Predictive Analytics

By Chris Mike, Chirpify

These days, retailers spend a lot of time obsessing over letters, specifically CAC and CLV. Most know these terms as shorthand for customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value. Both are key concepts and incredibly important metrics if you operate a retail business.

Menlo Park, Calif. – Facebook has purchased personalized shopping engine TheFind.com, with the intent of making its ad more relevant to individual users. The social media giant will integrate TheFind’s functionality into its personalized ad-matching capability, rather than keep TheFind operating as a separate entity.

In a message on its homepage, TheFind said some employees will make the transition to Facebook.

Chris Allan was a co-founder of Quantum Retail Technology and now he is the company’s CEO too.

Allan rejoined Quantum, a provider of merchandise optimization and inventory solutions, in late 2014 to lead the company’s retail development and delivery organizations. He will maintain that role in addition to serving as CEO.

Paris - Nature & Découvertes, a French-based European retailer with 83 stores across France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Germany and Switzerland, has partnered with Ipanema Technologies as part of an enterprise-wide, 24-month digital transformation. With Ipanema’s help, the retailer successfully reduced application response time by 50%, and reduced network costs and OPEX costs by 50% and 10%, respectively.
 

Following a recent series of data breaches targeting both large and medium sized retailers, many retailers are investing in technology that will help encrypt credit card data at the point of sale. Although a meaningful way to reduce risk, endpoint encryption is not the silver bullet solution hoped for by many retailers.

Genesco Inc. cited construction expenses and currency pressures as reasons for the company’s weaker-than-expected fourth quarter earnings. 

The company posted earnings from continuing operations of $51.8 million, or $2.18 per diluted share, for the quarter ended Jan. 31. The numbers are an improvement from the year-ago period, which saw earnings from continuing operations of $42.2 million or $1.79 per diluted share. 

Arlington, Va. -- Data-driven energy management systems provider GridPoint announced that Boddie-Noell Enterprises, the largest Hardee’s franchise operator in the United States, has deployed GridPoint’s state-of-the-art solution at a majority of its 334 restaurants, with plans to deploy to the remaining sites in 2015 and beyond.

Columbus, Ohio – Expenses, primarily related to incremental marketing activities, helped decrease profits at Express Inc. during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014. But the chain beat Wall Street analysts earnings and sales estimates while also giving an upbeat outlook for its current quarter.

Express reported net income of $41.8 million, down 16% from $49.7 million last year.

For both customers and merchants, the retail experience is going to transform dramatically over the next five to ten years as the Internet of Things moves from novelty to mainstream. With growth from 900 million units installed in 2009 to a predicted 26 billion by 2020, there are five ways the Internet of Things will drastically alter the retail industry:

Alexandria, Va. - Rising gas prices are taking a toll on consumer optimism about the economy. According to survey results released by the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS), consumer optimism fell from 54% to 44%, the largest decrease in optimism since August 2014,