Sales & Marketing

Waldorf, Germany – Retailers see a need for functional competencies leaning toward technology and data skills, even more than general business and people management. But a new survey of 76 retail managers from top retailers conducted by SAP during the recent SAP Retail Forum North America in Dallas, Texas revealed that 84% of retailers are worried that it will be challenging to find employees with these skills.

Quantum Retail Technology, a retail-focused supply chain management and inventory optimization software solutions provider, has named Mark Halverson as the company’s VP of professional services.

Halverson will oversee the full range of Quantum Retail's client program management, solution deployment and delivery, support and management of client partnerships during the implementation cycles.

New York -- Consumer confidence fell sharply in October, according to The Conference Board, whose monthly consumer confidence measure dropped to 71.2 in October, down from 80.2 in September. Economists had expected a reading of 75.0 in October.

The Present Situation Index decreased to 70.7 from 73.5.The Expectations Index fell to 71.5 from 84.7 last month.

Real time retail is the best way to describe an intriguing new shopper engagement platform from Bazaarvoice that allows brands to respond to questions and reviews about their products directly on retail sites within the Bazaarvoice network.

Bedford, Mass. – Daily mobile/online retail revenues surge an average of 55% on Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving), but a corresponding surge in attacks drives hard losses, on average, as much as $500,000 per hour or $8,000 per minute. In addition, a new study of 1,100 U.S., and U.K., retail IT staffers from RSA and the Ponemon Institute shows that 66% of respondents expect that disruption would result in customer churn that would damage reputation and brand and could push losses as high as $3.4 million from a single hour of disruption.

By Oliver Jaeger, [email protected]

Macy’s is poised to have its best digital Christmas ever thanks to a major expansion of ship from store fulfillment capabilities that enable the company to provide an omnichannel experience.

This holiday season, Macy’s will be able to fulfill orders placed online from 500 of its more than 800 stores, a major expansion from last year when ship from store was available at 250 locations.

“The way we view omnichannel is about having stores serve as another fulfillment location,” said Pam Sweeney, Macy’s SVP of logistics systems.

Seattle -- Starbucks is now offering gift cards that can be sent via Twitter. Under the company’s new “tweet-a-coffee program,” customers in the U.S. can sync their Starbucks account to their Twitter account and tweet to @tweetacoffee and the Twitter handle of the gift recipient, which will then send the recipient a $5 digital eGift.