Predictive Analytics

Cincinnati -- Kroger said Monday that it has ended a 12-year joint venture with British consumer data company Dunnhumby and launched its own customer data subsidiary.
 
The new subsidiary will help Kroger set prices in stores and decide which shoppers get certain coupons.  The ending of the joint venture comes after Dunnhumby's parent company, Tesco PLC, said it was seeking strategic options for Dunnhumby.

Analytics leader SAS has long promised customers “the power to know” and now a major enhancement to data visualization capabilities means retailers don’t have to be a Ph.D to do things faster and more effectively with their massive volumes of data.

Colorado Springs, Colo. -- Fuel price management software company PriceAdvantage announced a software integration with P97 Networks’ PetroZone Retail Fuels Module (RFM) powered by Microsoft Dynamics AX modern point-of-sale system (mPOS).

London - J Sainsbury PLC is increasing transportation productivity through enhanced accuracy. Sixteen Sainsbury’s depots are using an integrated transport management system from Paragon Software, which integrates Paragon’s planning optimization with wireless communications to enhance the accuracy and execution of each day's complex transport plans.

Amazon.com’s sales growth in the first quarter continued to outpace the overall e-commerce growth rate, especially Web services, but expenses related to interest and currency exchange caused the online leader to report a $57 million net loss.

Total sales for the quarter ended March 31 increased 15% to $22.72 billion but a strengthening of the U.S. Dollar caused a $1.3 billion currency exchange headwind. On a constant currency basis, which is how global retailers like to analyze their business, sales increased 22%.

Boston -- Springboard Retail, a cloud POS and retail management platform, announced that casual chic lifestyle brand XCVI chose Springboard Retail to accelerate sales, profits and customer engagement as they continue to expand stores throughout the Western U.S.

Mountain View, Calif. – It’s not just media hype – retailers’ exposure to data breaches really is getting worse. According to the 2015 Internet Threat Report from security technology provider Symantec, 11% of all data breaches Symantec recorded in 2014 hit retailers.

Only the healthcare industry represented a larger share of breaches. In addition, retailers provided a leading 59% of all identities revealed in breaches during 2014. Total breach incidents during the year rose 23% compared to 2013.

Verizon is out with its annual cyber security report and while the findings are disturbing the good news is that retailers can thwart many a breach attempt by focusing on a handful of basic attack patterns.

Verizon's "2015 Data Breach Investigations Report," reveals that cyberattacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, but many criminals still rely on decades-old techniques such as phishing and hacking. In fact, 70% of cyberattacks use a combination of these techniques and involve a secondary victim which adds complexity to a breach, according to the report.