News

Atlanta -- Teradata, the analytic data platforms, marketing applications, and services company, announced that it is working with Office Depot to expand the retailer’s enterprise data warehouse (EDW) with the very latest Teradata platforms and innovation. The new Teradata Active EDW can support the most demanding real-time workloads, with the ability for unlimited concurrent users to run queries against massive data volumes.

New York -- Costco Wholesale Corp. fell slightly short of estimates in July even as most other retailers who still report same-store monthly sales outperformed expectations.

The warehouse club giant reported a 5% rise in same-store sales for July, excluding gasoline, falling short of estimates for a 5.7% increase. The company said foreign currencies had a slightly negative impact. It was the first time in five months that Costco's sales have increased less than expected. Costco's total revenue for the month increased 9% to $8.55 billion.

Boulder, Colo. -- Cheesecake Factory is North America’s favorite casual-dining chain, according to a study by Market Force Information. More than 6,100 consumers were polled for the study, which ranks the top restaurant chains in five categories: general menu, breakfast, steak, Italian and seafood. Cheesecake Factory was tops in the general menu category, receiving high marks for quality of food, healthiness of food and atmosphere.
 

San Francisco – Twitter is reportedly making moves that indicate it is considering launching e-commerce services. According to The Next Web, users of the Twitter Android app are reporting a dormant “Payment & Shipping” option appearing in the settings menu.

New York – Barnes & Noble Inc. and Google Inc. are reportedly teaming up on a pilot of same-day delivery of book orders from local Barnes & Noble stores in several U.S. cities. According to the New York Times, customers in Manhattan, West Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay area can have online book orders fulfilled from nearby Barnes & Noble locations via the Google Shopping service.

Montvale, N.J. – The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P) is using the IBM FlashSystem V840 to compress live data and speed access to Big Data. The FlashSystem now integrates into a new Control Enclosure with IBM’s SAN Volume Controller (SVC) data virtualization system, a key component of IBM’s Software Defined Storage solution.

Chemnitz, Germany – Data analysis technology vendor Prudsys AG is updating features of its Prudsys Realtime Decisioning Engine (RDE), which allows businesses to individually address customers with personalized content and recommendations. This applies to every channel and device, both online and directly at the point of sale.

By Ralf Gladis, co-founder and CEO, Computop

Any retailer that takes payments at the point-of-sale (POS) in a brick-and-mortar store will most likely recognize the term EMV, which stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa. It is a global standard for credit cards with chips and card capable POS terminals providing checkout devices with a secure payment scheme.

New York -- Less than 30% of middle-market retailers have websites optimized for mobile purchases, according to a national survey of C-suite executives by GE Capital. Currently, middle market retailers conduct 16% of their transactions online and about half expect the proportion of online transactions to increase in the next 12 months. (GE identifies middle-market retailers as ranging from $10 million to $1 billion in annual sales).

Austin, Texas - Nearly seven-in-10 consumers (68%) surveyed strongly believe that digital coupons have a positive impact on a retailer's brand, and 68% also state that coupons generate loyalty. According to a new survey from RetailMeNot Inc. and Forrester Consulting, digital coupons increase the potential for conversion when consumers are in the cart and checkout phase of a purchase, and they play a key role in combating shopping cart abandonment.