Albertsons LLC is sharpening its focus on social media and digital marketing with the creation of a new social and digital marketing team that will be led by technology and social marketing expert Karl Meinhardt.

Target and other retailers have fought unsuccessfully for years to level the e-commerce playing field in the United States by requiring Amazon.com and other online-only merchants to collect sales tax. Doing so would eliminate the Internet-pure-play retailers’ most significant competitive advantage, and for a glimpse of just how significant look no further than Canada.

Dick's Sporting Goods is looking into opportunities beyond the United States and has agreed to make a 20 million pounds Sterling strategic investment in JJB Sports plc, a leading U.K. sports retailer.

Consumer Reports readers who shop at Target gave the company middle-of-the-road marks on service and its perishable offerings, but the company scored better on pricing and received the highest marks possible on cleanliness.

Consumers have a new incentive to shop at Express, with the launch of Express Next, a new points-based loyalty program open to all Express customers throughout the United States.

To be successful, growth strategies must go beyond theoretical strategic platitudes, proprietary consumer and shopper insights, robust analytics, and innovative growth platforms; they ultimately must be measurable. To be successful in today’s fast changing world, CPG companies and retailers need to be able to quickly confirm that their strategies are working and, if they are not, quickly regroup and adapt. Strategies today need to be living, evolving blueprints that are continually tested, measured, and reinvented.

It’s a safe bet that Andrew Pole will never talk to another reporter after the treatment he and Target received in a piece in the Feb.16 edition of The New York Times with the headline, “How companies learn your secrets.”

While Walmart maintained the No. 1 position on Interbrand's U.S. Most Valuable Retail Brands list for 2012, several other retailers are moving up the ranks.

Supervalu on Monday announced that its new Essential Everyday private-label brand — to include more than 2,400 products by early 2013 — now is available in select independent retail locations.

Because social media began as the purview of college kids and hipsters, it’s taken some time to register in the business community as a serious path to connection with customers.

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.