beta, has an interesting way to take something you do everyday, buy things with your credit card, and automatically push those transactions online for others to see and interact with.

Read full story here

Like the computer in the movie “2001,” Facebook is struggling to keep its profiles from virtual extinction at the hands of its arch enemy - the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine.

The Suicide Machine is a clever Web site out of the Netherlands that was designed to free users from their social network lives on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn. You just pick one of the networks, start up the machine, and it graphically shows you unfriending your contacts, one by one, and eliminating all your other contacts with your profile. Forever.

Although the now-friendless profile actually survives, the Suicide Machine is designed not to allow you ever to sign on to it again.

Except that Facebook is now fighting back. The Suicide Machine is reporting that Facebook has banned its IP address, thus foiling suicides. You can almost hear the machine singing “Daisy.”

Article by David Colker
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Did you ever want to know your measurements down to a hundredth of an inch?

If you’re ready for such honesty, Unique Boutique in Long Beach has the tool for you - a body scan that measures you at 200,000 points.

The purpose of the procedure is for the customer to have better information to buy or make clothes. It’s well suited for women and men who are difficult to fit, those who want to make their own clothes and those who like to shop online.

Article by Candice Shih
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The McDonalds/Starbucks coffee war has taken another step forward. McDonalds has announced that they will soon be offering free Wi-Fi access at most of their U.S. locations. Many are seeing this as a direct challenge to Starbucks, who currently offers paid Wi-Fi access at most locations.

Read more at MSNBC.com »

Shopping on a budget during the holidays can be difficult. Sprize is a customer loyalty rewards program launched by the Gap to help shoppers make the most of their money

Shoppers can sign up for a free Sprize account at participating Gap stores for an opportunity to collect SprizeMoney. SprizeMoney is automatically accrued in a customer’s account when a product they bought goes on sale within 45 days of the original purchase. The account is credited the difference between the price paid and the best sale price.

Website: www.mysprize.com

Full story found here

“The honorary holiday, National Believe Day, is part of the retailer’s “Believe” campaign, a holiday effort that kicked off this year with a TV commercial starring Queen Latifah and a little girl who makes “The Trek,” as the spot is titled, to Macy’s to mail her letter to Santa. A letter-writing campaign encourages customers to drop by the stores’ “Believe Stations,” where they can mail their own letters to Santa and help Macy’s raise donations to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

The full story is at AdWeek here.

Not to be outdone by tech visionary Jack Dorsey — one of the brains behind Twitter — and his Square cellphone payment start-up, point-of-sale  veteran VeriFone struck today with the announcement of PAYware Mobile.

Not dissimilar from the Square iPhone application and accessory, which The Times profiled last week, PAYware targets small businesses with its subscription-based model.

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