Evan Schuman

Networked closed-circuit television cameras are doing a lot more in retail than catching shoplifters. The latest cameras can track how consumers react to specials and even digitally find abducted children. With a system being piloted today by CVS and other large retail chains, a lost or abducted child has a lot more protection than from […]

Despite a veritable avalanche of negative publicity for companies this year that got caught with improperly-handled consumer information, preliminary findings from the Retail Systems Alert Group show that most retailers do not have any formal procedures in place to deal with protecting confidential consumer details. One of the authors of that report, Steve Rowen, who […]

Think of it as a marriage between Amazons consumer review comments and YouTubes homemade videos. But will anyone turn little movies into big money? Buy.com is trying to merge two of the Webs most powerful sales tools—consumer-written reviews and homemade videos—into a sales tool that will both tap a younger demographic and theoretically add more […]

Amazon.com has built a reputation for being an aggressive, take-no-prisoners kind of company, but it showed its more cooperative side this week. Late last week, Internet traffic monitoring firm Keynote Systems issued a report that said many of the largest e-commerce players will face major load-handling challenges for the holidays if they dont make big […]

There is a comforting premise taught in all business schools that market forces will cause all identical products to be priced in the same range. The typical marketing way to address this is by branding them differently, so a high-end branded watch or car can get far more than its almost-identical lower-cost cousin. But in […]

Two new reports show that retailers are getting better at answer customers e-mail, but this summers load handling statistics predict a very crashy Christmas. If these two new surveys are correct, top retailers have figured out how to communicate better with customers, but their servers are getting a lot worse at talking with other servers. […]

Federal regulators the week of Aug. 14 clamped down on bank-issued gift cards, forcing the banks to much more prominently disclose expiration dates and any inactivity fees. Industry observers expect federal authorities to soon extend such rules to retailer-issued gift cards. “The gift card market is growing rapidly, and the terms and conditions of various […]

As gasoline prices continue to soar to ludicrous heights and consumers get more comfortable with e-commerce, some retailers are starting to question what programs to push—and play down—this holiday season. For example, the popular “shop online, pick up in store” and “buy online, return at store” options both end up forcing the consumer to use […]

Vague guidelines and conflicting audit firm interpretations—coupled with retailers that fall into multiple PCI categories—are making for some unhappy retailers. The rules for the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard are designed to keep credit card payments secure as retailers transmit cardholder data. The Retail Industry Leaders Association, or RILA, held a retail meeting in […]

The Santas on Amazon may soon know if intended gift recipients have been not only naughty or nice, but also whether theyre Muslim, Gay and Unemployed. Amazon.com filed a patent application on Aug. 10 for a process that would allow Amazon customers to use the retail Web site to gather information on other customers, including […]

In what one executive of the $9 billion, 26,000-restaurant Subway chain dubbed “the single largest integrated cash card program in the world,” Subway has come out with a card that handles payment, instant loyalty rewards and highly targeted promotions that can be tracked by the customer. The program uses a very basic magstriped gift card […]

Click fraud is a huge threat to the massive, but not especially stable, Web advertising market. Ad hawker extraordinaire Google is doing its best to combat that threat. Unfortunately, Google is focusing on fighting the claims as opposed to the fraud itself. To be fair, Google has put a lot of programming talent into some […]