Influx

UK retailer Marks and Spencer is a strange hybrid; it sells both food, homewares and clothes which means it faces tough competition from a number of different players. Keeping the brand relevant and differentiated is critical and to do this the company recently announced a plan costing close to $1...

The latest Wired has a great piece by Matt Schwartz on what he terms "retail hacking". He describes a confluence of forces that have given rise to the emergence of consumers who will devote hours to hacking the system to get deals and how this world has been made accessible to masses of consumers...

The likes of the Gilt Group seem to have shaken up the retail space and brought something different to the marketplace. There seems no shortage of funding and deals with one of the latest being Amazon's rumored $3 billion purchase of the French company, Vente- Privee.Flash sales sites seem to have...

Consolidation is happening everywhere and it's always assumed that brands get brought and sold.Although the whole notion of branding is based on making strong emotional connections with consumers, I wonder if many CFOs really understand branding.Perhaps they see branding as a tool for operational...