Why Retail Is Interesting Right Now to One Tech Entrepreneur
Back in February 2008, RSR published a column on the subject “The View From Silicon Valley” that highlighted a conversation with Scott Russell, the managing partner of eCarnegie Tech, a venture capital...
View ArticleRetail Price Fairness: The Feds Step into the Fray
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that in a surprise move, the Obama Administration announced the formation of the National Consumer Pricing Administration (NCPA) reporting directly to...
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The China Trade
The status of trade and financial relationships between the U.S. and China are sure to get some people in the U.S. riled up about domestic jobs, taxes, debt, and general economic well-being. That kind...
View ArticleGlobal Retailing Conference: ‘Everything Is Retail’
The Global Retailing Conference, hosted by the University of Arizona Terry J. Lundgren Center For Retailing, is a concentrated dive into the state of retailing from the perspective of the executive...
View ArticleMore on Next-Gen Payments: Digital Vouchers
RSR partner Nikki Baird’s column this week (US Retail, EMV, NFC, and Mobile: Opportunity or Disaster?) talks about U.S. retailers’ apparent lethargy when it comes to next-gen payments. It’s a topic...
View ArticleNRHA 2013 Young Retailer Awards: ‘It’s A Nobile Business’
One of the things that I have found satisfying about spending all these years in-and-around retail is that at its essence it’s an “honest business”. People (usually) don’t buy things that they don’t...
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IBM’s Smarter Commerce Gets a Big Brain
The 3rd U.S. IBM Smarter Commerce conference was held last week in Nashville, TN at the Opryland Hotel & Conference Center. Usually, RSR’s intrepid conference-goers don’t do a Rick Steve-style...
View ArticleCEOs in the Participation Age: Watch What You Say
The very beginnings of my career as an “IT guy” began at the University of California, Berkeley. In those days (mid-1970’s), the computing department used the nascent Internet Protocol (IP) to get...
View ArticleM&A Season: Two Smart Moves
Mergers & Acquisitions are often an outcome of one of two things: first, M&A can be a sign of a maturing market that has too many solutions fighting over a stagnating revenue opportunity; and...
View ArticleSAP and ‘Design Thinking’
There was a time when business operational processes weren’t enabled by as much as limited by what technology could and couldn’t do. That certainly was true in the days of “batch vs. online” processing...
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Once More with Gusto: Why IT Isn’t More Effective
Going through my Inbox in preparation for getting back in the saddle after a long and hot holiday weekend, I was greeted by the usual “just-push-the-delete-key” e-mails with subjects like “25...
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The Rise of Subscription Retailing
It has occurred to me more than once that many of the new generation of marketeers have a few screws loose, and that has given rise to a whole generation of gonzo advertising that either works...
View ArticleReflections on the Benefits and Cost of a Connected World
In prior technical lives, I operated in a world of LU’s and PU’s (IBM SNA Network “logical units” and “physical units”) and SVC’s and PVC’s (X.25 network “switched virtual circuits” and “permanent...
View ArticleSan Francisco and the Definition of a Chain Store
I live in a town that seems determined to attract “chain” stores to replace one-off family owned retail stores at every opportunity. Quirky and quaint Main Street shops are disappearing almost before...
View ArticleThe Lure of Easy Money
In the past several years, RSR (along with virtually every other industry focused research, B2B media, technology provider, or consulting company) has been observing and measuring retailers’ attitudes...
View ArticleHelping Independent Retailers Compete in the 21st Century
Independent retailers are notoriously hard for technology companies to reach. For one thing, they are a pretty disaggregated lot. Larger retailers tend to congregate at big trade shows and conferences,...
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Who’s Concerned about Consumer Privacy?
Back in early January 2007, the retail world was abuzz with the news that there had been a major data breach at TJX. As these things go, it was a big one, with over 45 million credit and debit car...
View ArticleERP Is Dead; Long Live ‘Enterprise Enablement’
A lyric from a 1979 Kiss song is looping through my consciousness as I write this: “I sure know something, sure know something”. Well, when it comes to things retail, I know a few things. And two of...
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About Store Labor
In our 2013 study on retailers’ cross-channel strategies, RSR found that virtually every cross-channel fulfillment tactic is being employed by retailers to a greater extent than we saw in prior years’...
View ArticleThe ACA Website Mess: Lessons for Retailers
Regardless of your political or social views regarding the U.S. Federal health insurance mandate, known as the Affordable Care Act (or perhaps less affectionately as “ObamaCare”), there can be no...
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