QR Codes Are A Terrible Idea. Why Is Image Recognition Even Worse?
QR codes are ugly. They're intrusive. Most designers hate them because there's no way to make them look any less like the brick-full-of-blocks they are, especially when they've been slapped next to a...
View ArticleeBay Lawsuit Asks: Is An E-Commerce Store Really “A Place Of Public...
An eBay court case poses a question that gets a lot more interesting the more you think about it: If an e-commerce site is used extensively by a large number of shoppers as their primary store, does it...
View ArticleMajor Chain Loses PCI Compliance When Data Center Moves
One of the nation's 15 largest retail chains had done a tremendous job segmenting its network to reduce the scope of its PCI assessment. All of that was thrown away, though, during a simple data center...
View ArticleBest Buy Learns The Downside To Locking Out E-mail Changes
A Best Buy online anti-fraud mechanism has unintentionally created a security hole. I was placing an order with a local Best Buy physical store, using the web site's pickup-in-store option. Because the...
View ArticleICANN’s Vanity Domains Will Break Some Of The Internet And We Won’t Help Fix...
From the Department of What’s The Worst That Can Happen?, Vanity Domains division: ICANN, the organization that’s selling do-it-yourself replacements for .com for $185,000 each, is meeting this week in...
View ArticleJCPenney, Lord & Taylor and Abercrombie LP Work Together To Catch Thief
With all of the bitter retail rivalries and customer-stealing efforts, I found this story out of Syracuse, NY, refreshing. Seems that an LP officer working for Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE:ANF)...
View ArticleVictoria’s Secret Mobile Site Chokes On Plus-Size Images
First Victoria’s Secret’s (NYSE:LTD) mobile website choked during the last week of June, resulting in slow content delivery, failed connections and damaged or missing content. The next week it was...
View ArticleIncenting Non-Purchase Behavior Great, But Only If Numbers Add Up
To make a CRM rewards program effective today, it needs to move beyond points only offered for purchases. (Heck, even the Pope is offering concrete incentives for following him on Twitter.) Gilt.com,...
View ArticleThink Your Incentives To Get Your Brand Followed On Twitter Are Good? The...
Retailers have tried quite a few creative tactics to get shoppers to participate in the chain’s social media efforts, but none have the clout to do what the Vatican just did when it was trying to boost...
View ArticleBooks-A-Million Will Test A Giant In-Store Book-Making Machine
After years of trying to convince major bookstore chains that printing single copies of books onsite is viable, one print-on-demand vendor has finally gotten a nibble. The 253-store Books-A-Million...
View ArticlePCI’s Not-So-Open Global Forum
PCI's Global Forum is an open forum in name only, at least as long as it continues to force changes on members that they are not permitted to even know about until someone who has been briefed chooses...
View ArticleAmazon And The Limited May Be Stripped Of Their Brands When It Comes To...
After a week of meetings in Durban, South Africa, focused on vanity domain names, it looks like Amazon's (NASDAQ:AMZN) application to use its own name is still being denied, while U.S. apparel chains...
View ArticleA New Retail Twist On Copyright Defenses
Part of any retailer’s effective brand protection strategy has to include an "Open Source Monitoring" program – you know, monitoring social media and webpages for anything that could impact your good...
View ArticleA Patent On Clicking Website Images? Nope, Appeals Court Affirms
For once, JCPenney has something to be happy—not just hopeful—about. On July 22, a federal appeals court delivered what should be the final blow to a patent-infringement lawsuit that dates from CEO...
View ArticleChanging Terms of Service? Be Ready For A Class Action Lawsuit
Think you have complete control of the terms of service (TOS) of your website? As a retailer, you probably assume that you can dictate terms to customers, especially about any services you offer them...
View ArticleWalmart Sales Tax Snafu: How Did They Get This So Wrong?
In a sterling example of what big retailers' POS software is not supposed to get wrong, Walmart has apparently been charging too much sales tax on two-for-one coupon deals in Pennsylvania in violation...
View ArticleWhy Did Gonzales Hackers Like European Cards So Much Better?
Last Thursday's (July 25) indictment of five more Albert Gonzalez gang members by federal prosecutors in New Jersey is a reminder of how big that operation was (and may still be) and how far...
View ArticleNow Asda, Morrisons And Europe Are Going After Visa And MasterCard Over...
First there was the $7.25 billion interchange settlement that big chains mostly detested, largely because it would outlaw future interchange lawsuits. Then came a flurry of retailer lawsuits against...
View ArticleSIMs Pwned With One Message! (Only About A Decade Too Late)
We were going to do an in-depth teardown this week of one of the scariest-sounding cyberthreats we'd ever heard of: the ability to take control of a mobile phone just by sending it a carefully crafted...
View ArticleSen. Chuck Schumer Wants The FTC To Start Doing What The FTC Is Already Doing...
U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer has finally gotten around to asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to crack down on in-store mobile tracking. At a press conference on Sunday (July 28) in front of a...
View ArticleSelf-Service Shifts Legal Risks, May Let Customers Off The Hook
One of the great things about the Internet and computer technologies is that they can empower consumers and businesses to do things that ordinarily require a middleman. Consumers can purchase their own...
View ArticleWalmart’s Scan & Go Change Reminds Us How To Make Mobile Work
One of the many advantages of mobile payment is significantly expanding CRM reach, getting to know about a far greater percentage of all of a shopper's purchases. Nowhere is this more attractive than...
View ArticleSAP Exec Who Switched Barcodes At Target Cuts Plea Deal
Remember that SAP exec who last year was arrested for slapping fake barcodes on products within a Target—and his defense was that he was simply testing his company’s systems? Seems he cut a plea deal...
View ArticleHow To Deal With Merged Channel Inventory?
As merged channels (also known as omnichannel) become the default for an increasing number of retailers, the challenge of efficiently handling the supply chain and managing inventory becomes...
View ArticleWhen Replacing NFC, Tech Is Really Not The Issue
Seems that the thing to say today, when discussing a retail mobile interaction method (be it for payment or loyalty or couponing)is to say it's an alternative to NFC (Near Field Communication). What a...
View ArticleCMOs, Not CIOs, Now Control 11 Percent Of Retail IT Spending
Almost 20 percent of the $60 billion in annual North American retail IT spending isn't under the CIO's control. Who's spending most of that $11.6 billion? The chief marketing officer, according to a...
View ArticleCan VeriFone Actually Outsource PCI Problems?
In theory, you can't outsource PCI issues, but VeriFone wants to try. On Monday (Aug. 5), the POS maker announced VeriFone Point, a payments-as-a-service offering that basically takes everything in the...
View ArticleCourt To Fed: Keep The (Inter)Change
On July 31, a federal court in Washington sent shock waves through the merchant, banking, and credit/debit card industry by overturning the Federal Reserve's rules implementing limitations on the...
View ArticleSephora Buys A Software Vendor. Wait, Can They Do That?
In the kind of move you'd expect from Walmart (NYSE:WMT) or Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) but not a retailer who couldn't make the NRF's Top 100 list, beauty products retailer Sephora has acquired a software...
View ArticleHarbor Freight Breach May Be Biggest Of 2013, Issuers Say
What looked initially like a two-store payment-card breach may end up being one of the biggest breaches of 2013. In late July, the 425-store discount hardware chain Harbor Freight Tools posted signs in...
View ArticleWill Warranty Enforcement Be Amazon Marketplace’s Achilles’ Heel?
When it comes to competing against Amazon, eBay or even Japan's Rakuten, one of the more challenging aspects is their third-party marketplaces, which give each a seemingly endless inventory at minimal...
View ArticleIs Domino’s Site Getting A Tad Bit Defensive?
Automated Web responses to consumer comments are great time-savers, presuming the programming assumptions End my that irritation, definitely viagra puts. Without little pharmacy without prescription...
View ArticleSurvey Finds Personal Recommendations Half As Influential As Comments From...
In our ongoing looks at survey stats and why they often don't mean what you might think they mean, here's a fun one. A new report from comScore and Millennial Media has a chart that looked at...
View ArticleLondon’s Recycling Bins Don’t Do Mobile Tracking Anymore. (Until This Week,...
At a time when many retail chains are trying to navigate the public-relations minefield of customer tracking, disclosure and data use, a story from London is a useful reminder that nobody is getting...
View ArticleCongress Wants To Regulate Customized Pricing. Yeah, That Will Certainly Work...
If legislation pending before the House Energy and Commerce Committee is passed and signed into law, online merchants will be severely restricted in their ability to use "big data" and behavioral...
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