Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Some are questioning, though, whether the chain's lower priced approach might limit the number of consumer phones that can access the related content. Read more...

But several major cellphone carriers are preparing to bundle the 2-D barcode software with phones as they ship. Will that make a difference? Read more...

The retail move to embrace 2-D barcodes that began with a Sears trial in December and strong interest from BestBuy, the Gap and Target is inching forward, with a 500-store trial starting Thursday in San Francisco.

The trial, involving CitySearch, Antenna Audio and Scanbuy, is a fairly basic mobile integration effort. “More than 500 restaurants, shops and businesses reviewed by Citysearch are placing printed bar codes in their windows, and people who have Scanbuy software loaded on their phones can simply take a picture of the code and their phone’s Internet browser will immediately take them to the restaurant’s corresponding Citysearch page,” said a statement from the group.…

The biggest current concern—which is also likely to be the most short-lived—is that the service is available on a relatively few number of phones in the U.S.. That concern—a shortage of supported phones—was mentioned by a Sears manager involved in the trial. Read more...

Although the initial retailer for this trial wasn't identified, the company has been talking with Best Buy, the Gap, Nordstrom and Target. And for a fee ranging from $250K to 450K, they can leverage the trial to compete against online alternatives. Read more...

The problem materialized because this year, for the first time, several E-tailers tried to re-create some of the excitement that surrounds brick-and-mortar Black Friday consumers-wait-at-2 AM-and-then-stampede-for-half-off-an-HDTV sales. The idea was to announce some very enticing deals and then to not offer them until midnight while stressing that only a limited number of each item was available. The retailers' campaigns were designed to force a huge number of consumers to hit their E-tail sites at the exact same moment and try to buy the exact same product. If you're looking to stress test your inventory systems, this is an ideal way to do it.Read more...

Many retailers have tried contactless systems where a customer's smartphone displays a barcode that a cashier scans to complete the transaction. But Cimbal flips that process: The retailer displays a barcode that the customer reads with his phone's camera. That switch means retailers don't need new barcode-reading hardware. It also means customers never show retailers their account information, so it can't be stored—or stolen. Read more...

It’s been almost two years since Sears become the first U.S. retailer to embrace 2D barcodes, a move that launched a tidal wave of, well, pretty much nothing. This week, Google said it was trying to breathe life into these barcodes by mailing 200,000 2D barcode stickers to small businesses throughout the country. Such a move could allow these mom-and-pops to offer in-depth marketing information to anyone at the click of a smartphone.

The Google initiative, first reported by Techcrunch, is proactive and therefore feels much more powerful than Microsoft’s efforts to market its “Tag” code idea. And Google is sweetening the potential adoption-rate odds by giving away 40,000 Quickmark 2D barcode reader apps for the iPhone. Just like contactless, which is also suffering from a heart-pounding string of apathy, 2D needs three things to happen in parallel if it is to succeed: A huge number of places that are showcasing 2D barcodes; a very strong percentage of consumers carrying phones that can easily read 2D barcodes; and plenty of publicized incentives to get those consumers to use the 2D barcodes from those retailers. The phones are well on their way, and Google’s initiative seems like a good faith effort to jumpstart the other two points.…

This is the latest in a series of high-tech blunders from the 123-year-old $47 billion 3,900-store chain. Is this because of the chain's size or, more likely, because it has been pushing the envelope on what it's trying to do technologically, perhaps beyond its testing limits.Read more...

But what does any of this have to do with M-Commerce? A lot. If they finally get around all of the technical and logistical hurdles of M-Commerce, they will be trying to get millions of consumers to interact with their sites—via their phones—and see product lists, read reviews, watch multimedia demonstrations, interact with social sites, download PDF instruction manuals and even ask their peers for feedback on their shopping choices before consummating those purchases. That's all great, but—if successful—will it turn the Home Depots, Walmarts and Targets of the world into examples of what may become known as "The AT&T Factor"?Read more...

But the indictment revealed several key contradictions with 7-Eleven and Heartland and one major retailer's security executive found the government's specifics to be a convincing indictment against PCI.Read more...

It's not a coincidence that, for the last couple of years, Sears has been at the forefront of several major technologies, almost all of which resonant overwhelmingly with Gen Y, including social networking, mobile and companion shopping. These include being the first retailer to support 2-D barcodes, a new approach called a GiveTogether gifting program and a GPS-based mobile commerce application.Read more...

Could these be coincidences? Might they indeed be isolated debit card incidents? Absolutely. But this also might be an initial heads up that the debit card system relied on by major retailers today has inherent flaws. What happened, with both Macys and Best Buy, with software specifically designed to look for and prevent these kinds of multiple identical charges? What about the systems at the card processors and the banks?Read more...

Microsoft will use the show to roll out its version of smartphone-readable 2-D barcodes. Redmond's approach with "Microsoft Tag" brings multiple colors into those barcodes, which allows them to be 50 percent smaller but still more easily and reliably read than today's 2-D barcodes, said Kevin Kerr, Microsoft's worldwide retail technology strategist. Other rollouts will include virtual makeup mirrors, virtual customized music creation and wireless debit devices.Read more...

Payments for taxis, parking and movies may prove less patient in waiting for new technologies than E-Commerce, a move that could be a bad sign for once-promising mobile payment method Near Field Communication (NFC), according to a new report on Tuesday (Dec. 9) from ABI Research.

With a headline “NFC No Answer for Mobile Payments,” ABI reported that “once, NFC was the leading contender among technologies that could enable mobile payments. But NFC has developed more slowly than anticipated and will not offer viable large-scale mobile payment solutions for at least six years.” That will open the door for SMS, mobile Internet and downloadable mobile applications, the research firm wrote. We should add that 2-D barcode was once seen as a placeholder for NFC, but unexciting trial performance for 2-D has increased support for alternative alternatives.…

The London-based 823-store Sainsbury's grocery chain immediately issued almost a half-million dollars' worth of £10 (roughly equivalent to $20) vouchers to some 30,000 disgruntled customers and personally--through staff volunteers and no software automation—called every one of those 30,000 to apologize and tell them about the vouchers. Read more...

Sears is in a fascinating online position. On the one hand, the $50 billion 3,800-store-chain says its online numbers are soaring, with the number of unique visitors in February 2008 reportedly rising 20 percent in that month. But Sears.com has also run into quite a few speedbumps. Read more...

Retailers and telcos and others are watching test markets such as New York City and seeing how many consumers are using contactless payment. Their assumptions are based on the number of contactless cards in the population. But if that population doesn't realize that they have a contactless card, there's nothing valid that can be concluded when those people do not use them. Read more...

But, for better or for worse, that's not a long-term situation. Like the presidential candidates who had to fly South for the winter (or fly the coop entirely), these compliance salesfolk have a limited lifespan. Within the next year or so, retailers are going to shift from trying to become PCI compliant to having to maintain PCI compliance. Read more...

The trial with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) commuters started Tuesday and is expected to continue for four months, said Mohammad Khan, the CEO of Vivotech, which is one of the technology vendors involved in the trial. Sprint is also a key partner in the project. Read more...

The new interim CEO, Bruce Johnson, came up through the KMart side of the business and he had gone to KMart from French retail empire Carrefour, where he had been director, organization and systems and a member of the management board. Before that, he spent 16 years at Colgate-Palmolive and had worked as a management consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton and Arthur Andersen & Company.Read more...

But there is a huge IT frustration with those mobile devices when it comes to retail employees. It's not the fact that most new retail tech capabilities are mobile and experimental, which just begs the data breach Gods to punish managers. That's less frustrating than infuriating. Read more...

Pioneers have to be very careful or else their well-intentioned errors could mar the technology for anyone else to deploy. Put another way, is a bad experience in a very early trial proof of a good execution of a flawed idea or the flawed execution of a good idea? Regrettably, both results look exactly the same. Read more...