Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Oh, and Donahoe not only believes that NFC will never be adopted by large chains, but he has a specific prediction of when that adoption will happen—just in case he's wrong. And, no, we're not making any of this up.Read more...

The fact that it was a thief who stole the funds is undisputed. However, the immediate next actions of Wal-Mart and Green Dot—which manages MoneyCard for Wal-Mart—is a textbook example not of what should not be done, but how it shouldn't be done.Read more...

But it won't address many of today's age-ID problems, including waiving license checks if the associate thinks the person is old enough, license photos often being bad enough to fool weak authenticators, and under-age consumers using the driver's license of an older sibling. Still, 7-Eleven has crafted ways to deal with some of those gotchas with the new system.Read more...

Several years ago, when Tom Peterson was general manager of RSS, it was a much larger group than the $1.15 billion in revenue reported in the release. Pretty much everything that wasn't mainframe or core supply chain fit under RSS, writes GuestView Columnist Greg Buzek.Read more...

Take the example of a bottle of L'anza brand shampoo, suggests Legal Columnist Mark Rasch. The manufacturer in California sells the shampoo for, say, $5 a bottle in the U.S., but sells the same shampoo overseas for only $3 a bottle. It is perfectly legal for a retailer to buy the genuine shampoo overseas, import it back to the U.S., and then resell it for a profit. But add a label to the bottle of shampoo, and the situation may change. Read more...

Retail Columnist Todd Michaud has a suggestion: Go pull out the last POS RFP you put together and see what percentage of requirements that were in the RFP are actually in use today. It's a safe bet you'll be surprised, especially if it was a long time ago.Read more...

Beyond IBM's history of selling out key areas (printers, laptops, disk drives, etc.) a year or so before the market is about to die, this time it's the popularization of in-store tablets along with the integration of mobile and E-Commerce that is aggravating POS's demise. Retail Columnist Todd Michaud predicted in January that this year would see the death of the traditional POS. IBM apparently agrees. (Related Story: Unhappy With Your POS System? Take A Peek At Your Last POS RFP. Don't You Feel Bad Now?Read more...

It's striking, though, how much of a contrast the 36-year-old Mayer makes compared with the existing members—with an average age of 60, the board is heavily weighted with CEOs of non-tech companies, venture capitalists and Wal-Mart veterans. The board seems to be acknowledging that it may not be the ideal group to oversee Wal-Mart's moves into the worlds of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, geofencing and Foursquare.Read more...

It seems that as they exited the Havelock Wal-Mart with multiple yet-to-be-paid-for HP desktop computers, store officials did not stop them, but they did jot down their license plate number. Police found that it was from a car rental company, which happened to be able to remotely shut down the engine. And GPS was involved, too. Yep, this was a dual-shoplifter takedown, ultra-geek style.Read more...

In fact, what lawmakers probably thought was a simple idea runs into a buzzsaw of complexities—and the IT project is the easiest part of the problem.Read more...

Some self-checkout advocates concede that these types of self-checkout thefts are very real, but that they are often the result of sloppy self-checkout deployments, with some stores not activating all security functions, using insufficient staff around self-checkout, not bothering with security cameras and ignoring other self-checkout best practices.Read more...

In short, it means beating Amazon not with price cuts—which would only reinforce a cheap quality reputation while gutting already thin margins—but by delivering the type of buying advice and pleasant environment that Amazon can't touch.Read more...

After all, even the hottest things in retail-chain POS today—iPads and iPods outfitted with sleds—still only handle one type of payment device: a magstriped card.Read more...

One of the problems with the Costco system in various stores was either inadequate or non-existent notification to customers when a purchase was rejected. If an item's weight was different than expected, the system would void the purchase and not charge the customer. But many customers didn't notice the item was rejected, so they placed it in their cart, took their payment-card receipt and left the store.Read more...

Holding up each vegetable or piece of fruit in front of the scanner for one second? That's not a recipe for efficiency, even once the system actually works.Read more...

There's an easy way to overcome that customer (and cashier) inertia: a redesigned PIN pad that doesn't feel much different to customers but still makes swipes obsolete.Read more...

That means the government will ask for—and Congress might insist on—extensive additional limits on using and even collecting such data. If a chain is going to collect specific geolocation data, the retailer needs to do more than inform those shoppers, said Peder Magee, an attorney in the FTC's division of Privacy and Identity Protection. "You need to ask for permission," he said.Read more...

In fact, Microsoft's effort produced a bad-results hat trick: It didn't drive more store (or mobile or online) traffic, it wasted time for both store associates Read more...

As Best Buy itself said: "While the updates are occurring, customers will be unable to search or browse products, place orders or check order status on BestBuy.com, m.bestbuy.com (mobile or tablet), BestBuy.com/espanol and store kiosks." Customers also "will not receive E-mails regarding orders while the updates are in progress" and checking order status—plus, of course, making online purchases—"will also be inaccessible to store employees, call center agents and online support representatives."Read more...

Ironically, it's Starbucks—which was one of the first to try mobile payment and intrinsically understood the social media concept years before Facebook launched—that has embraced sending giftcards (for customer birthdays, which is another clever CRM touch) through the hail/sleet/dark-of-night people. This issue actually combines two marketing devices popular throughout the 20th Century: snailmail and plastic giftcards/loyalty cards.Read more...

It's a powerful idea, but it has some serious limits. First off, Facebook, Twitter and tons of gaming blogs will see to it that the need for Birds fans to go into a Wal-Mart and hunt around will likely only last a day or two. After that, the full sets of clues will be published by early fans (the store campaign begins March 25) and the incentive will quickly diminish. Suddenly, the advantage of Wal-Mart versus rivals disappears.Read more...

This did more than give this guy his first police record. It set in motion a complicated series of legal problems for Best Buy, along with other retailers trying to sell Wi-Fi-accessible televisions.Read more...

To be clear, what Shopkick said it did is quite impressive. To what end, though? Are these shoppers who went to the local large mall and simply hit store after store to accumulate the points? The much more meaningful figures would have been sales numbers, to indicate that this rush of manipulated foot traffic did something beyond running to the next store.Read more...

The initial test used the shopper's physical location, but no other personal data (such as purchase history, other apps on the phone, Web search logs, personal demographics). However, personalization will likely be the subject of upcoming trials, said Dave Etherington, the SVP for marketing and mobile at Titan, the advertising firm that executed the Gap trial.Read more...

ISIS has faced criticism for being overly vague and unable to articulate any significant differences—let alone advantages—over rivals such as Google Wallet and PayPal. Add the fact that ISIS is the only one of those three that hasn't done a public trial, and the sensitivity of not appearing substantive should be huge.Read more...