Amazon has launched a new content feature on its Amazon mobile app that takes allows users to shop items they see in photos and read about in posts generated by others, according to TechCrunch. Called Amazon Spark, this product discovery feature takes its cues from Social Media. Amazon describes it as “a place to discover things from people who share your interests…Spark makes it easy to discover – and shop – stories and ideas from a community that likes what you like.”
Maintaining accurate, standardized product data across all channels is a priority, as consumers have learned to expect a seamless retail experience. Sam Copeland, vice president of merchandising operations for Office Depot, Inc., took time to discuss why expanding assortments and the demand for personalization are placing additional emphasis on the need for centralized master data.
For retailers operating across multiple locations, maintaining consistency between stores is an ongoing — and crucial — challenge. As retailers discover and iterate on methods to better design and optimize their in-store customer experiences, ensuring the execution of those processes is uniform across storefronts can make the difference between failure and success.
Retail has always been in the forefront of business intelligence (BI). From the days of on-premises machines to today’s cloud-based solutions, retail has looked for new ways learn about their customers and discover new ways to serve them.
The business headlines are littered with tales of global expansion gone awry. While the reasons behind the struggles are complex, there is a common thread in these experiences: Missing the cultural differences and needs of the target market.
The widespread adoption of public cloud services by businesses of all types has raised awareness of how dependent we are all on these services. Ten years ago, an outage on a cloud storage service would not have made front-page news, whereas the recent Amazon S3 outage made headlines due to its significant, widespread impact.
The retail and logistics industries have developed a number of terms to define how consumers purchase products. Single channel, multichannel, and omni-channel are just a few of these buzzwords. While these terms have their place, they can contribute to a disconnect between merchants and their customers.
In the age of the consumer, every retailer must create the exceptional Amazon-like service experiences that consumers have come to expect or risk going out of business.
Intense competition and heightened consumer expectations aren’t unique challenges to the mid-market retailer. There’s one critical difference, mid-market retailers lack the resources that the biggest players do have to overcome those challenges. With already small margins, if you’re among this group, you may find yourself just scraping by. But the odds don’t have to be stacked against you.
Retailers today confront challenges that are unprecedented in other industries. In fact, there’s a case to be made that retailers have experienced more change in the past few years than in the previous 100 years combined. As a result, retailers must adapt to deliver on changing customer expectations. Those who succeed are able to differentiate themselves, while those that fail become irrelevant.
The trends this year retailers really need to focus on won’t be around the hottest new technologies or latest fads. Instead, companies that focus on delivering consistent, engaging customer experiences will set themselves up for long-term success. But in order to run your business successfully and provide the brand experiences shoppers expect, you must first have the right foundational systems in place.
Today, SATO continues its tradition of designing and manufacturing high-quality industrial printers that deliver reliable performance with each print job.
Cayan is an industry leader in developing and delivering award-winning and innovative payment processing solutions and merchant account services to developers, ISVs, VARs and merchants nationwide.
NetSuite delivers a cloud-based, multi-channel retail management system that brings together NetSuite Retail Anywhere POS with eCommerce, CRM and marketing, merchandising and order management, financials, and warehouse management into a single, centrally-managed solution.
Radial is the leader in omnichannel commerce technology and operations, enabling brands and retailers to profitably exceed retail customer expectations. Radial’s technical, powerful omnichannel solutions connect supply and demand through efficient fulfillment and transportation options, intelligent fraud, payments, and tax systems and personalized customer care services.
Compliance Networks is a leading provider of solutions to the retail supply chain that enable enterprises to optimize flow within their supply chain and make informed decisions that ultimately increase shareholder value.
Global Technology Systems is the trusted expert in mobile power technology. GTS designs and manufactures high-performance batteries, chargers, and power management technologies for essential mobile devices. Millions of business professionals, public safety, government, and military worldwide rely on GTS to power mission critical communications and mobile computing applications. Founded in 2000, GTS is headquartered in Framingham, MA.
Listen in as IRT’s Chief Editor, Erin Harris, talks to GTS’ VP of Marketing, JR Rodrigues, about some of the next-gen ways retailers can leverage batteries to run their operations more effectively.
Mobile wallets have been around for years now, and industry experts have called them The Next Big Thing in payments for their entire existence. But adoption rates have never quite matched up to the enthusiasm and excitement—while mobile wallet share is increasing month to month, it's still dwarfed by physical card transactions.
Hedgie Bartol, retail business development manager at Axis Communications, talked to LossPreventionInsights about the company’s upcoming Axis Retail Leadership Forum. Bartol explains that interdepartmental collaboration will be a major theme at this year’s event. Read on to learn more.
No employer wants to think of its employees as being dishonest, but industry research shows there’s good reason for concern. According to the “25th Annual Retail Theft Survey,” conducted by Jack L. Hayes International, one-third of all business failures each year are attributed to employee theft. Another alarming finding was that 34 percent of 18- to 29-year-old employees believe it’s justifiable to steal from their employer. The report also showed that dishonest employees steal approximately 5.5 times as much as shoplifters.
IRT sits down with Michele Salerno, Director of Marketing and Sales, at Celerant Technology about automating POs, best practices in tracking vendor progress, and more.
According to the latest research from the National Restaurant Association (NRA), restaurant-industry sales are trending upward this year and projected to reach $798.7 billion by year’s end, a 4.3 percent gain over 2016. Quick service restaurant (QSR) and fast-casual sales are expected to reach $233.7 billion this year, representing a 5.3 percent gain over 2016.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is, realistically, still in its infancy. Sure, IoT is already making a mark on retail, but what does IoT’s future look like? Michelle Covey is Vice President of Apparel and General Merchandise for GS1 US, the organization best known as the administrators of the UPC barcode but on that also helps retail companies leverage RFID for inventory visibility.
The MegaPX Indoor Analytics Dome is a fixed IP camera that combines 1080p video with highly accurate analytics, making it ideal for retailers that want to monitor and analyze customer and employee behavior so they can improve business efficiency.
Radial Dropship Manager is a cloud-based supply chain collaboration solution that automates order processing, exception handling, shipping, invoicing, and inventory between you and your dropship suppliers.
Compliance Networks offers a free opportunity assessment as a pre-sale discovery event with a two-fold objective. The opportunity assessment clarifies the client organization's objectives and quantifies the potential economic impact of a vendor compliance optimization process on the retail organization.
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