Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Think it's because Barnes & Noble is in the dead-tree book business? So is Amazon. Besides, at last report the brick-and-mortar bookstore business was still holding up (if only barely). It's the Nook and the chain's efforts to merge physical book and E-book retailing that have been a bottomless money pit. So why did Barnes & Noble—having lost its biggest physical-store competitor when Borders went under—fail to gain any merged channel traction?Read more...

To be fair, after more than a year, 552 vanity TLDs (out of 1,930 applications) have actually made it through the process to the point where there are no objections and they don't match other applicants. That includes retail-related terms like .camera, .clothing, .market, .markets, .pharmacy, .shoes and .toys, along with 23 actual retailer names. They're ready to start getting their contracts. Everybody else still has hurdles to climb.Read more...

In a handful of jurisdictions, the mere possession of such devices is illegal. What the vendor, San Diego-based Indyme, is pushing is a silent system that alerts LP that a foiled bag (calling it a "booster bag" is so clichéd) or magnet has entered the store and it flags the shopper and allows the shopper to be tracked, hopefully discretely. It also triggers security cameras to follow the shopper.Read more...

Nearby stores within the Ralph's and Albertson's chains avoid this issue by simply forcing the shopper to close out the order before proceeding to payment, according to a California TV station's report. The Safeway stores had a "finish" button but was it not required that it be hit before proceeding to payment. One wonders how much time was spent watching and fixing these holes and creating and distributing the signs, as well as dealing with customers who were apparently paying for other shoppers. It's also possible that many of those ripped-off shoppers never detected it, but they will now that media coverage has kicked in. How will those shoppers feel about Safeway's "let the glitch happen and we'll fix the individuals who notice later" approach? Compare all that to how much time it would have likely taken IT to simply force that the "finish" button be hit before payment was accepted? Ahhh, the wacky world of retail cost-benefit and analysis.Read more...

This is bad for an infinite number of reasons, but none more striking than the fact that associates are the primary interaction point with shoppers. When they see something new and unfamiliar, the associate is where they turn. When that inquiry is met with a baffled look and a pair of shrugged shoulders, that IT initiative is about to lose any shoppers—and IT may never know why. (They'd know if they asked associates, but if thought about asking associates, they would have had them briefed in the first place.)Read more...

CVS now gets three extremely valuable pieces of data: First, a list of prescription drugs presumably being filled by a rival pharmacy. What a clear chance to argue that those particular drugs should be brought over to CVS, an opportunity that doesn't exist without this information. Secondly, a list of various other things the customer is buying, many of which are likely sold by CVS. Another sales opportunity. Third, given that this is a mobile app, the data is already tied into a specific customer. This sharply enriches the CRM profile for CVS customers—and does it for very few dollars and in a way that seems to be altruistic.Read more...

Over the past decade, Council officials, retail IT people and QSAs have begun to question the quarterly requirement, but the fear was that retailers would simply not do it, as they could never cost-justify it, particularly for Level 4 retailers. The council has always had a strong pragmatic nature, weighing the effectiveness of guidelines against what they could realistically hope for retailers to do.Read more...

The question, then, is whether it has to start in-store. What if this hypothetical chain pushes some attractive incentives to get lots of customers and prospects to download its free mobile app? And buried in the terms and conditions is the right for the app to monitor images? The next selfie or Snapchat that the shopper sends is captured and the facial data points are noted. Here's where it gets even freakier. Once the mobile app has identified the face of the shopper—and has linked it to whatever mobile shopper that customer has done—it can tell the in-store camera databases what to look for. When that shopper walks in, it can connect the mobile activity with any observed in-store activity.Read more...

Slingshot, the third-largest ISP in New Zealand with about 10 percent of the market, last week rolled out its Global Mode service, which lets users block Internet geolocation. That's used by many digital content providers to prevent movies and e-books from being viewed in regions where they haven't officially been licensed.Read more...

Personally, I've never met someone who was as personable, intelligent and just plain nice as Walt. He will be missed far more than any words can convey.Read more...

Here’s the problem, pens Legal Columnist Mark Rasch. Most retailers have privacy policies that say they will turn over data (or even databases) in response to "lawful" government demands or requests. But if it turns out that the demand or request is overbroad, unreasonable, not supported by probable cause, done for an improper purpose, or simply that the government did not follow the proper procedure in obtaining the subpoena or warrant, or in otherwise requesting the information, the demand may not be lawful. And voila! The retailer will have violated its own privacy policies.Read more...

What is being given up is data, but this isn't referring to the limiters your team will give to Twitter ("we want 18-24 year old women who have Tweeted about clothing in the prior 96 hours and who are nearing our store between 9 AM and 10 PM"). The data at risk are the responses. Let's say you broadcast these discount messages to 4,000 proximity shoppers and 300 react, 250 download the coupon and 86 redeem the coupon. You won't be the only one saving those 86 names in the "nice" list, the one that you'll want to check a lot more than twice. So will Twitter.Read more...

Most of the retailers did OK, including Walmart, CVS, Costco, Home Depot, Target, Walgreen, Lowe's, Best Buy and Sears. The grocery chains (Kroger, Safeway and Supervalu) did poorly, but mobile commerce is generally a low grocery priority. Then we get back to Amazon, the retailer—let alone e-tailer—that has generally made all matters tech a huge priority. Amazon got beaten up on the ratings partially because the spreadsheet said it didn't have a true mobile site. But it seems to have a true mobile site—a very nice-looking one, too. They do, but it's apparently not done in the way that Google has in mind.Read more...

But on Thursday (June 27), Citi reissued that investors' note at Target's prompting, because in reality Target's IT spending will actually rise next year. It seems there was a communication problem between Target's top executives and Citi. The new version of the note reads: "TGT is investing approx. $0.20-$0.25 per share more in technology this year than last year. Next year, the incremental spending on technology is expected to be worth $0.05-$0.10/share YOY." No slashed IT budget. No wild swing between investing in new systems and digesting the results. In short, a much more conventional IT budget story. But wait—what if Citi had gotten it right the first time? Could that even have worked? Read more...

As far as Amex is concerned, here's the deal. If you want to accept American Express corporate cards, then, according to the terms of the agreement with Amex, you have to also accept all other Amex cards as well. And you have to agree to all of Amex’s terms. It’s all or nothing—or as antitrust lawyers might argue, an unlawful tying arrangement in violation of the Clayton Antitrust Act. Antitrust lawyers talk like that.Read more...

The details of the breach illustrate how innocuously these problems can crop up and how destructive they can be. And when your shoppers are hurt because the data they shared with you gets stolen, the blame falls on the retailer regardless of whether your team had anything to do with the breach. It's not pleasant, but there is something you can do about it.Read more...

By looking at the different choices made by Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Nordstrom, Staples, Tesco, Wet Seal and Lowe's, Oracle categorizes three IT lab approaches. But how a lab is corporately structured will make little difference if senior management isn't willing to first learn (and to pay a lot for those lessons) and to be open to a future that they may not like. The job of a chain is to adapt to the reality in its market. The job of a dying chain is to cling to its current tactics if the future doesn't look like what it wants it to look like.Read more...

Jay Dunn, the site's chief marketing officer, told Internet Retailer that he thought the approach has strong potential, but he's skeptical until he sees how it does with the site's full launch later this summer. "I have not yet seen conventional responsive design handle a true retail site. I have 6,000 products and more than 24,000 product images, not counting color swatches, marketing, video and animation," Dunn said. "I haven’t yet seen the pure responsive design technology that handles that smoothly and efficiently across multiple devices." The historic problem with server-based approaches has been that it ultimately slows down the experience after the initial download, as the shopper needs to do a lot of back-and-forth interaction with the site.Read more...

There are many factors behind those numbers, but it really comes down to the fact that Walmart's massive global supply chain needs to support more than 4,000 physical stores—a feat that Amazon need not worry about. Given that huge physical burden, Walmart's costs are quite impressive. But no one ever said that fighting against a pure play was particularly fair. Like all major chains, Walmart initially had two choices. Run the chain as one big happy merged channel family or separate and run online and offline as separate companies. Neither approach is perfect.Read more...

The Supreme Court in this case used federal privacy laws to protect a car dealership from being sued in a class action lawsuit. But the facts could also serve to help, for example, Target trying to defend itself against a consumer lawsuit about a defective product, where the chain could say that privacy laws prevent its revealing key information to the plaintiffs, opines Legal Columnist Mark Rasch. The court indicated its intention to read exceptions to general privacy laws narrowly and, in an unusual way, used privacy laws not just to protect privacy, but to protect businesses themselves.Read more...

Let's start with the basics on this one. Setting aside for the moment the counter-conclusion ("Why is it that 69 percent of online Canadians are not apparently more likely to purchase after following a brand on Twitter?"), the implication of this stat is to suggest a connection between the Twitter efforts and an increase in purchases/conversions. But isn't a shopper who chooses to follow a retail brand almost certainly already a fan of that brand and, as such, already someone who is quite likely to make purchases?Read more...

As a practical matter, though, very few consumers would bother (or even know) to ask such a question. They hear their bank say that their card is being re-issued due to something fraud-like. If a survey asks whether they have personally experienced fraud, they're almost certainly going to say yes. For retailers, this is a very key problem.Read more...

These days, it's just as likely for shoppers to use the Best Buy site as a way to explore products before buying them at another physical store or a rival's Web site. In effect, the Best Buy site is becoming a showroom for other e-tailers.Read more...

High heels present some interesting LP challenges. Not only are they easily slipped on and off without the need for a monitored dressing room, but they need to be tried on in the store, which can make typical security tags counterproductive. At the NRF Loss Prevention Conference show in San Diego on Wednesday (June 12), Tyco Retail rolled out a new EAS approach.

Tyco’s heel-friendly approach? The tag connects to the back of the heel, with an adjustable knob for different shoe styles. In theory, this shouldn’t damage the product. Tyco argues that although many shoes “have buckles, eyelets, etc, that allow retailers to easily attach” an EAS tag, a “wide variety of women’s pumps and men’s loafers don’t have a convenient place to hook an EAS tag.” As long as the thief doesn’t have a high magnetic detacher, Tyco suggests it should be difficult to remove the tag. Then again, this is a thief, after all. Hopefully she doesn’t simply steal the store’s—or some other store’s—detacher.…

The reason the bank-like issue comes into play is that the patent in this case specified that a transaction would go through a bank connection and Barnes & Noble argued that they handle the transactions internally, as a stored payment. Therefore, the chain argued, it's a different process and does not violate the patent. The patent holder, Alexsam, said that the way that Barnes & Noble processed these payments was using their payment processor. Given that the payment processor network also handled traditional bank card payments, it's a bank network and it's therefore the same as the patent. The jury sided with the bookseller.Read more...