{"id":158073,"date":"2017-02-16T11:47:31","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T09:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=158073"},"modified":"2017-02-16T11:47:31","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T09:47:31","slug":"woolworths-continues-free-wi-fi-roll-out-to-shoppers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/broadband\/158073\/woolworths-continues-free-wi-fi-roll-out-to-shoppers\/","title":{"rendered":"Woolworths continues free Wi-Fi roll out to shoppers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Retailer Woolworths says it will continue to roll out free in-store Wi-Fi for shoppers, having launched the service in 85 stores in December.<\/p>\n<p>All customers across its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.woolworths.co.za\/store\/fragments\/corporate\/corporate-index.jsp?content=..\/article\/article&amp;contentId=cmp206673\" target=\"_blank\">major stores<\/a> in Guateng, Pretoria, KwaZulu-Natal, and Cape Town receive two hours of free Wi-Fi, amid a continued shift towards online and mobile shopping platforms.<\/p>\n<p>By the end of 2016, Woolworths had 219 clothing stores in South Africa, two more than in the prior period, while Woolworths Food boasted 322 stores\u00a0&#8211; and 72 at Engen garages\u00a0&#8211; up from 317 and 67, respectively, in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, the group said that despite difficult trading conditions in both South Africa and Australia, group sales increased by 6.7% to R37.8 billion for the 26 weeks to 25 December 2016.<\/p>\n<p>However, headline earnings per share declined by 4.3% to 242.6 cents for the 26 weeks period.<\/p>\n<p>Profit before tax increased 37.9% following the sale by David Jones of its Market Street property in Sydney for a profit of A$172 million (R1762 million).<\/p>\n<p>Woolworths Clothing and General Merchandise sales grew by 3.5%, while Woolworths Food sales grew by 9.5%, with comparable sales up by 5.6%, it said.<\/p>\n<p>The group maintained an interim dividend of 133 cents.<\/p>\n<p>The retailer said it will continue to drive online sales \u2013 currently showing 30% growth, and improve the &#8220;online customer journey with better site capability and speed&#8221;.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/147817\/woolworths-launches-free-wi-fi-for-shoppers\/\" target=\"_blank\">Woolworths launches free Wi-Fi for shoppers<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Retailer Woolworths says it will continue to roll out free in-store Wi-Fi shoppers, having launched the service in 85 stores in December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":134663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5553,9872],"tags":[26,949],"class_list":["post-158073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadband","category-business","tag-headline","tag-woolworths"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158073"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158183,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158073\/revisions\/158183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}