According to SCT Newswire, NRDC Equity Partners paid a total of about $1.1 billion to obtain total control over Canadian retail conglomerate Hudson’s Bay.

NRDC had owned a 20 percent stake in the Toronto-based company for years.

Hudson’s Bay operates 94 The Bay department stores, 280 Zellers discount stores, 61 Home Outfitters stores and 161 Fields stores.

SCT Newswire reports that NRDC plans to use existing Hudson’s Bay real estate to secure store sites for Lord and Taylor in Canada. The company also plans to open small Fortunoff and Lord and Taylor stores inside some existing The Bay department stores.

According to SCT Newswire, Richard Baker, president and CEO of NRDC and chairman of Lord and Taylor (who will also assume the title of CEO for Hudson’s Bay), said some of The Bay’s flagship stores, like the 900,000-square-foot Toronto store and the 650,000-square-foot store in Vancouver, B.C., can accommodate a 200,000-square-foot Lord and Taylor store.

“We will have an unprecedented opportunity to re-create the retail landscape in North America,” he said. “The combined companies own a portfolio of trophy real estate assets that create a spectacular opportunity for development around the existing retail operation.”

Baker said up to 15 Lord and Taylor locations could open in Canada. NRDC aims to position Lord and Taylor as the Nordstrom of Canada, a mid-level department store between the country’s high-end Holt Renfrew chain and The Bay chain.

Falabella S.A.C.I.

The retailer will install the Retalix StoreLine POS system for the implementation, which also includes Fujitsu TeamPOS 3000 XL POS terminals and Datalogic hand-held scanners.

“This rollout with Retalix is part of an aggressive investment plan to implement state-of-the-art, world-class information technology to offer the best levels of security, agility and efficiency in all our operations,” said Cesar Hashimoto, CIO of Falabella’s Supermarket Division. “Our IT investments are helping us to increase efficiencies at the point-of-sale to enhance customer service and the shopping experience, as well as procurement, distribution and inventory in our supermarkets — all to the benefit and satisfaction of our customers.”

The StoreLine application contains advanced POS functionality that supports customer loyalty, self-checkout, fuel management, QSR and a variety of electronic payment services.

Retalix is working with Bell Tech in Chile and Peru to provide hardware, project management and ongoing support for new store openings.

Falabella operates department stores, home improvement centers, grocery hypermarkets, financial retail operations and real estate ventures in Chile, Peru, Argentina and Colombia. The company achieved consolidated revenues of more than $5.7 billion in 2007, while investing a record of more than $600 million in capital expenditures.

In a survey conducted by customer intelligence company Market Force, electrical retailers had the lowest customer service satisfaction score of any service industry with just 2.24 per cent of shoppers left happy.

Clothing retailers scored only 2.69 per cent, supermarkets polled 6.10 per cent, local convenience stores received 6.48 per cent backing from consumers, while department stores got the highest score of any retail business type with 9.72 per cent left satisfied.

Of those surveyed 41 per cent said that their biggest frustration with store staff is a lack of interest in their needs and wants, and despite more than three quarter of people preferring bricks and mortar shopping to online as a many as 88 per cent will leave a shop if service is poor.

Tim Ogle, CEO at Market Force Europe, commented: “Good customer service doesn’t have to be expensive. Small, inexpensive changes can have an oversize impact on whether someone buys in your shop and how much they spend.

“For example, our research shows eight out of ten shoppers want to be taken to a product when asking about its location. It’s these little gems of insight that turn a question into a sale.”

Retailers are increasingly realising that in order to make their bricks and mortar offer as compelling as their online platforms they have to improve the experience of visiting their stores.

This morning the UK’s largest retailer Tesco announced a huge recruitment drive, which in part is in reaction to a perceived drop in the supermarket chain’s service levels in recent years.

Several simple service techniques could be employed by businesses to boost trading it seems, with Market Force also finding that 59 per cent of shoppers like products to be recommended to them by staff members.

Although shoppers like to have a personal service, they also seem open to new technologies which cut out staff interaction, with 63 per cent saying they like to use self-service machine and 49 per cent in favour of contactless payments.

In a warning to retailers keen to make more transactions automated however, the research shows that 37 per cent of consumers feel they should pay less when using self-service checkouts.

Compared to other industries retail appears to be struggling to please its consumers at present, with banks (10.8 per cent), restaurants/pubs (28.3 per cent), and hotels (31.5 per cent) all scoring higher customer satisfaction levels in the Market Force survey.

Ogle added: “These findings should be a wakeup call to retailers looking for cost effective ways to grow their business.”