Artificial Intelligence

Mike McNamara, a former executive at British retailer Tesco PLC, joined Target as CIO last summer, moving from London to Minneapolis.   In a Q&A on Target’s website, McNamara discusses highlights of his first year with the discounter and priorities going forward. He also spoke about Target’s tech hiring boom.    

Customer experience remains at the hub of all retail strategies, including technical strategy. Whether it’s global inventory availability, mobile payment or loyalty apps, e-commerce and call center integration, or ubiquitous points-of-sale, infrastructure that uses all assets while integrating suppliers and consumers continues to define a retailer’s network design. Further, in highly competitive retail segments, managing the costs of digital fluidity is not only vital to capturing profitable share; it can also distinguish competitive advantage. 

Customer experience remains at the hub of all retail strategies, including technical strategy. Whether it’s global inventory availability, mobile payment or loyalty apps, e-commerce and call center integration, or ubiquitous points-of-sale, infrastructure that uses all assets while integrating suppliers and consumers continues to define a retailer’s network design. Further, in highly competitive retail segments, managing the costs of digital fluidity is not only vital to capturing profitable share; it can also distinguish competitive advantage. 

When it comes to providing customer service, companies often have only one chance to get it right. The reality is that even just one negative experience can be all it takes for a customer to take their business elsewhere.   

A start-up consumer electronics retailer has deployed a friendly-looking, white plastic robot named Pepper to greet shoppers.   In a two-week test, high-tech retailer B8ta is the first retail store in the United States to deploy the humanoid robot, which is from Japan’s SoftBank Robotics, Mercurynews.com reported.   

The back-to-school season is now in motion, kick-starting a series of peak holidays for retailers. Everything that follows is an opportunity.  

Sur La Table has launched a new solution designed to ensure online shoppers are able to easily find the best product.    The retailer of kitchen and table goods has deployed a tool from Edgecase (its ‘adaptive navigation solution”), which uses cleansed and enriched product attributes to make finding the right product online easier and more inspiring.  

Wal-Mart Stores announced it will acquire retail start-up — and would-be Amazon rival — Jet.com for approximately $3 billion in cash. Additionally, $300 million of Walmart shares will be paid over time as part of the transaction.   The deal will go a long way to helping Walmart expand its e-commerce growth and customer reach, and also give it more firing power as it competes with Amazon.  And Jet.com’s popularity with millennials will help the discounter attract a younger, higher-income customer. 

Credit card fraud is down by more than 60% at Mastercard’s top five EMV-enabled merchants since chip cards were introduced late last year, according to the company.   “Mastercard has helped over 150 countries adopt EMV and, time and again, we’ve seen the same result — significant reductions in counterfeit card fraud,” said Chiro Aikat, Mastercard’s senior VP of EMV product delivery.  

Having already served as an early innovator in e-commerce, eBay has turned its attention to a new emerging technology area. In an interview on CNBC, eBay CEO Devin Weng said the company intends to take a leading role in artificial intelligence.   "We are planting the seeds right now to ensure that eBay is not only relevant, but a leader — a disruptor — in artificial intelligence," said Weng.