Gamification in Retail: Delighting Shoppers & Store Teams Alike
Video games, shopping, and mobile phones are three of the most ubiquitous elements of contemporary society. So really, it was only a matter of time before the three intersected. A wave of gamification in retail has breached the mainstream. Video games have been around for decades. However, it wasn’t until the rise of the smartphone […]
Paper Coupons: Still Relevant for Retailers in a Digital World?
The first paper coupons date back to 1887 when households received an offer for a free glass of Coca-Cola. The company used the coupon to promote the new soda to the masses through a coupon sent via mail. Other brands followed suit with their own offers and The Nielsen Coupon Clearing House arrived in 1957 […]
What Amazon’s Brick-and-Mortar Bet Means for Retail
Popular wisdom tells us that online shopping has killed brick and mortar retailers, as exemplified by the massive success of Amazon. But if that’s true, then why has Amazon not only opened 13 bookstores and an automated grocery market, but also acquired Whole Foods? This is happening at a time when their competitors like Walmart […]
How One Retailer’s Productivity Point System Failed Employees
Not Busy This statement was for customers. It was written on the back of every employee uniform and worn throughout the bookstore corporation’s 34 locations. No issues or confusion had been reported. As the store manager of the company’s first American brick-and-mortar, I was asked for feedback. Was it clear? I respectfully suggested that American […]
Speak and Shop: How IT Teams Use Retail Voice Technology
With the arrival of voice assistants for smartphones and speakers has come a new frontier: retail voice technology. Voice assistants like Alexa and Google Home aren’t going anywhere any time soon: voice-enabled speakers are predicted to be in 55% of U.S. households by the year 2022. Americans are using them steadily, and the field is […]
Killer Retail Apps that Improve the In-Store Experience
Our phones have become an integral part of our relationship with retail as the devices assist us in connecting to stores, and help us look up hours or information. Studies show that nearly 60% of shoppers look up product information and prices while using their mobile phones in stores. The industry has embraced apps heartily […]
4 Retail Inventory Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Whether you’re a manager at a major department store, or you own your own boutique, inventory is a business necessity that most of us dread. Between planning, executing, and completion there are a number of things that tend to always go wrong during inventory, but tackling your first (or your 50th) inventory doesn’t have to […]
What You Need to Know About Grocery Store Technology
The retail industry continues to invest in technology to create a more seamless shopping experience especially in this world of omnichannel. Increasingly, methods to pick up groceries have been simplified, especially with the invention of online shopping, but it’s not just Amazon offering the services. Grocers are making investments in technology to allow customers to […]
Cannibalism and Complementary Effects in Retail
Two types of statistical models that are well known in machine learning are Discriminative models and Generative models. Discriminative models are used for modeling the dependence of unobserved target variable y on observed variables x. In particular, these models aim to estimate the conditional probability P(y|x) for the target variable given the observed variables. Thus, […]
How Retail Technology Investments Improve Same-Store Growth
Technology has found its way into the retail industry and has revolutionized many aspects of the retail process. Whether it’s offering a streamlined sales system, creating digital coupons, or just informing customers via an interactive kiosk, technology is one of the best weapons in driving growth. Store operators have a great opportunity to use retail […]
