Sales & Marketing

With this acquisition, the company's brands will generate approximately $13 billion in retail sales globally, with more than $2.5 billion attributable to the company's portfolio of athletic brands.

Succeeding in the market today is closely tied to how well retailers and manufacturers respond to evolving consumer needs. In the 2012 Shared Strategy Report, CGT offers several compelling examples of collaboration between consumer goods manufacturers and retailers that are designed to deliver improved customer service. Read on for an exclusive preview of research findings on Big Data, Mobility and Product Quality.

A new licensing arrangement will support the company's mobile initiatives and help it to stay on top of emerging technologies popular with consumers.

Holiday shoppers turned Cyber Monday into the biggest spending day ever with online sales growing 30.3 percent over the same period last year. What's more, nearly one in five consumers used mobile devices to reach retailers' web sites a whopping 70 percent increase over last year. Meanwhile, m-commerce sales experienced a 96 percent jump over Cyber Monday 2011.

The transaction creates one of the largest packaged food companies in North America, with sales of approximately $18 billion annually. It will also position ConAgra Foods as the largest private label packaged food business in North America, with combined private label sales of approximately $4.5 billion.

Brick and mortar retailers are painfully aware of the impact of showrooming the act of consumers using their mobile phones in-store to compare prices with competing retailers on their bottom line. However, only 10 percent of retailers have strategies in place to combat showrooming.

In advance of the biggest online shopping day of the year, the Consumer Fraud Center issued its annual Cyber Monday Shopping Alert to warn consumers of the growing use by cyber criminals of legitimate web sites such as Amazon Marketplace to sell illegal or counterfeit goods.

A recent Huggies marketing program realized a whopping 56 percent click-through and 55 percent e-mail open rate, which drove 630,000 visitors to Huggies' site. Social referrals amplified the campaign reach by about 700 percent, proving that consumers today seek advice from friends and peers for product insights and deals, before making purchase decisions.