We should start renaming this one “Fast Follow-up Friday NIGHT.”
Is Target Still Off Target?
We ripped Target pretty good for its Missoni Mess last fall. While many pundits assumed Target undertook a successful “scarcity” campaign, we felt it was one giant cock-up.
Target’s Q4 earnings call from late February seems to confirm that the company still hasn’t gotten itself under control. Besides the hemming and hedging about the sh&tty economy and “most intense ever” holiday period, management admitted its e-commerce operation is still three ounces short of a pound.
And there were lots of promises made about apparel and hardline goods, even though it is grocery that it keeping Target in positive territory for same-store comps so far this year. It will be interesting to see what impact J.C. Penney’s rebranding has on Target’s apparel sales, and how our new best friend Walmart impacts everything else Target sells. Online especially.
Dumb As An Online Doorknob
Hard to believe we haven’t awarded a Research Hall of Sham award since last July. Seeing as how much dumb marketing research gets released…
Like this:
“Visitors to CPG brand Web sites buy 37% more in retail stores than non-visitors to the brand sites. That’s according to a new study from Accenture, comScore and dunnhumbyUSA…”
Or this:
“Adobe' research of 16.2 billion visits to 150 online retailers shows that tablet users spend more per order than desktop PC and smartphone users.”
Let us translate these two points for you, in hopes of avoiding future squandering of research talent and time. “People who are more intelligent and richer spend more online.”
You can thank us later.
Super Bowl Stocks Are Super Consistent
In order to do it the official and proper way, per Professor Tomkovick, we have run our Super Bowl advertiser portfolio out to a full two weeks post the February 5th game.
The 20-stock portfolio increased its lead over the S&P 500 to just over 1.1 percentage points of positive return. Nice, but still not enough to offset your trading costs.
The Rich Person’s Old Normal
Rich getting’ richer. From the press wires today:
“Neiman Marcus…posted net income of $40.1 million for the fiscal second quarter ended January 28, nearly double the $21 million of a year earlier…Neiman's revenue in the quarter rose to $1.28 billion from $1.17 billion a year earlier, helped by comparable sales gains of 9%...”
Late next week we’ll use this little piece of data to discuss why we feel our recession call for Q4-2011 and Q1-2012, made back in October is still on target.
Turns out this is the one thing the 1% agree that only the 99% should enjoy.
