Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Supervalu’s Jewel-Osco grocery chain is taking an unusual tactic. It seems to be taunting Twinkie aficionados—who have never been known as the most restrained of shoppers—to run down to its stores and clear out inventory. The chain put out a statement Monday (Dec. 10) that it will be receiving “what is believed to be the final shipment of Twinkies in the country” and that the 20,000-box shipment will be available on Tuesday (Dec. 10) morning. “There will be no limit on how many items a customer can buy” and the items will “be sold at regular price,” the statement said.

The move, which also includes Ding Dongs and Zingers, is baffling. There is every reason to suspect that Twinkie-maker Hostess Brands—which is going bankrupt—will sell the Twinkie line to somebody as that specific brand can undoubtedly still make a profit, especially with new pricing. Hence, there will be more Twinkies, but not from a company called Hostess. Yes, the idea is sort of like a profitable loss-leader tactic, where the idea is to sell lots of stuff to those Twinkie-loving folk. But what happens when the inventory runs out? Could get ugly. Maybe Jewel-Osco misses the Walmart Black Friday types of damage and pandemonium? …

The Web site, where a company "publicly" advertises its goods and services and shows its prices, is similar to the brick-and-mortar store. However, unlike the store, access to the Web site is granted subject to a "contract" between the merchant and the visitor, typically a "Terms of Use" agreement linked to on the bottom of the homepage. Visit the site, and you are agreeing to these terms. Violate the terms, and you are visiting the site unlawfully, exceeding the scope of your authorization to use the site. Or, in legal parlance, violating the computer hacking statute, 18 U.S.C. 1030.Read more...

This new pricing transparency could severely undermine the purchase behaviors these optimized prices were supposed to cause. Will shoppers wait out fluctuations, knowing that prices will eventually drop sharply again? Will the dizzying speed of the changes make them ignore the price wars entirely and default to the chain and products they're most comfortable with? Should this new shopper pricing transparency change how retailers use pricing optimization? Chains today are soon going to have three buckets of pricing optimization options to crunch: internal, such as inventory level, close-outs, slow-moving SKUs, manufacturer incentives, etc.; external, such as competitor price monitoring or what rivals are running out of; and customer/CRM, which is individualized pricing based on a shopper's purchase history, cart assortment and demographics—for both online and, ultimately, in-store pricing.Read more...

This would be a little less embarrassing for Microsoft if not for the fact that the repeatedly crashing operating system was either Windows or Microsoft's own customized version that it sells as a POS system. This is not the way you demonstrate your retail expertise—or compete with Apple.Read more...

Such flaws could be more easily overlooked were this a minor promotion that no one has focused on. But stickers for Merry Christmas, America adorn almost every door to JCPenney stores, and the promotion involves almost every associate and customer-service desk. The idea is that customers ask associates for some holiday-themed pins (three to a customer at any one time seems to be the rule). The back of the pin has a sticker with seven numbers and letters on it.Read more...

On Monday (Dec. 3), a European mobile and E-Commerce payments and POS card reader vendor (Adyen) introduced a device that can handle both magstripe and EMV, which certainly makes sense for Europe. The interesting part, though, is that the Adyen approach uses two units (a reader/scanner and the Apple or Android smartphone or tablet) connected by Bluetooth. That's a lot of hardware for an associate to lug around in the aisles, but it's apparently necessary (at least now) for the EMV functionality. It also nicely—if unintentionally—sidesteps the Apple Lightning problem. Indeed, Bluetooth would theoretically avoid other interface upgrade issues, too. Is the trade-off worth it?Read more...

The mail agency also won't be allowed to do more than $50 million in business in the trial or expand it without more regulators' approvals, which rules out a rapid ramp-up to other cities. The last thing same-day needs is a regulatory straitjacket—but that's exactly what the USPS' service and the chains that use it will be saddled with.Read more...

The Amazon financials (which were supposed to be confidential) showed 2011 U.K. sales of $5.36 billion, which is just a tad higher than the $331 million in revenue that Amazon UK officially reported and paid corporate taxes on. But that playing-field line—and the obvious irritation of MPs on the Public Accounts Committee—makes it pretty clear Amazon has more trouble ahead.Read more...

One new element here is Visa's use of various phone and tablet attributes to try and authenticate the device being used. (Sign of the times: In Visa parlance, laptops are no longer considered mobile.) "There are more than 100 different fields that we can get back from a particular device," including frequency, operating system version, the existence of antivirus software and physical location, said Mark Nelsen, Visa's head of risk and authentication product development.Read more...

Sometimes, one picture is worth one thousand poorly chosen words. Consumer Reports on Monday (Nov. 26) ran this photo, asking whether the “better service” was supposed to happen “by making you go to Starbucks.” (Hey, CR, if we need help crafting snarky retail comments, we’ll let you know.) But this particular piece of cloth signage, which apparently has been used by Dunkin’ Donuts for a few years, does seem to send a rather ill-advised message.

We are guessing the intent was to connect the dots, which suggest the store was closed to do some important renovations. It is those under-construction improvements that the chain is suggesting will provide said better service. But the short-cut taken here pretty directly links “better service” with “closing the store,” which is perhaps more candid than a donut shop wants to go. Maybe the better service envisioned was getting more police patrolling the neighborhood? (Yeah, we went there.)…

Statements released in New York, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles said they were all "experiencing a trend in unfavorable weather, violent acts and pricey travel options" and specified "Pepper spray attacks, trampling, ruined stores and mass hysteria." For New Yorkers, a statement reminded consumers that "last year, the city saw riots outside stores in SoHo during the early hours while a 4:00 a.m. stampede in Herald Square frayed tempers and teams had to be devoted to directing shoppers like rush-hour traffic. Every year scores of shoppers get caught out by the alternate parking rule, mistakenly thinking that it does not apply during the retail bonanza." It's certainly fair game to tout the convenience of E-Commerce, but this is the first we've seen an E-tailer slam physical holiday shopping so directly.Read more...

Before retailers start taking down the happy Santa videos and replacing them with films about dying puppies, let's drill down into what the study actually found. (OK, you can show one of the puppy videos, but not the one with the beagles.) The study, from the University of California Riverside's School of Business Administration, offered participants various levels of Amazon gift certificates, with some of the awards being given immediately and larger payments delivered later.Read more...

When a CEO takes over a troubled chain, bold moves are generally encouraged. But when the chain is a much-beloved 110-year-old, 1,100-store, $17 billion household name, bold can be very bad. Enter Ron Johnson—fresh from Apple and formerly from Target—and his taking over JCPenney. The chain is melting impressively quickly, and Johnson’s boldness is a textbook example of taking the wrong lessons from retail history.

This is explored in StorefrontBacktalk‘s November monthly column in Retail Week, the U.K.’s largest retail publication. The column lives here at Retail Week. For those who don’t have a Retail Week subscription—shame on you!—here’s a copy at StorefrontBacktalk. You can also check out all of our recent Retail Week columns here.…

The result, as our media partner Retail Week reported, isn't just that vendors were pulled into thinking in terms of actual retail needs. It also pulled non-IT managers into thinking about IT. As John Lewis Retail Operations Manager Mark Lewis said, "It sparks ideas in our minds."Read more...

It's the PIN pads that are disturbing. They make it clear this gang was regularly swapping compromised PIN pads for the legitimate versions on retailers' counters. Even more disturbing: It wasn't the PIN pads that got these thieves caught.Read more...

Giving those shoppers an in-store option to use that PayPal currency, a place that has used (along with new) instruments and audio equipment and where said equipment can be touched and listened to before being purchased, made a lot of sense to Wes Muddle, Guitar Center's VP for Finance. So it's not surprising that the chain made it a priority to let every customer know about the PayPal option, through lots of store signage and associate training. And, gasp, Guitar Center is even considering offering cash incentives—though it would much rather PayPal do that instead.Read more...

The tags are soft tags and Kovio's approach is to try and get manufacturers to embed them deep within shoes and other clothing so they are not visible to the shopper, which makes the removal of the devices almost impossible without severely damaging the product. Mashkoori argues that this could change many standard retail tactics, such as having only one shoe on the floor and forcing the associate to go to the backroom to get the mate.Read more...

The specifics of this Papa John's case involve a vendor that never worked for Papa John's but was retained by quite a few franchisees. That vendor, OnTime4U, sent a huge number of texts to customers of Papa John's franchisees and never received explicit permission from any of those customers. If this had been a case of whether OnTime4U had violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), it would be a very easy case. But because the case is focused on the retailer that never retained the vendor, things get much trickier.Read more...

Part of the reason for Macy's silence on in-store navigation could be that it's only in the flagship store. A more likely reason: There's only one safe way to roll out untried technology on Black Friday, and that's very, very quietly.Read more...

Johnson's comment points to a hole in the legal minefield of marketing to children. Federal law strictly restricts and all but prohibits online marketing and tracking of children younger than 13 (once they become teenagers, the government—and parents around the world—have pretty much agreed that it's time to surrender). But there are no such restrictions in-store. Ironically, the reasons Congress agreed to restrict online activity are, today, probably more relevant to in-store, thanks to mobile.Read more...

In another blow to mobile wallets’ credibility, word leaked out last Thursday (Nov. 1) that Google will soon copy PayPal by introducing a plastic Google Wallet Card—complete with the magstripe that Google Wallet’s NFC hasn’t been able to displace. (This may be what Google was planning to announce last month but didn’t.) Google will be pitching the plastic for times “when you can’t tap and pay,” and any coupons or loyalty cards in a user’s Google Wallet will be automatically applied.

But we have to ask—why? Sure, we understand that Google seriously misunderstood either how hard mobile payments would be, how much its competitors hate it or how unwilling consumers are to use anything but plastic. If this is really Google throwing in the towel on NFC-based mobile payments, we have to wonder what else Google isn’t going to follow through on for Google Wallet retailers. After all, Google will still be tapping the transaction stream for CRM data, even at places that haven’t signed on. Is the search giant going to act like a partner after all this? This move may be just what Google Wallet needs. But chains? Not so much.…

The problem: Target's giftcards don't move easily between the chain's in-store, E-Commerce and mobile systems, each of which is in its own silo. Putting QR codes in-store to let people buy electronic giftcards is a fine, no-fuss step—but then making it particularly tedious to move those cards to the recipient's preferred channel is not the way to make those new customers happy with Target.Read more...

Stores in this area of New Jersey—StorefrontBacktalk's main office is in the heart of Sandy's path—are used to outages of a few hours and maybe, during severe situations, maybe one day. The bad news: With global weirding (the term for the many strange weather patterns caused by global warming), there's a fine chance these week-plus outages may be something that has to be planned for. With that in mind, let's look at what some of the chains—including Best Buy, Target and Starbucks—discovered when they could only exist via emergency generator. It meant POS without network (no debit, no gift cards, no returns, no lookups) and few ways to tell customers what they couldn't do.Read more...

At a glance, retailers might be inclined to dismiss this price match as something akin to what Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Diner's Club might offer and not at all related to what a retail chain might do. Although PayPal is indeed a payment device, its in-store retail efforts—where PayPal offers to handle POS purchases at Home Depot, JCPenney, Abercrombie & Fitch, Toys"R"Us, Foot Locker and Barnes & Noble, among others—make it something that can't be so easily dismissed. For the doubters out there, note that the program stresses it covers both in-store and online purchases.Read more...

No, this program has everything to do with getting E-tail shoppers into the stores. And, along the way, it has become the exact opposite of the original idea of merged-channel programs, where shoppers were encouraged to shop in whatever way was easiest and most efficient for their situation and the purchase's particulars.Read more...