Artificial Intelligence

Armonk, N.Y. – IBM and Box are launching a global, cloud-based partnership that will integrate their existing products and services and develop new solutions targeted across industries including retail. The strategic alliance brings together Box’s cloud content collaboration platform with IBM Analytics and social solutions, IBM security technologies and the global IBM cloud.

At the recent MIT CIO Symposium, Bryan Kirschner, director of the research/strategy organization Apigee Institute, and Jerry Wolfe, CEO and founder of food industry platform services provider Vivanda, participated in a panel discussion on consumer connectivity and engagement. Chain Store Age followed up with the two experts to ask a few more questions about engaging today’s connected customer.

How can retailers use APIs (application program interfaces) to provide a more personalized customer experience?

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:

Naples, Fla. – Retailers often may not have the tools they need to effectively fight omnichannel fraud. More than half (54%) of retailers in the U.S. and Europe still have to consolidate their fraud management solutions across all channels, according to new research conducted by Forrester Consulting for ACI Worldwide.
 

New York - Lack of a single customer view, an inability to deal with large amounts of data and lack of time for optimization are among the challenges that cause the biggest headaches for modern marketers. According to new research published by Econsultancy in partnership with SmartFocus, among the pain points marketers face are the challenges of making customer data actionable, bottlenecks caused by IT and web development teams and lack of time for campaign testing and optimization.

The report identifies the following key challenges:

Digital media company Catalina is launching a new solution that personalizes the deals found in weekly retail ad circulars. 

The program, called My Favorite Deals, is designed to increase ROI in a major area of marketing spend for U.S. retailers.

Seattle – Amazon.com is releasing its Echo voice-activated artificial intelligence device for general availability in July, and taking consumer orders now. Echo was made available on an invitation basis to customers who wanted to help shape the device in November 2014.

Retailers face a tough battle to generate growth in the face of unprecedented competition from global rivals and digital rivals, but many are overlooking what could be their best opportunity. Improving the way employees interact with customers – whether in stores, online or even via call centers – is a proven route to enhanced sales performance, but too few retailers are focused on doing so.

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.

A major U.S. retailer has launched preorders for the Pebble Time, just days after the Apple Watch became available at Apple's own retail stores.

Best Buy is selling red, white and black versions of the Time for $200 each. The retailer has yet to say when the watch will be available for in-store shopping. The smartwatch is available for sale only through the manufacturer and Best Buy.