News and Analysis
What’s Shwell in Attracting Hourly Workers?
No, that’s not a typo. MULO (multi-location) convenience store (C-store) brand Sheetz is opening a massive “Shwellness Center” across the street from one of its major locations in Pennsylvania. This center will offer some of the lifestyle benefits of its current Shwellness center (see below), as well as routine medical appointments, physical therapy, and behavior […]
The Freezer Beyond the Grocery & C-Store
Cryotherapy is one of the latest categories to scale in the health, wellness, and longevity space. In this column, we’ve detailed how brick-and-mortar businesses have expanded far beyond the typical gym as the population ages and become more concerned about staying healthy longer. Highly specialized brands and franchises are offering body-related services like IVs. I […]
Early Spending Results are In! MULO BOOMs this Holiday Season
As of this writing, Black Friday and Cyber Monday (now seemingly extended to Cyber Week) are behind us. MULO (multi-location) pundits and agencies involved in retail and restaurant analyses and predictions are starting to call the winners and losers in the holiday Street Fight, which now involves battles between brands, products, SMBs, and MULO chains, […]
Commentary
Niantic Accelerates the Real-World Metaverse
One of the companies at the center of the shift to the metaverse is Niantic. Mostly associated with its breakout hit, Pokémon Go, it has evolved its business to be more of a developer platform for geo-local AR experiences. Known as Lightship, the platform is expressly built to enable the real-world metaverse.
The Customer Journey Isn’t Linear Anymore: How Marketers Can Adapt
Brands that previously were able to define a customer journey and maybe even map it out in a linear fashion face a new reality. They no longer possess the means to dictate how a consumer interacts with them. Here are three tips on how marketers can adapt their strategies for the new customer journey.
Google Elevates Mapping and Visual Search
Google’s annual Search On event was held this week, including several updates to core search and orbiting products like Maps. Given the prominence and centrality of mapping to local commerce, we’ll start there.
Latest Posts
Boutique Health & Wellness: The Birth and Expansion of Stretch Zone
As the population ages and becomes more health-conscious, a new retail category is emerging — specialty storefront wellness. We’ll cover other multi-location brands in high-growth industries and category creators in the months ahead. Wellness is a $450B category and is rapidly accelerating. Multi-location retailers are picking up on that and launching products and brands that […]
Report: Higher Income Adults Drive Podcasting Growth
What makes podcast listeners so loyal to the brands that advertise on their favorite shows, and how does that sense of loyalty translate to real world sales? Those were just a few of the questions asked by the customer experience platform DISQO in its new report, released last week. As the podcast landscape evolves, brands and […]
Vericast Launches Contextual Advertising Solution
The marketing technology firm Vericast is changing its approach to contextual advertising by launching a privacy-centric solution meant to help brands reach relevant consumers in the moments when they’re most likely to be receptive. The proprietary solution bolsters Vericast’s in-house targeting capabilities. It matches ads to the content from consumers’ view or search, and it’s […]
Fire Sale: How Multi-Location Businesses Should Handle Downturns and Fails
This year alone, more than 2,000 retail locations have closed. The major casualties include Party City, Jenny Craig, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Some multi-location restaurants are also slimming down, shuttering locations in markets that aren’t performing well. That doesn’t necessarily mean the beginning of the end for the brands. They may simply reduce expenses to […]
What’s New at the Drive-Thru?
We spend the equivalent of 4.3 years of our lives in our cars. Multi-location restaurants and retailers have known this for quite some time and introduced the drive-thru decades ago. Although the exact date of the first-ever drive-up window is fiercely debated, sources indicate that banks introduced the concept in the early 1920s. The drive-thru […]
Debate – Brand Safety Risk of Advertising with Legacy Publishers
Does legitimate news, published by reputable organizations, pose a brand safety risk for brand advertisers? For nearly half of advertisers, the answer is yes. According to new data from Advertiser Perceptions, just 53% of advertisers believe that legitimate news does not pose a significant brand safety risk. For others, there is concern that having […]
What Does It Take to Succeed as a Retail Media Network?
The Retail media network is on the rise, with projections showing they could grow another 60% by 2027. While the concept has already taken hold among businesses in the retail and hospitality industries, it’s still relatively uncommon — and untested — within other verticals, like financial services and travel. What will it take to get […]
Publishers Clearing House Media Has a Trove of Clean Data
Publishers Clearing House (PCH) conjures images of sweepstakes winners being surprised with large-sum checks and bouquets of balloons. Since its founding in 1953 as a means to sell more magazine subscriptions via direct-mail promotion, PCH has evolved into a digital entertainment and commerce destination for millions of consumers in the United States, and one of […]
Tinuiti Sees Real Bright Spots in the Digital Ad Landscape
Tinuiti, the largest independent performance-marketing firm that measures across Streaming TV as well as Google, Facebook, and Amazon, has published “Q1 2023 Digital Ads Benchmark Report”. This report looks at trends across the digital ad landscape of paid search, paid social, digital marketplaces, and video and display advertising. Tinuiti has nearly $4 billion in digital […]
BOOM: Multi-location Target from 1902 to the Future
We have no shortage of companies that go BUST. Just in the past few days, we covered the demise of Bed Bath & Beyond and Jenny Craig. The failure of multi-location brands cannot be attributed just to digital options, consumer trend shifts, and bad hires or financial bets. More complex factors seem to go into […]
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