Over the past couple of years, several home furnishing retailers – including At Home, HomeGoods, and Floor & Decor – have expanded their physical footprint, while other brands such as Tuesday Morning shrunk their store count. We dove into the foot traffic numbers to find out how modifying the store fleet size has affected these retailers’ recent performance. Despite the wider challenges impacting retail, recent location analytics data shows that several home furnishing leaders are seeing visits that match or exceed 2019 foot traffic levels.
Snapchat and TikTok reach billions of millennial and Gen Z users every day and have changed the social media landscape for brands, advertisers, publishers, and investors. Today, we’re thrilled to share that ad intelligence for Snapchat and TikTok is now available in Pathmatics Explorer. Customers will have full visibility into how brands are including these platforms as part of their media mix, as well as how seasonal trends are affecting share of voice and creative strategies.
When many Americans sheltered in their homes early in the coronavirus pandemic, meal delivery sales reached new heights. Our data reveals that in April 2022, sales for meal delivery services grew 7 percent year-over-year, collectively. The ongoing pandemic may also be driving more Americans to make their first meal delivery purchase. In April 2022, 52 percent of U.S. consumers had ever ordered from one of the meal delivery services in our analysis, up from 47 percent a year ago.
When U.S. cities and states faced shelter-in-place orders to limit the spread of the coronavirus, Americans’ reduced mobility resulted in plummeting sales at rideshare companies. With the exception of year-end dips in 2020 and 2021, sales have been gradually recovering since April 2020. Bloomberg Second Measure transaction data shows that Uber sales were up 80 percent year-over-year and Lyft sales were up 49 percent year-over-year in April 2022.
The wholesale category was thriving when we last checked in. Costco landed on our 2022 Predicted Winners list and BJ’s and Sam’s Club were still riding the wave of 2021 success. But the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022 brought about a new set of challenges that threatened to upend the consistent strength the segment had seen. We dove deeper into the retail foot traffic trends to see how these chains are doing.
According to Furniture Today, the pandemic unsurprisingly fueled consumers’ “home goods” purchases. As pandemic restrictions ease, and even with consumer spending focusing more on experiences and travel, the “homebody economy” continues to flourish. Furthermore, this upward trend in consumer home goods spending is propelled by diminishing supply chain issues; among other factors. Overall, ad spend in the home goods industry should increase in step with consumer confidence in the category.
Recent earnings reports of several e-commerce companies have caused many to wonder if pandemic fatigue will erase most of the new shopping behaviors that have emerged over the last two years. In today’s Insight Flash, we look at trends not only over the last year, but over the last three years for five high-profile e-commerce subindustries in both the UK and US: Grocery Delivery Services, Meal Kits, Online Retail – Broadlines, Ride-Sharing, and Video Streaming to assess how much consumer preferences for e-commerce have truly changed.
Department stores have been part of the American retail landscape for decades – but their role in consumers’ shopping routines is changing. We dove into foot traffic trends for leading mid-range and luxury brands to see how these iconic retailers are performing in this almost-post COVID world. COVID hit department stores particularly hard – even after non-essential business reopened, many consumers still avoided shopping indoors. By summer 2021, however, many brands, including Macy’s, Dillard’s, and Kohl’s, were nearing – and sometimes exceeding – pre-pandemic levels.
The top 10 quick-service restaurant apps in the U.S. were downloaded 9.95 million times in April, 4.75 percent more than those the month prior. Year-over-year in the month of April, downloads of the top 36 quick-service apps are up 20.9 percent. A download represents a new user and the first conversion on the mobile app customer’s journey. The biggest mover from a ranking perspective is KFC, moving up eight spots from No. 16 last month into the No. 8 spot this month
Beauty sales have seen seismic shifts over the last few years, with the pandemic limiting going out occasions, the rise of cult beauty, and subscription boxes taking share. Sephora and Ulta have tried to maintain share by entrenching themselves with mass merchants Kohl’s and Target (respectively). But as shoppers shift to more niche offerings, what has happened to the larger players? In today’s Insight Flash, we dig into channel trends, cross-shop, and price per item to understand what has changed and what may have stayed the same.
BeReal is the latest innovation in social media — with over 10 million lifetime downloads to date (May 10, 2022). In Q1 2022 alone, BeReal saw 3.3 million downloads worldwide, up 390% from Q4 2021. Founded by a former GoPro employee, Alexis Barreyat, the French-based app was first released on iOS and Google Play stores in January 2020 and is focused on fostering ‘real’ connections, championing a return to simplicity and authenticity
In April 2022, Chinese ecommerce giant Shein closed a funding round that valued the company at $100 billion. Shein has experienced a meteoric rise in the U.S. fast fashion market, with its sales overtaking established competitors such as H&M and Zara during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using U.S. consumer spending data, we analyzed how Shein sales have boomed over the past few years, as well as how other fast fashion companies have fared.
While some video streaming platforms have been in the news recently for implementing ad-supported tiers or experiencing declining subscriber counts, an analysis based on Bloomberg Second Measure’s alternative dataset shows that as of March 2022, major music streaming subscription services like Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) and Amazon Music continued seeing subscriber growth in the U.S. for their paid subscription plans. Between these two music streaming companies, Spotify also had the higher customer retention rate.
Following a strong 2021, the impact of inflation and rising prices have now reached the home improvement sector. We dove into location analytics data for leading retailers to understand whether the pandemic-induced surge has finally come to an end and what lies ahead for these categories. The home improvement sector was one of the biggest retail winners of 2020 and 2021, as consumers stuck at home – or moving home – invested heavily in their living space.
Tesla, the world’s most famous electric vehicle giant, reported its first-quarter performance on April 20th, with impressive margins and increasing sales. The company detailed revenues of $18.76 billion and $2.86 in earnings per share, up from $10.389 billion in revenue and 93 cents in earnings per share in Q1 2021. On the company’s earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said the company plans to bring a dedicated robotaxi to market by 2024. The dedicated robotaxi will be highly optimized for autonomy, meaning it would not have a steering wheel or pedals.
Following the conclusion of their studies, many fresh law graduates apply to state and federal clerkships with the hopes of serving directly under a judge in preparation for a lucrative career. But how do these prestigious appointments impact law graduates’ earnings over the course of their careers? The number of law graduates has been steadily declining over the past decade. In fact, Law School Transparency – an advocacy group focusing on the legal profession – reports that the number of law school applicants has decreased by as much as 23% since 2010.
When we last dove into the performance of Walmart and Target, the writing was already on the wall – both brands were positioned for a strong 2022. And a few months into the year, it appears that this prediction – albeit not bold – was very much on point. Looking at visits for both retailers through the beginning of 2022 showed a significant year-over-year jump in visits. Walmart has averaged a 4.9% monthly visits increase compared to the equivalent months in 2021, while Target has seen a 6.1% average monthly increase.
The American Revolution. Isaac Newton discovering gravity. The Continental Congress adopting the Declaration of Independence. What do all of these events have in common? They happened after Friedrich Jacob Merck took control of the Engel-Apotheke, which would eventually become one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, maybe its current one does: Merck. Yes, that Merck—the same one that reported $48.7b in sales last year.
First-time downloads of ‘pandemic-winning’ mental wellness apps in the U.S were 15% lower this April than in April 2019. By contrast, downloads in April 2020 were up 21% YoY from April 2019, which kicked off investor interest in the category. From June 2020 to May 2021, Calm, Headspace, Noom and Talkspace raised $963M in private equity and venture funding. BetterHelp, which we also included in this market, has been privately held by Teladoc since 2016.
Monthly active users of the top entertainment ticketing apps in the United States are up 511% year-over-year in the first quarter. Remember the trauma from 2020 when all events, including Taylor Swift, Doja Cat, and BTS concerts, kept getting canceled or rescheduled? The ticket marketplace was the only industry that felt the pandemic induced frustration more than you did. As the global entertainment industry took a massive hit due to state-imposed lockdowns, event ticket resale companies witnessed a record fall in downloads and active users.
