Weekly Insights Sep 4, 2015

Executive Summary

• Next week, on September 10, UK budget retailer Primark will open its much-anticipated first US location, a 70,000-square-foot store in Boston, the first of eight initial locations in the US
• The limit for a single payment made through a contactless card in the UK, which allows users to pay with a single swipe of their card without having to enter a PIN or sign, has been raised from £20 to £30 (US$31 to $46)
• Home Depot plans to moderate its number of new store openings in Mexico to five to six annually, investing MXN500 million (US$29.5 million) this year to bring its store count there to 116 by the end of the year
• The Henn-na Hotel in Nagasaki, Japan is populated almost entirely by robots, who check in guests at the front desk, while an automated cart takes luggage to guests’ rooms, obsoleting human workers