Evan Schuman

The traditional argument against item-level RFID is that it only makes economic sense for products costing more than $100, but that assumes one-time use. In a trial with reusable tags, Staples is throwing out all the old rules. Staples in late May started its trial at one of its Montreal stores, selectively tagging about 2,000 […]

A survey of 20,000 consumers offers good news for Amazon, QVC and Netflix and not so good news for Macys, BestBuy, PCMall and Saks Fifth Avenue. The survey, done for years by consulting firm ForeSee Results, takes the top 100 revenue-grossing Web sites and applied the methodology of the University of Michigan’s ACSI (American Customer […]

Statistics are wonderful things, especially survey results. Numbers in general can be selectively chosen to suggest the reality the stat-issuer wants to suggest. But surveys hold a special place in the perception-illusion game. We can start with how the question was phrased, who was asked and—my personal favorite—how the interviewee interpreted the question. All of […]

When Hewlett-Packard unveiled this week its prototype Retail Store Assistant—a kiosk that offers customized promotions transmitted directly to a customers smart phone—it took a business-pragmatic position in the personal shopper battle. Theres little debate that customized shopping—taking the CRM customer-specific data one major step beyond the minimally effective coupons at the end of checkout—is almost […]

Low tag read rates are still preventing RFID from gaining momentum as of mid-2007, even though the potential benefits of the wireless technology are making it look more attractive, according to a report issued May 29 from Cambridge, England.-based research company IDTechEx. “The tagging of pallets and cases to meet retail mandates is still struggling […]

Confronted with a seemingly impossible task, its human nature to long for a neighbors solution, even if that neighbor curses at that solution every day. This comes to mind as we look at two aspects of the PCI world this week. Recent reports about PCI have raised questions about how many retailers are truly PCI […]

With concern growing over major retail data breaches, pressure is increasing for retailers to become compliant with the retail industrys security standards, formally called the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. Several states are trying to make such compliance legally required. But behind PCI is an alarming patchwork of contradictory enforcement, auditors selling the same […]

After months of investigation, the state of Connecticut sued Best Buy on May 24 and accused the chain of tricking customers with two identical-looking Web sites in its stores, with the only difference being that one had higher prices. “Best Buy treated its customers like suckers, not patrons to be prized,” said Connecticut Attorney General […]

The promise of personalization—where stores in one neighborhood would have entirely different merchandise than one in a nearby neighborhood with a different customer mix—is nothing new. Retailers have been adding technology to their stores for years to test it out, in many different ways. But almost all of those efforts were isolated and piecemeal. They […]

The $81 billion European retail chain Metro Group is moving ahead with its Asian RFID supplier program, promoting a kick-off program May 23 for 30 partners at the Hong Kong Science & Technology Park. The “Tag It Easy” pilot is officially part of an initiative that Metro is calling Advanced Logistics Asia, or ALA, which […]

Consider this scenario: A customer walks into a favorite retail outlet and grabs a handheld shopping helper from a rack near the entrance. The customer signs the unit out with a loyalty card and the unit accesses shopping lists from what the customer downloaded onto a Web site and uses in-store directional signals to navigate […]

TJX reported May 15 that, in the three months leading up to April 28, it spent $12 million dealing with the data breach the company announced in January. Thats on top of $5 million the company said it spent in the previous three months to deal with the breach. A TJX statement said the money […]