Amazon.com, an online retailer, has announced that its Kindle App for iPad is now available in the App Store.

According to the company, the application lets users to select from more than 450,000 books from the Kindle Store on iPad and features Amazon Whispersync technology that saves and synchronizes customers’ last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights across their Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, iPad, and more.
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Citi and Shell have announced that cash-back rates are to be slashed on their co-branded Shell MasterCard, with fuel rates cut from 3% to 1%. As the card is no longer being issued, Shell is now looking to its loyalty scheme rather than its credit card to improve customer allegiance, although this may prove tricky as UK fuel customers are notoriously disloyal and price-conscious.
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Finland-based retail conglomerate Kesko Group’s sales from continuing operations in August 2009 totaled E718.6 million, excluding value-added tax, down 11%, compared to August 2008.
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French grocery chains have reported a mixed set of results for the first half of 2009. While the large and outdated hypermarket format continues to underperform, convenience formats are driving growth. Despite the resilience of smaller format stores, most of the large French grocers still rely on hypermarkets for the bulk of their turnover, which is dragging down overall sales performance.
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The new report Retailing in Russia 2009 published this week by retail analysts Verdict Research, part of the Datamonitor Group, finds that despite the damaging impact  of the global financial crisis, the long-term growth potential of the Russian retail market remains huge. Once initial barriers such as poor infrastructure and an uncertain legislative framework are overcome, Russia’s large population and expansive geography spanning 11 time zones will represent a sizeable market in which retailers can grow large-scale operations. As per capita expenditure will catch up with the West eventually, the Russian opportunity is simply too big to be missed.

Russia’s retail market has grown at a tremendous pace, by almost 500% over the last decade, reaching $451 billion in 2008. While the credit crunch and global financial crisis have dampened immediate-term growth prospects, a longer-term view of the market indicates significant growth opportunities for retailers in the country. Verdict Research forecasts that by 2012 the Russian retail market will be approaching $800 billion. Such a sizeable market will be difficult for any retailer to disregard.

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The current retail downturn is not simply a temporary side-effect of the recession, says Verdict Research, part of the Datamonitor Group, in its latest UK set of forecasts* to the year 2013, but the mid-point of a lengthy reform of the retail market. Ultimately 2008 will be remembered as the beginning of a substantial contraction of a sector that had become bloated with over capacity and buoyed by rocketing house prices, cheap credit and massive space growth. Verdict Research is predicting just 8.1% growth in the UK over the five years to 2013, a massive drop from the increase of 14.1% in the same period to 2008. The good news though is that survivors will find themselves in a far less competitive environment, with major opportunities for market share gains and winning new customers.

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