Machine Learning

The explosive growth of device connectivity, wireless technology, cloud computing and advanced analytics has driven the Internet of Things (IoT) from vision to reality. Devices with embedded sensors are enabling advanced, automated communications for retail businesses and customers. These connected devices are driving deeper engagement, providing new experiences and opportunities, creating new revenue opportunities and enabling better business insight.

New York – Retail real estate giant Simon has announced the winners of its inaugural 'Simon Launch,” a retail startup competition aimed at uncovering, investing in, and accelerating top startups in the retail industry. 

The winning startups, which were selected from more than 300 applications, are:

Seattle – Amazon.com is reportedly using a proprietary machine learning solution to analyze online customer reviews and present newer and more relevant reviews first. According to CNet, the system takes into account factors such as newness, whether the review was written by a verified Amazon purchaser and how many customers found the review helpful.

Plug and Play brings together retailers and start-ups that offer specific technology and expertise that can relieve merchants’ pain points. Chain Store Age’s Customer Disruption newsletter provides a Q&A with the CEO of one of those companies in each issue. This time, the spotlight is on Brian Ley of BiddRocket.

What does your company do?

A lot of attention has been paid to a variety of technologies currently disrupting retail, like beacons and wearable devices. Here are three technologies still in the development phase that hold potential to radically disrupt retail, and even life as we know it, in the next 10 years:

Quantum Computing

San Francisco -- Shoppers think it is cool to get digital help finding relevant products and information – and navigating the store, according to a study by RichRelevance. But they are creeped out by digital capabilities that identify, track and use location and demographics, such as targeted advertisements based on facial recognition. In addition, the dressing room is the one area where personalized product information and recommendations are not welcome.

Roanoke, Va. - Advance Auto Parts Inc. has selected Teradata as the vendor of choice for its Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW).

Advance Auto Parts will leverage the EDW to aggregate data from multiple sources to perform advanced analytics and help drive the business.

The new Teradata platform at Advance includes testing as well as production and will leverage the Teradata Americas Data Migration Center of Expertise

Purchase, N.Y. - MasterCard will acquire cloud-based analytics provider Applied Predictive Technologies (APT) for $600 million.

APT’s Test & Learn platform enables users to apply analytics to design, measure and calibrate marketing, merchandising, operations and capital initiatives.

Plug and Play brings together retailers and start-ups that offer specific technology and expertise that can relieve merchants’ pain points. Chain Store Age’s Customer Disruption newsletter provides a Q&A with the CEO of one of those companies in each issue. This time, the spotlight is on Arie Shpanya of Wiser.

What does your company do?

New York -- Facebook hopes to transform the way  customers communicate with retailers by re-inventing the customer service platform. Facebook and its partner Zendesk, a customer service platform firm, are teaming up to allow businesses to provide scalable and responsive customer service to the more than 600 million people worldwide who use Facebook's popular Messenger app. The social media giant is inviting retailers and other companies to develop software that allows customers to communicate instantly with them through Messenger.