You’ve heard of flash mobs. How about cash mobs?

The idea behind this latest trend is to encourage a large group of people to spend their money en masse at a designated local business “to give the business owner a little bit of economic stimulus,” according to the Cash Mob website.

Downtown Blacksburg Inc. is organizing a cash mob for March 8 to go with their Small Business Saturday and BUY EAT LIVE Local campaigns. Downtown Blacksburg Inc. will announce which business will be mobbed a week before the event.

The Roanoke Times’ New River Valley publication, The Burgs, has more details.

What do you make of this trend?

It should be no surprise that retailers track what you buy so they can send you coupons for those items, or, as creepy as it is, that they buy data about your ethnicity, political beliefs, job history and more.

But how about employing statisticians and researchers to figure out if a customer is pregnant, and if so, estimating her due date based on some 25 products she’s bought?

That’s what Target does, according to this New York Times Magazine story, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets.” They do it with so much success that they had figured out a teenage girl was pregnant before she’d told her parents and started mailing her coupons for maternity clothing and nursery furniture.

Here’s an excerpt from the NYT story about how Target’s statistician, Andrew Pole, developed a formula for figuring out if a woman is expecting:

Target has a baby-shower registry, and Pole started there, observing how shopping habits changed as a woman approached her due date, which women on the registry had willingly disclosed. He ran test after test, analyzing the data, and before long some useful patterns emerged. Lotions, for example. Lots of people buy lotion, but one of Pole’s colleagues noticed that women on the baby registry were buying larger quantities of unscented lotion around the beginning of their second trimester. Another analyst noted that sometime in the first 20 weeks, pregnant women loaded up on supplements like calcium, magnesium and zinc. Many shoppers purchase soap and cotton balls, but when someone suddenly starts buying lots of scent-free soap and extra-big bags of cotton balls, in addition to hand sanitizers and washcloths, it signals they could be getting close to their delivery date.

As Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy.

Does it make you uncomfortable that retailers want to know everything about you? Or do you expect that given technology and the volume of personal information we put online?

Consumer Reports' President and CEO Jim Guest talks with reporters this morning. Photo by Logan Wallace | Virginia Tech

Consumer Reports‘ President and CEO Jim Guest is in town to give a talk Thursday night at Virginia Tech entitled “How to be a Smart Consumer and Engaged Activist in the 21st Century.” The event is free. It begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Graduate Life Center auditorium.

Guest spoke this morning with reporters. Below is a selection of questions and answers from that session.

Q: What’s your main message tonight for the audience at Tech?

A: My main message is going to be, I think, the need for strong active consumers is the greatest it’s ever been. And I’m going to encourage the students that I talk with and others in the audience to get involved and get engaged. I think what we’ve seen now with the various digital means of communication, is that it’s much easier than it’s ever been before to really rally grassroots consumer public support on issue.

You saw when Bank of America wanted to start charging a $5 fee for people using debit cards. Within about a week or two weeks that ended. There was an uprising. We at Consumers Union and Consumer Reports, we generated tens of thousands of emails to Bank of America protesting what they were doing. You’ve also seen it when Verizon a short while ago wanted to add a $2 fee for people who people who paid by certain means. That lasted about three days.

I think you’ve seen some other issues as well, that consumers are connecting, and there really is a stronger and stronger consumer voice. We ourselves are strong credible advocates for consumers, but best of all is consumers rallying together. So I’m going to talk to students and others about ways they can be involved and ways their voice can be heard.

Collectively, I think the consumer voice can be incredibly strong. And it’s more necessary than ever today when you see the kind of corporation money that gets pumped into political campaigns and the lobbyist in Washington and at the state level. We don’t have the money, but we have the citizen power.

Q: Can you talk about the importance of being skeptical consumer when you’re talking about questioning food labels or extended warranties?

A: There’s the phrase “caveat emptor” which is basically buyer beware, and the buyer certainly should beware of almost all kinds of transactions that come along. To take a couple of examples, when you get to food labels – and by the way we have a great website at Consumer Reports, greenerchoices.org, take a look at it – many of these labels are just totally misleading.

My favorite one is free-range chicken, or free-range product. For free-range chicken the standard is you can have thousands of chickens in a chicken coop and have a little door to the outside. Open that door for a few minutes a day. A few chickens may wander out and run around in the outdoors, which you kind of think happens with free-range chickens. The rest of them stay in the chicken coop. They are all called free-range chicken. Don’t be beguiled, or misled, by the notion of a free-range chicken.

Q: What is your definition of a smart consumer, and what are you going to tell people tonight about what they can do to better educate themselves?

A: Well a smart consumer is a skeptical consumer and a consumer who tries to get the facts about the products that they might be being offered so they can make informed comparisons, and that’s what Consumer Reports is all about. We test about 3,500 products a year ranging from computers to flat screen TVs, to washing machines, to cars or whatever it may be, and we provided – again, it doesn’t come from the industry, it has no commercial influence on it – we provide that information to consumers to make the choice. Get the information and look at the comparisons.

An interesting phenomenon today, of course, is with Facebook and Google and Amazon and the various sorts of user reviews. People can go there as well, but that is somebody’s kind of subjective opinion which may or may not really reflect the quality, the safety, the reliability of a product.

Photo courtesy of Walmart

In a few months some of the Walmart store-brand foods will have an unfamiliar icon on them.

Walmart this week unveiled its green and white  “Great For You” icon, which will be printed on the products that have reduced sodium, sugar and trans fat levels.

The icon is part of the company’s healthy food initiative, which it promises to reformulate thousands of foods to reduce sugar, sodium and trans fat levels, make the healthier food choices more affordable, build new stores in so-called food deserts, and increase its donations to food banks.

The icon, seen in the picture above, will begin appearing this spring on Walmart Great Value and Marketside items, and on fresh and packaged fruits and vegetables, according to a news release from the company.

“Our ‘Great For You’ icon provides customers with an easy way to quickly identify healthier food choices,” Andrea Thomas, senior vice president of sustainability at Walmart, said in the news release. “As they continue to balance busy schedules and tight budgets, this simple tool encourages families to have a healthier diet.”

Walmart turned to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Institute of Medicine to create nutritional guidelines for the reformulated food products.

According to this New York Times story, Walmart has said it will also allow other brands to use the “Great For You” icon at no cost, so long as the products meet Walmart’s nutritional guidelines.

Other stores have adopted similar techniques to identify the nutritional value of food. This story, written by my colleague Sarah Bruyn Jones last year, is about a system called NuVal, which assigns a score to each product’s nutritional value. The score is displayed on the shelf next to the price. Grocery store Food City adopted the system, and Kroger was testing it as of last June.

Do labels such as these help you shop?

The holiday shopping frenzy is over, and by now many of us have even returned some unwanted gifts.

Much has been written about the deep sales and crazy store hours this year, but what about customer service?

Customer experience analytics firm ForeSee recently released its Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction index, which ranks Amazon.com as the best when it comes to customer service.

The report is based on more than 8,500 responses from visitors to the top 40 e-retail websites.

The top 10 retailers for customer satisfaction were:

1. Amazon
2. Avon.com
3. JCP.com (JC Penney)
4. QVC.com
5. Store.Apple.com
6. VistaPrint.com
7. Newegg.com
8. BN.com (Barnes and Noble)
9. LLBean.com
10. VictoriasSecret.com

Other findings:

• Netflix, Gap.com and Overstock.com saw the largest declines in customer satisfaction
• TigerDirect.com (an electronics retailer) and JCP.com (JC Penney) saw the largest gains in customer satisfaction

Where did you experience outstanding or disappointing customer service this holiday season?

A screenshot of the mallMerlin app on my iPhone

Don’t know which jewelery stores are at Valley View Mall?

Can’t find the new Bare Escentuals store?

Yes, there’s an app for that.

Valley View Mall and its owner, CBL & Associates Properties, have launched an app for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch. The app is rolling out at all CBL properties.

The app highlights sales and events at the mall, has a searchable directory of stores, and uses GPS to find your location and help you get where you want to go. It also has the ability to use GPS to unlock special deals for shoppers when they enter the mall.

I downloaded the mallMerlin app (it’s free) from the app store on my iPhone and put it to the test.

It’s helpful if you don’t know which stores are in the mall, or where they are. You can search the directory by name or category, and the results return a description of what the store sells and a map of where the store is located in the mall.

As for the discounts offered on the app, I found just one for 40 percent off a regular priced item at Gap.

CBL’s regional marketing specialist, Stacey Keating, told me that it’s up to the retailers at the mall to decide whether to use the app to promote their stores, specials and offer discounts.

“We think that once it kind of catches on and they see that cusmtomers are using it, they’re going to want to get involved,” Keating told me.

She said the app will be helpful for holiday shoppers who want to get in, make their purchases, and get out.

If you use the app, let us know what you think. If you’re a frequent mall shopper, what features would you look for in an app? What would make this app better? Have you found other apps that help you shop?

Wikimedia Commons photo | BlairSnow

For the past few weeks my inbox has been filling up with Black Friday emails. I figured we could at least wait until after Halloween to start talking about holiday shopping.

So here we go!

The National Retail Federation is projecting this year’s holiday spending to be a bit lackluster compared to last year. That might be what is driving retailers to seek competitive advantages, such as opening their doors even earlier on Black Friday.

How early? I’m talking about midnight.

Retailers that have typically stuck to the pre-dawn hours of 4 or 5 a.m. have announced that they’ll unlock their doors at midnight. Among them: Target, Macy’s and Kohl’s.

Kohl’s said in a news release that they’ll be open Nov. 25  for 24 hours, from 12 a.m. Friday to 12 a.m. Saturday.

Target will be open for 23 hours, from midnight to 11 p.m. They’ll also have extended store hours on Christmas Eve (7 a.m. to 8 p.m.) and the day after Christmas (7 a.m. to 11 p.m.).

Several other retailers, such as Best Buy, haven’t yet announced their Black Friday hours, but I’ll let you know when they do.

How early are you willing to line up for Black Friday deals? Would you rather stay up after your turkey dinner or go to sleep and get up early?

They heard you.

Bank of America, SunTrust and Wells Fargo are among the banks with branches in Roanoke that recently announced  they are abandoning plans to charge customers monthly fees for debit cards.

Bank of America made the announcement today.

“We have listened to our customers very closely over the last few weeks and recognize their concern with our proposed debit usage fee,” David Darnell, Bank of America’s co-chief operating officer, said in a statement. “Our customers’ voices are most important to us. As a result, we are not currently charging the fee and will not be moving forward with any additional plans to do so.”

The threat of fees came after the Federal Reserve’s ruling to cap debit card swipe fees collected by banks. The banking industry said the cap will cut into revenues and doesn’t cover the cost of providing checking accounts.

News of the usage fees – charged every month that a customer uses a debit card to make a purchase – was met with backlash. Activists designated Saturday “Bank Transfer Day” and President Barack Obama accused the banks of mistreating its customers to make a profit. On this blog, many readers said the the fee would send them to smaller banks or credit unions, which are exempt from the debit card swipe fee cap.

Do the recent reversals change your feelings about doing business with these lenders?

Flickr photo by Juushika Redgrave

How much will you spend on Halloween costumes, candy and decorations this year?

The National Retail Federation found in a survey that seven of 10 people are planning to celebrate Halloween, the most in the survey’s nine-year history.

That also means retailers are expecting to see record spending on costumes, decorations, candy and more. The NRF estimates that the average person will spend $72.31, up from $66.28 last year. Total spending is expected to reach $6. 9 billion.

Spending on decorations, from life-sized, inflatable skeletons to fake cob webs, is estimated to hit a record high, according to the NRF. Consumers will spend $19.79 each on decorations, putting Halloween decorations second to Christmas decorations.

Other survey findings:

• 44% will dress in costume
• 34% will attend a party
• 23% will visit a haunted house
• 50% will decorate their yard/home
• 15% will dress their pets in costumes

How much will you or have you spent on Halloween? And where are you shopping for your costumes and decorations?

Lea Steele takes money from a customer at the Center in the Square parking lot in downtown Roanoke. JEANNA DUERSCHERL | The Roanoke Times

If you missed today’s story on parking in downtown Roanoke, click here to read it.

When I set out to write this story I wanted to find out exactly how much parking we have in downtown Roanoke and how we much we use it. I obtained occupancy data on the city garages and surface lots from PARK Roanoke, the city entity that oversees parking. On street parking utilization isn’t tracked.

What I found is that we have a lot of parking and we don’t come close to using all of it. There are nearly 8,000 parking spaces downtown. That includes city owned garages and surface lots, free on street parking, and spaces in some 30 public lots owned by private businesses.

Of course, not all of the garages are convenient to where you’re going. That explains the low occupancy rates at the new Campbell Avenue garage across from the police department. (I suspect that when residents begin moving into the Lofts at West Station that garage will see more use.) And yes, most times you have to pay to park there. Roanoke’s all-day parking rate of $6 is among the cheapest in the country, according to a 2010 survey by the National Parking Association.

And sure, not all of the 664, free on street parking spaces are near the farmer’s market and the Roanoke City Market Building. But, as city manager Chris Morrill and several others pointed out, how far do you walk to get to your destination when you park at the mall? (The only difference is that you won’t get a parking ticket at the mall.)

So if you’re willing to pay and/or walk, there is plenty of parking.

There’s much more information in the story, including the points below about free and discounted parking.

• Free and discounted parking in Roanoke
• Free parking at all city parking locations on Sundays
• Free parking Saturdays at all city locations until 4 p.m.
• Free parking after 5 p.m. at the Elmwood Park Garage, Williamson Road lot, Elmwood Park lot and Warehouse Row lot
• Free parking for SmartWay riders Monday through Friday at the Gainsboro Garage
• Free parking in the 664 on-street, timed parking spaces
• $1 “lunch special” parking in the Market Lot from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
• 50 percent discount at the Gainsboro Garage and Higher Education lots for students enrolled in classes at the Higher Education Center