Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

The blogosphere was having lots of pun-fun this week with a story out of Finland about a fellow who stuck a USB thumb drive onto the end of his prosthetic finger. Indeed, it’s hard to resist the urge to make light of Jerry Jalava’s creation by resorting to groaners such as “Did you ever want to give the finger to your data storage systems?” Jalava, a programmer from Helsinki, lost part of his left ring finger in a motorcycle accident. He was inspired to build his prosthetic finger, containing a 2GB USB memory stick, when surgeons performing his finger amputation cracked jokes about installing a “finger drive.”

Sometimes, since the prosthesis is easily removed, Jalava just leaves it plugged into his computer’s USB port. According to reports, Jalava is planning an upgraded version that has a removable fingertip, an RFID tag and more memory. That’s some pretty innovative thinking and it’s a sure way of being sure you have the data you need, ahem, right at your fingertips. …

ABI Research Senior analyst Mark Beccue said North American mobile commerce totaled about $346 million last year and is expected to hit $577 million this year. "Then, you're going to get a big jump by year-end 2010, reaching $2.09 billion," Beccue said. The analyst pointed out that even if it doubles in size as predicted, mobile commerce will remain a drop in the bucket compared to all types of E-Commerce. He said E-Commerce in North America alone was a $204 billion industry last year.Read more...

A minor observation. Over the last couple of weeks, have noticed a depressing trend. Many new subscribers from very large chains are subscribing with personal addresses (gmail.com, hotmail.com, etc.). Even worse, many of these are existing subscribers who are logging in to change their addresses to personal domains. Are these recently laid off folk? Or are they merely getting worried that they soon will be and are trying to make sure that they won’t get cut off from the world if that happens.

It used to be that these domains would pop up very infrequently, mostly for execs who wanted to read newsletters at home on the weekend. Another sign of an economy in deep doo-doo: A surge in generic consumer domains among business people. *sigh*…

Even more cynically, is it possible that those execs know that surveys like this tend to impact CEO/CFO expectations and, therefore, they'll give the answers they want their CFOs to believe? Even if the execs are being straight with the survey takers—and that the survey takers are being straight in reporting all of the collected data without sanitation—we have to wonder what was behind those answers.Read more...

The researchers predict the U.S. digital signage market — including hardware, software, installation, and maintenance — will grow by about 33 percent this year. "This report was done in the fourth quarter of 2008," noted ABI Research analyst Zippy Aima. "At that time, the economy was not in as dire straits as it is now. We might have to revisit some of the numbers, but despite that fact, we are seeing very promising growth."Read more...

Surveys show the public's lack of enthusiasm for mobile device-based shopping held steady between late 2007 and late 2008. "Consistent from year to year, a little over one-half of all respondents are not interested in using their mobile phones to make purchases," ABI Senior Analyst Jeff Orr said. "Transaction security was cited by 71 percent of mobile phone users as a major concern preventing wider uptake."Read more...

In a Japan-only (for now) rollout, Sony is including a TV remote control with its new line of HDTVs, but this is no ordinary remote control. With a built-in RFID tag reader, it’s designed to talk with consumer’s cellphones and authorize purchases.

Initially, the devices are to be used to pay for very TV-related items such as video-on-demand, ringtones from a music show and other multimedia features. But the next phase could include any purchases, whether it’s a barbecue grill from the Home Shopping Network, a washing machine from Amazon (as seen through the TV’s Web connection, courtesy of a built-in Ethernet port) or groceries from the local Wal-Mart (to be picked up later). Of course, that’s in Japan. Here in New York metro, I’m happy if my Treo can actually connect two phonecalls in a row.…

Some of the state legislation doesn't even limit itself to dictating what retailers must do while operating in their states but are setting new rules protecting the residents of that state when they happen to be shopping out-of-state or online. Do they expect cashiers at Wal-Mart to ask what state a customer lives in and then, based on the answer, change the way they handle a credit card payment?Read more...

Just a couple weeks after word got out that Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble had backed off their support for RFID tags on marketing displays comes the news that the nation’s largest drugstore chain, Walgreens, is boosting its support for the very same RFID tagging of promotional displays.

“The results have been impressive: Over the past year, our in–store execution has grown to nearly double the industry average,” said David Van Howe, purchasing VP for the $60 billion 6,658-store chain. “Store–level information about what is up and where it is in the store allows unprecedented accountability for achieving program potential.”…

And both firms quickly retreated. The specifics here do not indicate a major inappropriate reaction, but the pattern is discomforting. For companies to lead the industry and stake out strong global positions--especially in a weak economy—requires bold action. That means being aggressive at times to see how far consumers and competitors will permit them to go.Read more...

According to TJX's earnings statement issued Wednesday (Feb. 25), the chain had set aside significantly more money than it ended up needing to deal with the 2006 breach, thereby allowing the company to reallocate cash for other purposes and add about $18 million to the year's net income.Read more...

One vendor is trying to get consumers to sidestep the hassle of filling out loyalty card applications at every store by integrating the functionality into a PDA.

The field test by Japan’s NTT Communication started this month, just as the vendor promised when it rolled out the program in October 2008. NTT’s new “Gyazapo” system, which uses an RFID chip in a mobile phone to carry loyalty card information for multiple retailers, can allow RFID scanners at the POS to grab shoppers’ personal information from a central database managed by NTT.…

It’s been clear for a few weeks now that there has been another major credit card processor breach—above and beyond Heartland–lurking in the retail financial shadows. But the processor (along with co-conspirators Visa and MasterCard) has remained silent and, for the moment, unidentified. One report said that the breach appeared to be limited to “card not present” transactions, which certainly suggests an E-Commerce-only aspect.

StorefrontBacktalk has been in a quandary on this one for weeks, as it seemed pointless to run a story in which we couldn’t say who the processor was, how the breach happened, what the breach accessed or, well, pretty much anything else. But as more media outlets report that there has been another processor breach of some sort, staying silent started to seem ridiculous.…

To interpret motivation and real intent, sometimes a look at history can be useful. Do you remember another Facebook privacy incident back in December 2007? In that case, Facebook tried sharing—without permission—customers' purchases with people on their friends list. Is this a pattern? Is Facebook trying things, and if it's caught and there's a loud enough protest, the site pulls back? In short, is Facebook trying the permission versus forgiveness approach? Indeed, it seems to have tried both options. For a company that is trying to solidify a brand and build as much trust as possible, these tactical approaches seem odd.Read more...

Given P&G's reputation for ROI worship, many assumed the company pulled the plug because RFID was failing the test. What is closer to the truth is that the test failed, not the technology. And to the extent that Wal-Mart was as much a player in this trial as P&G, it could also be said that the test didn't fail, the tester did.Read more...

Web sites where consumers can find money-saving coupons enjoyed a 32 percent increase in traffic between October and November 2008, the largest month-to-month increase of 10 measured site categories. Coupon site visitations jumped from 27,101 in October to 35,649 in November, said an eMarketer report, based on a new study by ComScore.

Next on the list, in terms of visitation growth, were retail sites selling jewelry, luxury goods and accessories. They saw a 25 percent change, increasing from 15,362 in October to 19,210 in November. At the bottom of the list were retail sites selling food. They experienced visitation growth of 10 percent.…

Even though no retailers were involved in that particular incident, the implications of this attack technique must be thought through. What the thieves did was to take the fundamental security of time and flip it around.Read more...

But GuestView PCI Columnist David Taylor says that the rules can be different for "targets" and "non-targets." And he clues us in on what those differences are.Read more...

Some 13.3 percent of respondents say 18 to 24 months, and only 6.7 percent assume it will take "more than 24 months." The respondents who "do not know" account for the remaining 18.3 percent. Those are some very sobering numbers. Do IT managers truly believe these goals, or have they convinced themselves to believe? Or were they forced to say what they really need to get their CFOs' spending authorization and now need to be consistent?Read more...

Prior to the ACMA decision, formally published Jan. 15, 2009, RFID devices were limited to one measly watt in Australia. Boosting the power of RFID readers will allow retailers to use fewer of the devices and enable the units to process more simultaneous data.Read more...

This tactic is hardly new, as many chains—including Price Chopper and Wegmans—have been doing this for at least a year and several very large retailers are exploring it. But Costco is the largest retailer to have launched it on such a large scale.Read more...

The Kroger grocery chain apparently saw good results from a 219-store digital coupon last summer, as it announced on Tuesday (Jan. 27) that it was expanding digital coupons to virtually all of its 2,400 stores in 31 states.

Kroger, which used Cellfire for its initial trial, will be varying coupon price discounts regionally. The Kroger brands involved include Ralph’s, Bakers, City Markets, Dillon, Gerbes, Gilander, Jay-C, King Scoopers, Owens, Payless, QFC, Smiths, Scott’s, Fry’s, Cala Foods and Bell Markets.…

"Why would you want to invest in technology, training, software and people when Wal-Mart can do it for you for 12 cents?" asked Louis Bianchin, senior RFID analyst and program manager at VDC Research. "The risk there is that they (Sam's Club) could have sent the wrong message to the supplier community. That is not the message the supplier community needs to get."Read more...

The adoption of contactless by a retailer of Carrefour's size "is one of the largest victories so far" and a "very positive win" for contactless technology, said Forrester Research Analyst Ed Kountz. "It's looking like we are going to see more deployments in Europe. It's also being done well in Turkey, of all places, and Asia really remains the number one market for contactless payments."Read more...

Beyond the advantage of being able to physically shop without having to take a shower, there are some tactical reasons for Sears' plan to convert one of its Illinois stores into what it is calling a "MyGofer Store." Read more...