Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

One of the most frustrating truths in retail security is that, by definition, it has no meaningful return on investment—at least not in the sense that CFOs and board members view ROI. There’s no chance at improving revenue or profit; at best, it’s risk avoidance. Even that’s dicey. If security is in place, how do you really know that you would have been breached otherwise?

One way to squeeze out ROI: Flip an unsexy security expense like PCI by upgrading to a POS system that also moves lines faster or displays ads while customers are waiting. Or what about training cashiers to encourage debit-card users to key in their PIN—thus improving security and reducing the cost of card transactions at the same time? We explore these and other ideas in the latest StorefrontBacktalk podcast on security. To listen to the podcast, please click here.…

Like most media outlets these days, we here at StorefrontBacktalk get deluged with PR people pitching stories about their clients. But also like most media outlets, very few of those pitches are appropriate for us.

To help, we have crafted a page with our best-kept secrets about how to successfully pitch a story to us. It starts with understanding our audience and how we try and differentiate our stories. (Note: This particular blurb is a horrible example of what our typical stories are like, but it’s a pretty good example of an irony, so at least we have that.) So for PR professionals only: Please check out our PR tip cheat sheet, and your chances of getting a story placed will soar.…

But is that necessarily true? Given the various target audiences for different categories of retailers, is it not realistic to assume that site management has already matched functionality and visuals to target customers? Read more...

On Wednesday (Oct. 20), Starbucks launched another campaign to get customers into its stores and, again, it has nothing to do with coffee. Called the Starbucks Digital Network, the program provides free access to a wide range of entertainment and news content that requires a fee elsewhere. The catch: Content can only be seen when customers are within the wireless LAN range of a Starbucks store. It gets better. The plan is to soon integrate the Starbucks Digital Network with loyalty cards, which opens a whole new world of customer data. With Yahoo as its partner, that information could find its way almost anywhere. They'll know not only customers' latte preference, but their preferences in news and entertainment, too.Read more...

That poses a problem. With those rich interactive features, it's simply a way to get additional information about a product. But it doesn't meaningfully go beyond 2D barcodes and NFC efforts. Some chains are frightened to even experiment with systems that are not only IT intrusive (they need to integrate deeply into many back-office programs) but may raise privacy issues. Without such trials, though, retailers have no way of assessing whether the privacy concerns are real or simply imagined. Consumers might love the advantages, if given a chance to try them.Read more...

It's always a challenge to get employees to correctly use a computer system that stops them from selling—even when it's enforcing the law. That's the kind of conflict retailers increasingly face in cases where, for example, loyalty programs clash with privacy concerns. No manager is going to get a bonus for pushing customers away. As such, it may fall to IT to make sure employees don't cut corners, especially when those shortcuts could result in an expensive legal bill. Trouble is, that can be an impossible task.Read more...

The purpose of the questions often is to locate the "unknown unknowns" or to make sure contingencies are addressed. As such, the questions may sound obvious or even silly at first—at least until they succeed in actually uncovering a problem you didn't know you had. Read more...

On Tuesday (Oct. 19), Wal-Mart agreed to pay the State of New Jersey $775,000 to settle charges that it sold infant formula and non-prescription drugs beyond their marked expiration dates and that items on sale scanned at incorrect prices. The chain also agreed to try really hard to not get caught doing it any more.

Even though Wal-Mart is one of the few businesses that could honestly consider a $775K payment a nuisance settlement (one where its legal and related costs would far outdistance the cost of just writing the darn check), it underscores the ROI value of automating price-check and expiration dates This is one of the areas where the upcoming G2 barcodes should help: By adding the expiration date to a product’s data, expired items will be caught at the POS. Until then, consider the size of this fine—and the fact that it covers only one state, with 49 more in the U.S. alone. (Note: Target was also a defendant in this action, but it settled last year for a mere $375,000.)…

Surveillance video isn’t just for spotting what happens inside a store these days. It can also be used to establish what didn’t happen. This month, a Burger King franchisee used footage to knock down a lawsuit claiming that an unwrapped condom had been included in a Whopper. Carrols Restaurant Group was sued in 2007 after a customer claimed he bit into his Whopper and found the condom. But after Carrols came up with video tracing the burger’s assembly—with not a condom in sight—the customer dropped the suit.

In fact, “what didn’t happen” might be the next big thing in retailer video. Amazon has a patent on using digital video to make sure shipments aren’t mispacked, and several chains have tested video systems that let store security quickly spot missing children who haven’t been abducted (they’re usually just lost or hiding). But what about reviewing video to identify displays that don’t attract shoppers’ attention? Or to spot products that multiple customers put in their carts and then decide to return to the shelf? Catching shoplifters in action is fine—but video of what’s not happening could end up being even more useful.…

The Macy's crash itself was unremarkable, having lasted barely an hour on a Sunday morning (Oct. 17), which is how all well-mannered outages should behave. Site visitors were shown a screen with a headline warning of a "temporary shopping jam" and a message that blamed the difficulties on "heavier traffic than normal." More interestingly, though, the screen had a striking 10-second countdown animation, with visitors instructed to wait 10 seconds and then refresh. But that refresh might need to be done a few times.Read more...

Let's open this strange-fest with Domino's Pizza. Domino's is no stranger to unorthodox campaigns, such as the one the chain launched early this year declaring how stunningly horrible its products had been just weeks before. On Monday (Oct. 18), Domino's announced that its Web site's Pizza Tracker feature will be more customizable. "Depending on the theme, Pizza Tracker might sing, cheer or even sweet talk the status of customers' orders from the moment they are prepared to the second they are out the door or ready for pick up," said a company statement. Sing? Sweet talk? Can you say Pizza Train Wreck?Read more...

At first glance, the Best Buy Commerce API program doesn't look that different from its earlier API efforts or from API moves by other chains. And even Best Buy's official line about the program—"we'll connect with customers wherever they are"—has a deeply innocuous element. But there's much more to it.Read more...

The problem for alternative payments isn't just doing the things that conventional payment cards do at lower cost. It's also breaking through the lack of familiarity that customers, banks and even retailers have with new payment approaches. Visa and MasterCard remain in the POS driver’s seat because of their network, but also because they're a known quantity. And as much as retailers want cheaper alternatives, the Bling Nation/Fifth Third deal illustrates how much of a challenge it is to buck the current infrastructure.Read more...

The action began last Thursday (Oct. 7) at the Wal-Mart in Alliance, Ohio, when two sisters from Cleveland—Katurah and Staniel Petty—visited. The pair went to the back of the store, selected two higher priced pieces of software and "concealed them behind a large purse in the [shopping] basket," said Alliance Police Lt. Kevin Moore, who later saw the pair's activity on the store's video system. The Pettys then tried exiting the store without paying and the theft-detection system was activated. (Stick with me on this one. It gets a lot better.)Read more...

PCI Columnist Walter Conway asks: Can this powerful emerging technique simplify retailers' PCI compliance to the point of it being a minor annoyance? That seems to be one of point-to-point encryption's promises, but how much it and the others are realized depends greatly on each retailer's internal processes and requirements. Read more...

Franchisee Columnist Todd Michaud argues that a chain's commitment to making customer comments public—before knowing what that feedback will be—says so much about its confidence in quality. Isn't showing this transparency through unedited real-time feedback what social networks are all about?Read more...

If Halloween is a mere two weeks away, then it’s time to start hearing about the holiday-themed retail tech rollouts. And on Tuesday (Oct. 12), ToysRUs, Amazon and Debenhams stepped up to the brightly colored—and undoubtedly Wi-Fi-connected—plate. ToysRUs is adapting the wedding registry kiosk for the holidays, dubbing it a Wish List, with gift-givers able to access gift lists as long as they have the Wish List number. A nice touch from the toy chain: “Registrants do not have to worry about keeping receipts in the event they wish to make a return or exchange an item in-store that was purchased from their Wish List. Store employees can look up any Wish List transaction simply by revisiting the purchase history on the registrant’s list for easy returns.”

And Santa’s mobile app developers were hard at work at Amazon and over at Debenhams (the second-largest department store chain in the U.K.). Both retailers Tuesday released the same new functionality for their iPhone mobile app: barcode scanning. Debenhams said its move makes it the first High Street retailer to offer mobile barcode scanning. Amazon’s move is surprising in how late it is. But it’s safe to say that eBay’s June purchase of Red Laser helped to focus Amazon on offering an alternative.…

The reality is that there are many firms in the tokenization space today, and you cannot count on all of them being around forever. Some will change business focus, go out of business or be acquired. Because there are no standards for tokens across vendors, transferring to another vendor could be difficult, pens PCI Columnist Walt Conway. That means retail CIOs need to address what to do if (when?) the unforeseen happens.Read more...

That's a key problem with tying your loyalty or rewards programs to an outside company, especially a quickly rising startup with inevitable growing pains. From the point of view of your customers, when they check in with Foursquare at your store or restaurant, they're checking in with you. And if Foursquare is unresponsive, you're the one who will get blamed.Read more...

Frustrating for contactless proponents, the more trials that happened, the further in the hole they found themselves. Even retail participants were often resistant, having to be have been bribed into doing the trial at all. But a pair of recent mass transit uses of contactless—an existing trial in New York City and an imminent changeover in Chicago—have a surprisingly good shot at finally giving contactless payment a real shot at success.Read more...

Wal-Mart won't explain exactly what happened. That's partially because the chain itself hasn't completely determined what happened, with an internal investigation underway. Whatever precisely caused the glitch, it had two elements. The first was an electronic system problem. But that wouldn't have shut everything down had it not been compounded by an employee's ill-fated—albeit well-intentioned—attempt to manually fix the issue.Read more...

According to the draft of the PCI changes that the PCI Council has been circulating for comment, there are indeed no major changes in next month's updated standard. But as they say in Purchase, the CVV devil is in the details. Read more...

Critics of Chip-and-PIN have raised questions about whether EMV is honestly that much more secure than mag-stripe. These concerns mushroomed back in February when a Cambridge University report publicly detailed many security holes in the current implementation. Even worse, some have suggested the U.S. shouldn't embrace Chip-and-PIN because it will likely be years-beyond-obsolete by the time it's fully launched.Read more...

Eddie Bauer, for example, completed the transaction, took the money and never sent the card. Two others also never sent the card, but at least had the decency to not charge for it. RSR Managing Partner Nikki Baird said Eddie Bauer's people admitted that they never shipped the card.Read more...

How can you make sure you don't get round dusty minerals that are overpriced and provide about as much true data security as a Jack-O-Lantern? PCI Columnist Walter Conway, in an eerie voice, bellows that it all comes down to knowing which houses to go to and which to avoid. Even more importantly, it's about knowing which questions to ask.Read more...