Technology expert Evan Schuman takes an authoritative look at the faults and foibles of enterprise IT.
Amazon UK is experimenting with a page lifted from 1970s Sears: loaning customers money to make purchases.
When Visa and Dell this month agreed to invest $3 million in a program to upgrade the e-commerce capabilities of the Girl Scouts, it was a concrete glimpse into the marketing minds at Visa. Although a healthy chunk of credit certainly deserves to go ....
There's something very black-coal-in-your-stocking about having a price-match policy that is 90% exceptions and exemptions. Your lawyers may think it is protecting you, but the only practical impact is that it associates your brand far more with....
Why do younger consumers seeing the technology security/privacy threats as greater challenges? Is it ignorance-based fear, making them afraid of high-tech issues that they don't understand? Or is it the opposite, that they understand the systems....
Target has a vision of a new kind of physical store to compete with online rivals, one that attempts to sidestep the drudgery of shopping by wiping out the need for customers to lug around their purchases through the store's aisles.
A throwaway reference in a Reuters story last week showcases a critical retail IT problem, which is that chains in the hectic holiday shopping season are quite willing to try new technology but are almost never willing to support it. That means insuf....
Retail's bizarre fascination with high-tech mirrors that shoppers show no interest in using at all continues. This time it's Ralph Lauren toying with RFID-enabled dressing-room mirrors.
Pizza chain Domino's has rolled out an e-commerce tool that is so obvious it could be brilliant. It's a big, physical button that you press to instantly order a Domino's pizza delivery. It's so simple that it may just have an over....
Watching a lot of the commentary and excitement last week about Square's Nov. 19 IPO, one might think that Wall Street had never been given a shot at a retail POS investment before. The truth is that, in many of the ways that count, it hadn'....
As I sit here and notice all of the glowing financial pieces about Amazon this week, it's hard to not sit back and think, "How can Wall Street employ so many smart people and yet be so consistently stupid?"
Retail merged channel strategies should leverage all channels in a way that makes the most sense for the shopper rather than trying to feed all shoppers into whatever channel the retailer finds the most profitable.
Was this project really just an effort to flag shoppers who had previously been suspected of shoplifting?
Amazon UK is trying to leverage shopper emotions to get them hooked on a service that they don't currently seek or want. No one in retail is more Machiavellian about free offers than Amazon — or more successful at it.
With a video connection to any store in the chain, foreign-born customers could deal with sales associates who speak their language.
The Starbucks mobile app and Apple Pay have had an amazing amount of influence on both the consumer conversation and general attitudes about mobile payments. This is all the more impressive when you realize that Apple Pay today represents barely 0.05....
When you watch Walmart, as I have done for years, you start to wonder where it wants to go with its business model, and whether it has any chance of ever getting there.
Companies suing people that use their sites can be dicey proposition, but Amazon's legal threats against more than 1,000 people who are allegedly posting bogus reviews is exactly the right move. What Amazon didn't do was merely file a Jo....
It has often been said that humans can make mistakes, but to truly wreak havoc, technology is necessary. Although true, a recent awkward situation with U.K. retailer Marks & Spencer — that the chain blamed on technology — really has t....
Shoppers are willing to try new retail methods if they feel that the retailers are working with, not against, them. And nothing quite says "we're against you, shoppers" as adding a brand-new fee. That's something you do to discour....
It's bad enough when the FBI announces to the world that you're not secure enough. It's even worse when it then reluctantly takes it back — that second bout of publicity will be even bigger than the first, after all. Such is the ....
What would a true mobile-centric shopping experience be like? It would be stunningly different from what exists today.
Deliberately making shoppers jump through hurdles to get "better" pricing is arguably retail's most self-defeating idea ever.
In security circles, hype and marketing — and the security complacency they encourage — can be more dangerous than a well-funded cyberthief.
A Best Buy experiment in New York City is using a giant (350-foot-tall) robot to grab DVDs, CDs, video games, headphones and chargers for customers. There's no doubt that this will prove to be an attention-generating novelty in Manhattan, but wi....
Retailers have discovered that increasing mobile and e-commerce purchases do not necessarily support the shutting down of physical stores. This week's example: Bed, Bath & Beyond.
When a user-experience company recently tested mobile apps from pharmacy chain Rite Aid and restaurant chain Applebee's, both apps greatly frustrated focus-group users. The Applebee's app, foe example, didn’t update pricing when quant....
Walgreens will track the level of exercise and issue automatic credits when customers check out.
Just about every one-time market leader that imploded did so because of insular thinking. The echo chamber that is far too common in CEO suites is lethal.
Last week, one of the world's largest retailers cut a deal with Alibaba, China's global e-commerce giant. Metro will turn over its online operation in China to Alibaba. This sort of thing is becoming a familiar tale in e-tail, it just about....
Responsive Web design makes scaling a website up and down for a mobile device easy. Almost as easy as it facilitates sloppy designs that don't even try to intelligently choose what stays, what goes and, most critically, what should stand by unti....
The reversals by Gap, Victoria's Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch move could have far-reaching implications for retail software that uses in-store traffic to make close to real-time decisions about how many people are needed in the store for t....
It has never caught on with shoppers, but retailers just can't seem to let go of the magic mirror concept.
Brick-and-mortar retailers can't beat Amazon at its game. Instead, they must force Amazon to play theirs.
In a world where shopping malls are losing customers by the escalator-load to more convenient and deeper-inventoried digital options, one mall in a lightly populated Nebraska town is making some impressive progress in getting its shoppers to stick ar....
Retail beacons have huge potential, but it can only be met when chains move beyond seeing beacons solely as tiny ad broadcasters. Coca-Cola is starting to get creative about beacons, with a trial in Norway movie theaters to not merely communicate wit....
Bloomingdale's major gift card glitch illustrated two huge retail IT security issues. First, human approval of gift cards can avoid some big problems. Second, chains have almost no meaningful system for dealing with such glitches.
Printed coupons and mobile devices are as far apart as Bitcoins and silver dollars. One company that's been specializing in bridging the gap sees the answer in not looking at any one element and instead layering.
Nowhere is more customer feedback needed than with mobile apps. What works? What do you like? What is needed that isn't there? And, most critically, why do you like or hate whatever you like and hate? A report crossed my desk the other day that ....
Although there are many pros and cons to Target's initial beacon deployment, the retailer has revealed some clever twists to beacon-powered programs. The further — and more creatively — a retailer gets away using beacons as mini-ad-b....
In its ongoing effort to become a force for good for its brick-and-mortar retail clients, Google has rolled out a traffic prediction element within its search. The feature appears to leverage POS data so that Google visitors can see the times when th....
Walmart has sent a memo to its suppliers reminding them that they need to comply with labeling laws, "emphasizing that the amount inside a package matches what is printed on the outside." At a glance, the memo seems perfunctory. But as any ....
Amazon has proposed that a large section of the sky be declared a drone zone, a chunk of airspace where only high-end, autonomous drones would be allowed to fly. The filing proposes specific standards for such drones, in a clever attempt to craft rul....
The future of retail IT is not going to be in pulling in new data. It's going to be in finding the best ways to integrate all of those data sources to generate new opportunities. One of the best — and potentially wackiest — examples ....
Retailers really want shoppers to use self-checkout, but many underestimate the psychological deterrents they put in place.
Soaring Manhattan real estate prices and e-commerce competition were blamed when FAO Schwarz closed its flagship toy store in Manhattan. But neither one is the real culprit; they are the excuses.
Did the e-commerce God of Uptime Stability meet its match with its Prime Day promotion this week? It depends on your point of view.
When it comes to redefining the brick-and-mortar shopping experience, no major retailer even approaches what Apple has done with the Apple Store.
A few days ago, I had the opportunity to see how the biggest and best global retailer, Walmart, handles this tactic. My expectation was that it would go very well, given that Walmart was one of the earliest supporters of buy-online-etc. That expectat....
When Stores Magazine released its annual Top 100 Retailers list last week, the ranking was pretty much the same as last year. When a list is that static, it's hard to read much into it. That didn't stop the editors of Stores, though.
I've often heard techies say they wish politics could stay out of IT, but it looks like IT has found its way into politics this year. Hotels owned by Donald Trump, the Republican candidate currently polling No. 2 in a field of 14 GOPers, have re....
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