Walmart said a year ago that it would make it easier for its customers to identify which foods on its shelves are healthier than others. This spring it will make good on that pledge by adding “Great For You” icons to hundreds of packages of foods in its stores.

Walmart already has millions of loyal customers simply because it has good prices at a good value. Now the question is: Can an icon that identifies healthier foods be an unconventional way to encourage, even build, customer loyalty for the retailer? more

Marketers buying time during the Super Bowl broadcast face challenges in determining the return on investment of their spots. They’ll face even more challenges if their websites aren’t designed to handle resulting surges in traffic… and Yottaa.com, a website optimization firm, is betting they aren’t.

Yottaa has released its predictions for the five sites most likely to either crash entirely or slow down considerably during the big game. They are, in order of likelihood: more

Let’s be honest: A lot of what turns up in email inboxes is pretty ho-hum. You click through on a message if there’s a discount or free shipping on something you have an immediate need for, but otherwise, you delete or ignore a whole heck of a lot of messages because there’s a “been there, done that” vibe.

This past weekend, for the first time in ages, an email hit my inbox that made me want to revive our “Emails We Love” headline. The honor goes to Barnes & Noble, and an email for the Nook tablet.

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Depending on your viewpoint, JC Penney announced Wednesday that it is migrating down—or up—the multibrand retail chain. In the course of announcing some poor quarterly results covering the holiday season, CEO Ron Johnson said the retailer will remake itself to look less like a standard department store and more like a big-box retailer. The change includes everything from a “boutique” shop merchandising makeover, to a simplified “everyday low pricing” strategy, and even to a logo redesign that, to my eyes, resembles that of Target: the brand initials inside a geometric shape, in this case a square rather than a bulls-eye.

Put aside the Old-Glory-meets-Tommy-Hilfiger logo change, Penney’s second in a year. And put aside the “store within a store” orientation. To me that simply makes Penney more like every other department retailer, but then I prefer my clothes and kitchen goods without ads on them, whether Ralph’s or Martha’s.

What do you feel about the pricing philosophy? more

There are various modalities and senses of urgencies that flow through the upper echelons of executives at major corporations. Most of these individuals realize there is a time to grab market share as well as a time to plan a strong counter defense to against any and all plausible business, nuclear scenarios. Sometimes they’ve got to get into the boardroom and realize that the strategical direction that they are taking their company is concretely and 100% absolutely even more vital than the sugar coated, feel-good marketing messages that they continue to beam out into the ethos for all of the letdown customers to hear. Thus, drawing an even bigger divide in customer’s thought space re: the brand and what it really is vs. what they’re getting told it is. more

So much for home-field advantage. Among the top 10 companies an American Express/National Retail Federation Foundation survey recognized for excellence in customer service, fully half are pure-play online marketers. As in, no brick-and-mortar presence whatsoever. more