Artificial Intelligence

Pittsburgh – American Eagle Outfitters will launch the ShopKick shopBeacon iBeacon solution in 100 top-performing American Eagle Outfitters and Aerie stores across the country. shopBeacon is an Apple iBeacon-based presence signal for retailers that offers customers rewards, in a currency called "kicks," for a variety of actions they take as they go about shopping.

New York – Nicolas Franchet, head of e-commerce global vertical marketing at Facebook, said that compression of screen sizes as consumers switch to mobile devices is the biggest upcoming challenge retailers will face during a session titled “Data the Matters: The Future of Personalization” at the NRF 2014 Conference & Exposition on Sunday, Jan. 12.

Prism Skylabs, a global leading cloud service provider, has hired former Apple executive Cliff Crosbie as SVP of managed services.

Crosbie comes to Prism Skylabs after overseeing Apple’s global preferred reseller program. In his new role, he will be charged with growing Prism’s visual merchandising and auditing services

“I’ve never seen a merchandising or analytics solution as effective as Prism Skylabs,” said Crosbie. “I couldn’t be more excited to join the team.”
 

Tysons Corner, Va. -- MicroStrategy Inc. announced that Guess has unveiled a new mobile app for its customers powered by the MicroStrategy Alert Platform.

Mobile point of sale (mPOS) technology promises to continue to transform the customer’s shopping experience in 2014 and beyond. Gartner forecasts an mPOS market valued at $617 billion with 448 million users by the end of 2016, representing 42% annual growth.

Retail is one of several sectors poised to benefit from mPOS. With that in mind, here are five trends that every retailer needs to be aware of in the space.

Lakeland, Fla. -- Publix Super Markets Inc. has expanded its Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse to accommodate growth and more complex analytics. The upgrade moves the data warehouse functionality beyond traditional strategic analysis and into tactical operational intelligence.

The expansion includes the latest Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse platform, database software, and services. The new platform is designed to enable quicker reaction and response to changing business conditions and consumer behavior.

New York -- From mobile devices to social media to 24/7 connectivity, it’s a brave new world for retail — and one that Chain Store Age will explore at its first-ever Customer Disruption event, May 7-9, 2014, at Sofitel Hotel, Redwood Shores, Calif., the Gateway to the Silicon Valley.

You’ve got to hand it to Amazon.com. While consistently turning a profit has eluded Amazon for the past 18 years, the company has consistently taken a lead in disrupting retail. Whether it’s inventing e-commerce as a mainstream B2C transactional channel, taking a leading role in hosted cloud services with Amazon Web Services or helping to usher in the tablet era with Kindle e-readers, Amazon.com has never been afraid to do things in a way that alters how retail business is conducted.