Artificial Intelligence

London – If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then perhaps a video is worth 1,000 sales. U.K. electric appliance retailer ElectricShopping.com has increased unit sales by 37% using Treepodia’s new YouTube Fetcher service.

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By Marcel Munoz, CTO, Thanx Media

2014 was an interesting year in e-commerce. Who would have predicted that mobile commerce would explode the way it did? Advances in technology continue to influence consumer behavior and in turn their preferences are driving innovation in software and hardware.

By Will Poindexter and Coleman Mark, Bain & Company
 
Retailers need to quickly build world-class IT capabilities for omnichannel retailing — a seamless, integrated shopping experience, whether the customers are in the store or online. The major reason: customer expectations are rising, in part thanks to the strides made by new competitors with business models built on technology, and pure-play retailers like Amazon, which are not encumbered by legacy environments and physical stores.
 

As recently as a year or two ago, “mobile retailing” was a major industry buzzword. Everyone was busy trying to figure out how to best “mobile-enable” their enterprise.

Buy online, pick up in store capabilities are being rolled out to all of Kohl’s nearly 1,200 stores this spring after a successful 100 store pilot program during the holidays.

And that just the beginning of the digital initiative the company has planned.

The addition of pick up in store to Kohl’s omnichannel offering puts the retailer on equal footing with others in the industry who have recognized in store pick up has quickly become a basic expectation shoppers have of retailers who operate physical stores.

With the Internet of Things (“IoT”) comes yet another technology-driven advancement that challenges businesses with promising opportunities and potentially vexing responsibilities. In particular, manufacturers and retailers who plan to sell (or are already selling) IoT devices increasingly face consumer questions about data security and privacy.

San Francisco -- Schneider Electric and Autodesk are teaming up to advance building information modeling (BIM) technology and principles for building lifecycle management. As part of the collaboration, the two companies are exploring ways to complement each other’s strengths to make buildings more energy efficient, from the design and construction stage and continuing through operation and end-of-life phases.