Data & Analytics

BOSTON - Payments made via near field communications (NFC)-enabled mobile handsets will account for $130 billion in worldwide consumer retail spend by 2020, according to a study by Strategy Analytics. This equates to 254 million mobile users making five payments per month at an average of just below $9 per transaction.   

Consumers who love chocolate may have been waiting for the day someone unveiled a chocolate 3-D printer. Well, thanks to Hershey Co., that day has come.

The company has announced the debut of its 3-D Chocolate Candy Printing exhibit at Hershey’s Chocolate World in Hershey, Pa. Consumers who visit the store will have the opportunity to interact with Hershey scientists and the breakthrough technology.

Beijing – Baidu, China’s leading search engine, is investing an unspecified amount of money in U.S. online transportation service Uber. Under the terms of the agreement, Baidu will invest in Uber and enable users of Baidu Map and Mobile Baidu, Baidu’s flagship mobile search app, to connect easily with Uber driver-partners.  

Las Vegas – Marshall Retail Group (MRG), an independent specialty retailer in the casino resort marketplace, is betting that D.L. Neu will help bolster its order fulfillment processes. MRG has  awarded a contract to D.L. Neu to provide an order fulfillment system featuring a newly engineered “Shuffle Sorter” which automatically routes inbound put-to-light totes to the appropriate lanes.   

Walmart has announced the 75 winners of its Food Pantry Holiday Makeover campaign, which gifts a food pantry organization with a $20,000 grant for renovations. 

By Paul Jones, eBay  

Google could be preparing to take on Amazon.com with its own unique e-commerce solution. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is developing a “buy now” button that would be embedded right into results pages within the search engine.   

Piccing, a “social-shopping” platform, has raised $3.62 million from undisclosed investors, the company announced.

The company’s web and iOS app lets users upload or bookmark images — the latter, Pinterest-style — wherein they can add up to five hotspots tied to items found in each image, thereby helping to make those images “shoppable.”

Users browsing or searching via the platform can click on any image’s hotspots — dubbed “piccs” — to buy the product or see similar items.