Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

By also using the phone to purchase food, beverages, t-shirts and other merchandise at the show, Apple's approach goes beyond convenience because of the CRM potential. For the first time, producers can learn precisely which guests are purchasing which extras and for how much.Read more...

It is a somewhat simple concept: The amount of fees paid by a merchant to process a credit card transaction is directly related to how secure their environment is. You create a standard scorecard for each merchant's "risk factors," similar to a credit score.Read more...

But the idea is actually grounded in reality and boosts near-term revenue. Like it or not, mobile coupon redemption is not especially easy for most retailers. Read more...

Among the top changes, according to PCI officials, are: a requirement that retailers must perform extensive searches for cardholder data across all their networks and systems; clarification on strong one-way hashing of PANs; a move to a three-year PCI lifecycle; clarification on what constitutes acceptable network segmentation; new wording on what constitutes cardholder data; and the applicability of PCI for card issuers.Read more...

Each of the vendors is basically crossing its arms and pointing at the other two. The next person to tell him, "Hey, we did everything right; you need to talk to those other guys." is not going to like the conversation that follows.Read more...

We now have three years of data to examine—2007 through 2009—so, to the extent that Visa has used the same categories during that time, we can add a bit of context to this information.Read more...

It's for that reason that recent actions from a site specializing in consumer reviews are so baffling. The site, Yelp, has championed the power of customer reviews and it reports some 31 million consumers visiting its site last month. But Yelp then gave vendor advertisers the capability to select which reviews would lead certain pages and it also selectively—and secretly, in the sense that it didn't flag it to its visitors—removed various reviews.Read more...

For those who take a long view of short-range, a very interesting small proof of concept for Bluetooth was deployed at a Florida sporting event back in February. It was at a 6-hour-long Tampa Bay Rays baseball fan fest event.Read more...

Retailers are nervously watching from the sidelines, with one eye on their phones and another on the millions they're spending on interchange fees to payment processors.Read more...

Walmart.com has consistently deployed helpful technology and has been at the forefront of shop-online-pickup-in-store as well as showcasing in-store inventory. Those are excellent features and shrewd uses for the Web site. But both techniques also use the Web to drive sales to the stores. From a shareholder perspective, that's fine. A dollar's a dollar, and a dollar spent in-store will likely yield several more dollars in-store, as long as the consumer is already there. But it also means that when the company's E-Commerce revenue is isolated, it delivers a misleading picture.Read more...

Although that's certainly an impressive achievement, the much more telling figure is the one that wasn't released: the dollar value—or even simply the number—of actual transactions coming from the free app.Read more...

Michaud was on a conference call with a group of franchisees recently, providing a status update on several projects. When asked about the status of one particular project, he informed the group that it had not yet been started, primarily due to a lack of IT resources. This project is important, one that is expected to deliver significant savings to the franchisees' community. He wasn't surprised when they were unhappy with his answer.Read more...

A new report from Forrester Research analyzes that dilemma and has one clean recommendation for today's retailers: Don't worry about it. Consumers either don't care or they understand why the prices might be different. Let the prices be different and worry about more important matters.Read more...

The idea behind the patent—see all of the Patent's glorious tech and logistical specs here—is for Amazon to video each package as it's being filled and link the clip to the order number. The video would show what goes in the box and then do a close-up of the address label as the box is sealed.Read more...

It's time for IT execs to stop trying to explain how the world works and start accepting how others think it works. I'm not saying that "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." I'm saying it's time to make your own way. The way of the Maverick CIO. Read more...

A new multi-university study (Univ. of Minnesota, Univ. of New Mexico and the Rotterdam School of Management) of green buying habits has some interesting implications for E-Commerce. The study (full text here) found that when consumers shopped publicly (in-store), they became self-conscious and tended to make purchases that they wanted to be seen making, such as buying items that would be seen as good for the community and the planet (“green”). When shopping privately (E-Commerce, M-Commerce), consumers tended to be more self-centered and bought that which they truly wanted, but perhaps were less proud of.

Clearly, there’s nothing very surprising about this conclusion. But how should it be internalized in E-Commerce-land? Does this mean that the green elements—fuel efficient, organic, only made by factories that have always banned child laborers, etc.—of products should be played down online, in favor of comfort, price, speed and sex appeal? For in-store, are there ways to design traffic flow to encourage public viewing of purchases that people want to be seen buying? …

Apple's approach is interesting in and of itself, but how might iGroups apply to retail? What if this approach was applied to a very large shopping mall? Or perhaps even a large, freestanding department store? What practical benefit could it have for consumers? The true advantage of the approach is in the discovery of online contacts who just happen to be there when you are. If a consumer goes to the mall with nine of her friends and they want to split up to divide and conquer the shopping, there are so many easier ways to communicate wirelessly. The iGroup idea only moves from mildly interesting to truly powerful when you factor in the discovery.Read more...

Describing the smartphone as a "cord to my soul" and a consumer's "most personal device," Tracy Benson, senior director of Best Buy U.S. marketing, said the trial is promising some contextual relevance to know precisely where a customer is standing and what direction they're looking when they have their phone. Today's mobile technology "doesn't tell me where the customer is looking. This uses different sound waves to detect precisely where they are."Read more...

Long before the term customer relationship management was bastardized to secretly mean salesforce automation, many companies had the vision of an IT system that would help them manage and maximize the relationship they have with their customers. The idea of being relevant is a complex equation that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Because no one really knows the secret formula to being relevant, Michaud's goal as an IT leader is to create systems that will help his business partners answer questions they don't yet know to ask.Read more...

First, Procter & Gamble and other major manufacturers started direct selling, undermining their longtime retail partners. Now comes word that Visa is setting up its own virtual shop to move products. What, Brutus, the sharp, 8-inch interchange dagger wasn’t enough? You had to go for the jugular?

Visa’s E-Commerce move, called Rightcliq, is actually a rather clever CRM move to collect more data on consumers directly. “Rightcliq will enable consumers to track their purchases in one convenient location. This removes the hassle of remembering tracking numbers, digging through confirmation E-mails or having to double-check delivery dates,” a Visa statement said. “The information will all be stored in Rightcliq, giving consumers more control over their online shopping experience.” And here’s the unexpected kicker: The service will accept “other payment options, including competing brands.” Visa is setting up an E-Commerce arena in which people can make purchases on their Amex card? That says everything that needs to be said about how much Visa values those extra CRM tidbits.…

Strong mobile applications today understand the need for extreme efficiency of movements to allow for actions with as little effort as possible. That’s been the problem with mobile payment trials; they simply haven’t proven to be any faster than swiping a credit card. A new PayPal iPhone app—dubbed Send Monday—grasps this ultra-convenient attitude and attacks the nightmare of splitting checks.

By simply banging two iPhones together (gently, please. Those things are mostly glass), payment data is shared. “With bump, users can put two iPhones together and funds are quickly transferred between their PayPal accounts,” a PayPal statement said. “The Split Check feature lets users conveniently divide and quickly reimburse each other for the cost of a meal, including tip and tax, for up to 20 people. Collect Money allows users to request money from multiple people for a joint gift, team dues, concert tickets and more.” …

What would happen if we turned NFC on its head? For example, rather than the phone making a payment to the POS, it makes a payment to the restaurant's bank in the cloud. What would happen if the restaurant deducted the cost of lunch from Facebook credits? What if the guest could earn a free lunch by promoting the brand on Twitter? What if restaurants gave guests their menus on an iPad? What if that menu was customized to each diner’s likes, dislikes and allergies? What about a restaurant booth that has a video-conferencing setup that allowed to people to have lunch together without being in the same restaurant? Read more...

Gap’s site crashed for about 3.5 hours on Wednesday (March 17) and apparently took fellow Gap brands—including Old Navy, Banana Republic and Piperlime—down with it. The cause of the crash, which kept the site down from about 3 PM to about 6:30 PM (New York time), was not immediately known, said Gap Spokesperson Daniel Rubin.

Site performance tracking firm Pingdom was the first to report the trouble, a problem quickly confirmed by another Web performance firm, Gomez. “The error messages seem to indicate that the problem is very serious,” said Matt Poepsel, Gomez’s VP of Performance Strategies.…