Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

The carts, jointly crafted by Microsoft and MediaCart Holdings, use consumers' loyalty cards to grab the historic shopping data and the uploaded shopping lists and deliver data back to consumer goods manufacturers about ad performance, by comparing ads displayed with the ultimate customer purchases. That last part is easy to track because the carts assist directly with checkout. Read more...

Office Depot CIO Tim Toews isn't sure exactly where that line must be drawn, but he's confident it's moving more toward the data-sharing side, provided the consumer sees immediate, real and actionable incentives. 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...

No, that won't work. As much I try, it's hard to pretty up a retail technology/E-Commerce panel as an exciting outing. But for a tech-biz discussion, we've got two decent offerings. On Wednesday morning (9:45-10:45 AM, at the Javits, Concurrent Hall A 1A21/22), StorefrontBacktalk will be moderating a look at The Road To Merged Channel. Read more...

One $200 million retail chain—1800mattress.com—is taking a baby step toward merged channel, by sending copies of online chat transcripts to the local brick-and-mortar. "Having the complete transcript of what the customer is looking for onscreen in the store facilitates the sale," EVP Joe Vicens said. Read more...

Some of them are so classic that it might be helpful for retail IT execs to hear these customers' stories in their own voice, without editorial comment or filtering. From time to time—when we see some that look especially intriguing—we'll share these.

This one comes from a reader describing a holiday shopping attempt: Essentially, I purchased two bar stools (I have a breakfast nook in my new apartment—and no, I never thought I'd use the words "breakfast nook") from Target, using a Target gift card and a Visa gift card I received for Christmas. Read more...

But the chain is also learning that the online world—with its thousands of bloggers armed with screen captures—is fairly unforgiving when it comes to marketing excesses. Read more...

The timing of this nation-wide hiccup couldn't have come at a worse time for retailers. Merchants and giftcard exchange sites have been pushing giftcard convenience more aggressively this year than ever, positioning it as the ultimate hassle-free gift. To have that network crash on Dec. 26—one of the busiest days for gift returns and gift card redemptions—is certainly not ideal. Read more...

As small groups of Web thinkers sketch out what Web 3.0–the so-called Semantic Web–may look like, how much attention should E-Commerce execs be paying?

In an interesting RetailWire story and discussion, questions are raised about whether this will be a broad transition or merely a niche enhancement for those who bother. But if major e-tailers want to change, the sad reality is that they need to get involved early or surrender the ability to complain later. Given how much E-Commerce execs love to complain, that latter option seems unrealistic. ;-)…

In a move with significant potential impact for online marketing, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has cleared Google’s $3.1 billion takeover of DoubleClick.

Saying the deal is “unlikely to substantially lessen competition,” the commission voted 4-to-1 to approve. But the transaction still faces substantial antitrust scrutiny in Europe and Google has said that it won’t close the deal before it has clearance from European regulators,” said this Wall Street Journal story. The European Commission has set a deadline of April 2, 2008, to complete its review, the Journal said.…

Leverage's vision is not radically different than other giftcard firms—such as PlasticJungle—but it's focus on the CRM aspect is. With a formula that will likely deliver about 40 percent of its giftcards directly from retailers with the remainder consumer to consumer exchange, Leverage plans on selling information about their consumers to retail and manufacturing advertisers, said Leverage CEO Mark Roberts. Read more...

This RetailWire story nicely sums up the action, but the essence is that Facebook tried sharing--without permission--customers' purchases with people on their friends list. Did Facebook cross the line? I'd rather say that they made this move inappropriately. The difference is that I do agree with Facebook that something very similar to this program could work, but it needs to be presented properly and at least start with more-than-ample opt-out options. Read more...

This is not merely a multimedia ad-displayer. It has the potential to interact with smartphones, smartcarts and contactless credit cards. So where are the retail IT leaders in all of this? Nowhere near, as IT isn't seriously involved with—and certainly not in charge of—most of the major retail digital signage deployments today. Right there, in a Unix shell, is what's wrong with corporate IT departments today.Read more...

Payment is then made solely by mailing a check to that address, to the name on that credit card. The check isn't issued until the buyer receives that giftcard. The guarantee is also capped at $1,000.Read more...

Taking a calculated risk, CircuitCity this week unveiled a social interaction feature to its E-Commerce site, where it’s customers can exchange on-topic messages. CC’s premise and hope: customers will bash and praise various manufacturers, while pretty much ignoring other retailers. If the chain’s new “CityCenter Community” facilitates unhappy customers warning others away from CircuitCity, that’s when the chain’s commitment to a social Web site will be tested.

“Circuit City wants to empower consumers with innovative approaches to shopping,” said Mark Oldani, vice president and general manager of Circuit City Direct. “We were the first multichannel retailer to incorporate customer-centric features such as ratings, reviews and discussion forums, and our new CityCenter builds on this tradition, adding blogs, personal profiles and photo galleries to Circuit City’s growing online community.”…

But in what could be called the Boomerang Strategy, what consumers will see in-store this season will be quite far removed from the utopian epitome of merged retail channels, with the customer shopping through whichever channel is most convenient and store management apathetic about that customer choice.Read more...

The program is crafted for more than 600,000 targeted Tesco customers and "everyone on the database will automatically become members of fashionfile and be invited through an E-mai to activate their own online space." Read more...

Retail software sales last year were $7.3 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of 7 percent through 2011, "catapulting the market to $10.4 billion," the report said. Read more...

For years, American technology leaders have gotten used to seeing the U.S. no longer globally technologically dominant. But nowhere is that lack-of-dominance more pronounced than with cellphone technology. That's why I saw this week's Google Android news as something that was exciting in its potential to shake the industry up. Trust me: this is one sector that truly needs a lot of shaking up. Read more...

With Oracle’s Fusion package barely a year away, some Oracle-ites wonder if the delivery could ever match the hype. The company has now changed lead horses, turning the delivery responsibility over to in-house code rider Thomas Kurian.

In a nicely done BusinessWeek piece on the subject, the hurdles that Kurian faces are detailed. Worth a read.…

"There has been a lot of talk about social shopping," said Patti Freeman Evans, the report's lead analyst, but that talk hasn't translated into sales. "Social and community sites still rank low in shoppers' minds as useful places to research and shop for gifts. Only three percent of users who plan to buy online this holiday season—and six percent of those in the segment who are ages 18 to 34—plan to add a wish list or gift list to their MySpace, Facebook, or similar Web site page to help their friends and family select gifts." Read more...

In the reversal of age-old television advertising pricing models, Best Buy wants more money for delivering a much smaller audience. There's a logic to it. Instead of consumers sharing their private videos with the world, they'll pay a few extra dollars—Best Buy wants $7 for 100 minutes of video hosting—to exclude anyone who is not on their list.

Amazon on Thursday announced that for more than 450 of its top toys this holiday season, it will offer full videos. Read more...

A consumer shopping for a home entertainment system accesses a 3-D CADCAM representation of his home and drags it to an entertainment E-Commerce site. This large digital file, however, is much more than a mere architectural depiction of the consumer's home.

It includes window placement and the times of day—during different months—that the sun shines through various windows and at roughly what intensity and for how long. Someone has entered the style of thickness of the rug and wall-coverings and a database lookup has associated those with their likely sound-dampening characteristics. Read more...