The era of the true “dollar store” is coming to an end. In late 2021, Dollar Tree announced that it would increase its main price point from $1 to $1.25, ending its pricing model of 35 years and joining other discount chains in providing low-cost—but not exclusively $1—items to customers. Consumer transaction data reveals that so far in 2022, average transaction values for Dollar Tree, Inc (NASDAQ: DLTR) have been elevated, continuing its trend of increasing transaction values during the pandemic.
The fitness foot traffic recovery may be underway, but that doesn’t mean that gym-goers are returning to their pre-COVID patterns. Consumer preferences have shifted over the past couple of years and are driving major changes in many established retail categories, including the fitness space. Here, we take a look at how LA Fitness, a pre-pandemic category leader, is adapting its offering to today’s consumers through its new value-priced chain, Esporta Fitness.
2021 was a memorable year for ROBLOX. According to our analysis, the world-building game ended the year as the mobile game market's top title by consumer spend, #3 by downloads and its #2 by monthly active users (second only to PUBG Mobile). It was a remarkable 12 months. And in February 2022, the company itself revealed its latest set of key metrics, showing both strong growth in 2021and forecasting double-digit top-line growth in 2022.
In the free text of employee company reviews, we notice a strong and early uptick in mentions of inflation in negative reviews. Employees aren't just mentioning inflation more in general, but are distinctly mentioning it more in conjunction with compensation. At companies where multiple employees mention inflation in reviews, have average salaries been keeping up with inflation? Turns out, the reviewers were right to complain - their salaries have barely been keeping up with inflation, while other large US companies have kept up
In this Placer Bytes, we analyze retailers and restaurants – Winn Dixie, 7-Eleven, Olive Garden, and Panera Bread – whose performance could indicate how their wider sectors are performing. Grocery chains were among the clear winners of 2021, and there were some specific chains that seemed uniquely poised for a strong year in 2022. Given the success of the grocery sector over the past two years and the numerous examples of grocery chains’ success, some grocers in that mix that seemed uniquely and positively affected by the pandemic’s impact may not have been called out. Winn-Dixie was one of those chains.
As you probably heard, Discovery and WarnerMedia are merging, which means streaming services HBO Max and Discovery+ are also merging, likely at some point in April. It's also possible that before they merge, they will engage in a bundle, similar to that of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. Assuming the apps merged today, we wanted to look at what the market share of the top 10 streaming subscription services in the United States would look like:
In 2021, downloads in Brazil grew 30% vs. 2019 and +63% in consumer spend, with categories like Entertainment, Gaming and Finance driving growth. Overall, Brazil saw over 10.3 billion apps downloaded in 2021, a 30% increase from pre-pandemic levels in 2019. Brazil has seen phenomenal growth in consumer spend, adding an additional $1.13 billion in 2021, $200 million more than 2020, equating to 22% growth YoY as mobile gaming and in-app subscriptions go mainstream.
Our latest white paper examines recent changes in consumer behavior patterns. Over the past two years, the rise of omnichannel, shifts towards hybrid work, the growth of leisure activities, and increased economic uncertainty all contributed to rapid and unpredictable shifts in when, how, and where consumers shop. These changes impact every facet of retail strategy, from chain-level considerations like when to open stores, shelf-level arrangements on where to place products, to product-specific decisions for pricing, packaging, and marketing goods.
The Mountain-West region is the hottest housing market in the country. Of the 20 cities covered in the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index, Phoenix had the fastest year-over-year appreciation in December 2021, growing 32.5% annually. Another popular market was Denver, where prices increased 109% compared to the previous peak in August 2006. Right behind Denver was Boise, Idaho. According to the CoreLogic Home Price Insights Report, Boise real estate appreciated 22% in 2021, and the average homeowner equity increased by $64,000 from December 2020 to December 2021.
Uber just announced a partnership that will allow New York City users to take taxis on its platform. In a crowded marketplace, will this “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” strategy prove successful? In today’s Insight Flash, we take advantage of our ability to drill down into the New York City CSA to take a look at how market share has evolved recently in Ground Transportation, how demographics align between Uber and NYC taxis, as well as how loyal riders are based on cross-shop rates.
Although the gas price hike has finally slowed down, the national average price per gallon [is still up](https://www.gasbuddy.com/go/gas-prices-fade-for-most-west-coast-keeps-rising) 71.5 cents from a month ago and $1.37 per gallon higher than a year ago. We dove into the foot traffic data to find out how rising gas prices and elevated food prices are impacting retail visitation trends. Over the week of March 7th, nationwide overall retail visits declined by 4.3% compared to the equivalent week three years ago – the most severe decline in weekly retail foot traffic over the past twelve months that wasn’t directly tied to COVID waves or holiday calendar shifts.
ATTOM’s February 2022 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report revealed that lenders started the foreclosure process on 16,545 U.S. properties in February 2022. That figure was up 40 percent from January 2022 and 176 percent from February 2021. According to ATTOM’s latest foreclosure activity analysis, those states that saw the greatest numbers of foreclosures starts in February 2022 included: California (1,868 foreclosure starts); Florida (1,527 foreclosure starts); Texas (1,488 foreclosure starts); Illinois (1,168 foreclosure starts); and Ohio (1,144 foreclosure starts).
As traditional linear TV consumption continues to decline, OTT streaming providers such as Hulu, Pluto TV, Tubi, Peacock, and Paramount+ have seen significant growth, making them a go-to for advertisers and brands to reach audiences as they cut the cord. Pathmatics now tracks and breaks out this unique data, which shows—at a high level—that U.S. advertisers spend a combined average of $1 billion per month in their effort to reach consumers via OTT channels. Our new State of OTT Advertising in the U.S. report provides an in-depth analysis of the latest advertising trends on OTT, including those in the Financial Services and Food & Beverage categories specifically.
Beauty retailer Ulta recently highlighted a strategic initiative to onboard a larger number of popular brands into its stores. But if you offer them, will customers come? In today’s Insight Flash, we analyze the potential benefits of partnerships with brands like Fenty, Olaplex, and Supergoop by seeing what market share has been for large multibrand beauty retailers over time, what cross-shop looks like between DTC shoppers of these brands and Ulta, and how much DTC brand sales overlap with Ulta when it comes to purchase sizes.
In this Placer Bytes, we dive into two companies that dominated headlines in recent weeks – Starbucks and Dollar General. Earlier this month, Starbucks announced that it would be expanding its physical footprint and that CEO Kevin Johnson would be retiring. The announcement comes at a particularly interesting time for a company that has proven incredibly resilient in the face of COVID and the corresponding disruptions to normal routines and shifts to hybrid work.
The headline numbers for data.ai’s State of Mobile Gaming 2022 Report reveal the extraordinary success of the mobile gaming space over the 'COVID' period. If we look at the figures for 2018 to 2021, they show that consumer spend on mobile games rose from $73.8 billion to $116 billion. That's a rise of 60%. Over the same period, downloads grew from 63.7 billion to hit 82.98 billion – a rise of 30%.
This week we turn to female leadership and its effects on a company's workforce. We focus on Inc 5000 companies, tracking the share of CEOs who are women for these fastest growing private businesses we see that the vast majority are run by men. Notably, the Software industry is the most skewed toward male CEOs. It probably doesn’t come as a surprise since female enrollment in CS degrees just reached around 20 percent recently.
On Tuesday, March 15th 2022, we hosted Billy Taubman, President and COO of Taubman Centers, and Placer’s Ben Witten, Senior Solutions Engineer, for a webinar entitled “Mall Update: Yearly Review and What Lies Ahead.” Taubman is a major REIT that owns, manages, and leases 20 premier regional, super-regional, and outlet shopping malls throughout the U.S. Combining Billy Taubman and Ben Witten’s on-the-ground perspective with our data-driven understanding of the mall sector yielded valuable insights, some of which are summarized below.
We took a look at some of the leading steakhouse chains in the US to find out how the sector is recovering and what the future might hold. Indoor dining was one of the industries most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite two years of lockdowns, restrictions, and lingering limits on indoor dining, visits to Texas Roadhouse and Longhorn Steakhouse are on the rise. Even amidst the overall decrease in dining trends nationwide over the past two years, these two chains have maintained their overall growth pattern.
One of the advantages of CE Vision is that it can help companies find unlikely matches for partnerships beyond their space. Over the past four weeks we have highlighted some of these unlikely matches and what our data shows about how much better it is when companies work together. To start, we take coffee dates to a new level, showing how Black Rifle could achieve synergies by swiping right on Bumble. The average Black Rifle shopper spends 1.75 times as much as our panel average on Bumble as a share of their overall wallet.
