Dunnhumby Ltd.,an analyzer of brand value for consumer goods and retail companies, has hired Lung Huang, formerly of Arbitron, as VP digital advertising for global partnerships.

Social media will influence how people plan to shop this holiday season nearly as much as word-of-mouth and store advertisements, according to a survey conducted by ConsumerSearch.com, part of the About Group.

It may be back to basics in Walmart’s apparel department, but shoppers still crave discounted brands and fashion as evidenced by continued strength at some familiar retailers.

Target has brought in someone with both advertising and retail experience to oversee its marketing efforts.

Mobile marketing has been the “next big thing” long enough that it almost seems like old news. Mobile advertising is projected to reach $55 billion in 2012, and has the distinction of being the fastest medium to reach $1 billion in spending; it took only five years, versus 16 years for the Internet to hit that level of investment.

Following a wild ride during Black Friday, the last month of the year in 2011 saw most retailers maintaining similar levels of promotional activities when compared to 2010. The majority of advertisers either saw slight increases in circular and page counts or stayed flat. When looking at both page counts and circular drops overall there was not much change, with a 2% decrease in number of pages and a 1% drop in number of inserts per market. 

During Lowe's annual conference Tuesday, SVP marketing and advertising Tom Lamb defined the company's target customer by first breaking down home improvement consumers into four distinct groups.

The National Retail Federation announced that it has asked the Commerce Department to delay implementation of a controversial plan to vastly expand Internet domain names, saying retailers and other businesses need more information before moving forward.

Whirlpool announced it has been named to the 2011/2012 Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) for the seventh consecutive year.

Target failed to crack a ranking of the top 10 most effective back-to-school ads compiled by Ace Metrix that was dominated by retail competitors and technology companies.

About 6.2% of 14 million mobile phone users have scanned a quick response or bar code on their mobile device, according to a new ComScore survey.