Artificial Intelligence

When it comes to success in retail, the old mantra of “location, location, location” has been largely replaced by “customer, customer, customer.” That was one of the themes of the SPECS workshop session, “It’s All in the Demographics.”

“Yes, it’s about demographics, but it’s more than demographics. It’s about the lifestyle embedded in the demographics,” explained Bill Stinneford, executive VP retail, Buxton, Fort Worth, Texas, which provides customer analytics for site selection, marketing and e-commerce.

By Sunil Mirani, CEO, Ugam

By Jason Fredrickson, Guidance Software

The recent cyber attacks on Target, Neiman Marcus and Michaels Stores had an immediate and profound impact on sales, as well as a widespread and ongoing ripple effect on consumer confidence in the safety of credit-card information at point-of-sale (POS) terminals.

In an era of Big Data, retailers are finding new ways to leverage that information to improve processes and consumer engagement. However, there’s one area where Big Data can have a big impact that companies in the retail space may be missing: real estate.

Mark Ledbetter, global VP retail strategy for SAP, recently spoke with Chain Store Age about the promise of Big Data for retail real estate, and how retailers can best take advantage of it.

Where does retail real estate data originate?

New York -- The White House on Thursday called on Congress to pass legislation to create a national standard that would alert consumers when their data has been hacked. It one-of-six policy recommendations that comes after a 90-day review of data and privacy.

"As organizations store more information about individuals, Americans have a right to know if that information has been stolen or otherwise improperly exposed," said the report, led by John Podesta, a top advisor to President Barack Obama.

Dick’s Sporting Goods monitors social commentary to boost customer satisfaction

If you really want to know what people think about you, you need to find out what they say behind your back. Historically this has been a tricky proposition, but the advent of social media provides an open forum where companies as well as individuals can check to see what is being said, and whether the commentary is good or bad.

San Francisco - Revel Systems, has introduced a new hardware and software product bundle aimed at providing technology features for the visually impaired. The inherent touch-screen nature of iPad POS terminals are without tactile qualities, making them not fully accessible and independently usable by the visually impaired.

San Francisco – Stock compensation expenses helped produce a net loss of $132.4 million at Twitter Inc. during the first quarter of 2014, compared to a net loss of $27 million in the same quarter of the previous year. Twitter attributed part of the net loss to $126 million in stock compensation expense.