Best Buy Blames Price Competitiveness in Holiday Sales Decline

| Erin Lynch

The competition in price played a major role in the declining 2013 holiday sales results at Best Buy, according to a statement released by the electronics retailer. In the nine week holiday period that ended on Jan. 4, Best Buy reported $11.45 million in revenue, down slightly from the 2012 holiday season of $11.75 million.

Holiday Ecommerce Sales Rose 9.3%

| MCM Staff

Total holiday retail sales, which includes November and December sales, increased 3.8% to $601.8 billion, which was in line with NRF’s projected forecast of 3.9% and $602.1 billion.

Target, Target Canada, ecommerce, store closings, Canadian retail market, Zellers

Target: Security Breach Affected 70 Million Customers

| Tim Parry

As part of its ongoing investigation into a security breach discovered last month, Target has determined that the stolen information includes names, mailing addresses, phone numbers or email addresses for up to 70 million individuals.

USPS

USPS Exceeded Holiday Package Delivery Volume

| Tim Parry

The U.S. Postal Service has been relatively quiet about its holiday 2013 performance. But last week, the USPS broke its silence, and said it exceeded holiday volume expectations with a higher than projected package volume increase.

FedEx Failed For Yankee Candle

| Tim Parry

Yankee Candle saw trouble with FedEx at least two weeks prior to Christmas, starting with tracking issues that they thought were due to internal system errors. Yankee Candle was also told that FedEx’s Columbus, OH facility was so “overwhelmed” that FedEx had trouble moving packages.