Artificial Intelligence

Armonk, N.Y. -- An IBM "Institute of Business Value" study revealed that self checkout is the preferred way to shop for most consumers today, and more than half said they want to use a mobile device to scan while shopping, and to do final checkout at a self-checkout station. More than 40% want to scan samples and retrieve shopping items for pickup, or have the items delivered directly to their homes.

Armonk, N.Y. -- IBM announced it has completed the acquisition of Vivisimo, a leading provider of federated discovery and navigation software that helps organizations access and analyze big data. Financial terms will not be disclosed.

Armonk, N.Y. -- Survey results released Thursday by IBM said that Americans are increasingly upbeat about their plans for the Memorial Day weekend, with a huge increase this year in the amount of people talking about traveling and spending compared to last year.

According to the IBM Social Sentiment Index, the "Desire Ratio" – the proportion of positive versus negative comments about shopping – increased by a factor of five for this Memorial Day compared with last year.

The University of Arkansas RFID Research Center will finally receive a home of its own. The center, which was founded in 2005 as part of the Information Technology Research Institute in The Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas will be housed at 1637 Fred Hanna Drive in Fayetteville. This will be the third location for the research center since it was founded.

Dallas -- Family Express has improved its inventory management operations significantly by deploying Retalix Ltd.’s demand-driven replenishment solution across its convenience stores in Northwestern Indiana, Retalix said.

New York -- Research by ACI Worldwide and Aite Group has identified a new group of smartphone fanatics – coined Smartphonatics – are driving demand for mobile banking and other financial services.

As part of Chain Store Age’s lead-up coverage to RECon 2012, to be held May 20-23 in Las Vegas, we talked with customer analytics firm Buxton’s Charles Wetzel about what his expectations are for the big real estate show. Visit Buxton’s booth 701 in the North Hall Marketplace area of RECon.

Chicago -- Galleria Retail Technology Solutions said Tuesday that Lithuanian retailer Maxima Grupe will use a range of Galleria solutions to automate and optimize its merchandising strategy.

Maxima plans to implement Intelligent Store Optimization, Behavioural Cluster Planning, Customer Centric Merchandising and Galleria Foundation Services in more than 400 stores across Eastern Europe, according to Edvinas Volkas, chief food purchaser at Maxima group.