Foot Locker recently undertook multichannel initiatives in the United States and the UK

Although the recent National Basketball Association lockout threatened to disappoint sports fans and depress sales, Foot Locker made the most of the situation by launching an online video advertising campaign that used celebrity professional basketball players to attract consumers. The videos poked fun at the NBA lockout, and offered consumers and sports fans an exclusive look at the funnier side to many professional basketball stars, such as Amar'e Stoudemire. The advertising campaign won a Customer Engagement Award from Retail TouchPoints, as the videos generated high traffic on the company's website and increased sales of products, Brand Channel reported.

In the U.K., Foot Locker launched an offshoot retail concept called The Locker Room by Foot Locker. This new branding appeals to U.K. consumers, while maintaining the reputation the retailer developed in the United States, according to the source. The store is set to open first in the U.K., and management hopes to open other European branches.

Another U.K. multichannel retailer, John Lewis, recently added new technology to its online store to provide a more personal shopping experience for customers. After launching the ecommerce tool, John Lewis's online store reported a 27.9 percent increase in year-over-year sales in the last five weeks of 2011. The new technology allows the retailer to analyse shopping behaviour alongside data on relationships between products and product categories. The retailer can apply the results of this analysis on its site to provide a personalised experience for shoppers based on their past purchases and searches.