Artificial Intelligence

Get it before it’s gone is the message Amazon is sharing with holiday shoppers as it looks to drive sales of limited duration “Lightning Deals” supported by enhanced same day delivery capabilities.

Amazon’s countdown to Black Friday and then Christmas involves a strategy of featuring roughly 15,000 products the online retailer promotes as Lightning Deals because of reduced pricing during a tight promotional window.

Digital retailer QVC is adding new in-app features that allow customers to make easy and quick purchases with just a touch of their finger. 

Using Apple’s fingerprint sensor technology, Touch ID, the QVC for iPhone app now gives customers the option to log in to their QVC accounts on all iOS 8-enabled iPhone 5S, 6 and 6+ mobile devices using only their fingertip for authentication.   

Menlo Park, Calif. –- Net income soared 90% to $806 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2014 from $425 million in the same quarter a year earlier, as part of strong overall performance by Facebook Inc. A sharp increase in operating income helped drive the net income growth.  

Ad targeting firm Cardlytics said its secured an additional $70 million in funding led by Discovery Capital.

Cardlytics, an advertising and technology company regarded as a leader in card-linked marketing, said the new $70 million funding round brings its total venture capital funding to more than $170 million. Cardlytics intends to use the funds to continue to extend and expand the breadth of the company’s capabilities to make all marketing more relevant and measurable. Morgan Stanley acted as adviser on the deal.

Englewood Cliffs, N.J. -- LG Electronics USA has selected Ugam's Brand Intelligence solution to help manage its brand reputation and channel relationships in the U.S. consumer electronics industry. Ugam's technology and services will support LG's commitment to deliver a superior customer experience by enforcing compliance with its pricing policy.  

Armonk, N.Y. –- IBM has released new high-speed analysis and criminal investigation software that is designed to uncover hidden criminal threats buried inside massive volumes of disparate corporate data. IBM i2 Enterprise Insight Analysis (EIA) can find non-obvious relationships within hundreds of terabytes of data and trillions of objects in just seconds.   

Mooresville, N.C. -- Lowe's Innovation Labs will introduce two autonomous retail service robots in an Orchard Supply Hardware store in midtown San Jose, Calif. during the upcoming holiday season to study how robotics technology can benefit customers and employees. Called OSHbot, the robots will assist customers to navigate stores by directing them to specific products and providing real-time information about product promotions and inventory.   

Sears and Amazon.com both recently came under fire for allowing rings decorated with the Nazi swastika symbol to be posted for sale on their third-party seller sites. While both retailers quickly pulled the items down and issued public apologies, they received a large amount of negative publicity and surely damaged their brand image with many offended customers, perhaps to the point of permanently losing some of them.

Sears and Amazon.com both recently came under fire for allowing rings decorated with the Nazi swastika symbol to be posted for sale on their third-party seller sites. While both retailers quickly pulled the items down and issued public apologies, they received a large amount of negative publicity and surely damaged their brand image with many offended customers, perhaps to the point of permanently losing some of them.  

New York -- The cat is finally out of the bag. Former J.C. Penney CEO and Apple retail head Ron Johnson confirmed that he is launching a new company—but it’s not a tech-gadget delivery service as was widely rumored. Instead,  the new initiative, set to launch in 2015,  is designed to help online hoppers make the right product choices.