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The retail tendency to believe in one-size-fits-all simplicity is a failing. One needs look no further than PCI security enforcement, Web traffic analytics and retail self-checkout to see that. But a new self-checkout study forces the issue. The study finds a tremendous success rate with self-checkout–which is fair and valid–but it didn’t even consider the extreme differences between different kinds of retailers. Consider the differences between grocery chains–where self-checkout tends to be detested by consumers, who barely tolerate it–and home supply chains, where it is honestly embraced. Read more.
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Over the last month, I've been struck by an unusually large number of reader E-mails that fundamentally question whether E-Commerce will ever truly work: Whether it will consistently make money, be profitable and be, well, worth all of the effort.
If the slip of a lip can sink a ship, perhaps a retailer's flick of the click can kill a prestigious campaign mighty quick. The best way for a retail chain to make a customer happy is to offer him/her a program that few others can get. And the best way to undermine that—as Best Buy discovered on Wed. (Sept. 3)—is to then accidentally make that offer to every single reward customer you have.
It looks like Amazon is no longer backing up its pricing, putting an end to its Post-Order Price Guarantee — a policy that allowed customers to recover the difference from an Amazon price drop within 30 days of a purchase. As of Monday (Sept. 1), customers who place orders on Amazon.com are not offered the 30-day guarantee, a customer service representative confirmed.
Security is nothing if not filled with seeming contradictions, and the latest version of PCI—slated to be officially unveiled next month (October)—is highlighting a beauty: To most effectively protect payment-card-related systems, protection must be focused on anything that is not related to payment card data.
Quite a few retailers have been involved in site changes to make the Web more accessible to those with vision difficulties, but Target has been the most aggressive in fighting such efforts. As such, Target's settlement has an especially strong chance of pressuring retailers to aggressively embrace such changes.
Wal-Mart on Wednesday (Sept. 3) launched what it dubbed the Walmart Smart Network—a series of next-generation digital-ad systems—to 2,700 stores. The funky aspect of this rollout is that all 27,000 screens will be centrally controlled via an Internet Protocol Television connection.
Site navigation problems and unpleasant booking engines are driving customers away from online travel sites and pushing them through the doors of traditional, more personable travel agencies. Even though sales for online travel sites are growing, fewer travelers are actually booking their trips online.
A TJX senior executive is apparently trying to push chip-and-PIN, arguing that cyberthieves are focused on the United States partly because we haven't adopted it. "Criminals, I believe, are focusing on the countries that haven't added that higher level of security," TJX Vice Chairman Donald G. Campbell said.
Calvin Klein finally gave its HTML blessing to E-Commerce, offering its first for-sale items on its Web site, although the E-Commerce launch is U.S.-only. Anyone visiting from outside the United States will be routed to the existing corporate brochure site.
It seems clear that most retailers are adopting one of two distinctly different strategies when it comes to data security and compliance. Let's label them Cost-Effective Compliance (CEC) and Compliance-Driven Security (CDS). Both approaches are based on best practices and solid risk management principles. But, GuestView Columnist David Taylor argues, they lead to quite different spending patterns, technology decisions and business cultures.
A retail IT lesson from the world of politics? Maybe. Web tracking firm Keynote was studied the text message blast sent by the U.S. presidential campaign of Barack Obama, the one in which his campaign promised to tell supporters his VP selection before it was broadly announced.
Has Amazon decided what it wants to be when it grows up? More to the point, are there indications that it has now decided that one thing it does not want to be is yet another thin-margined retailer?
The IT chief at Netflix has pointed the finger of blame for its site problems last month at "a database corruption event in our shipping system." The problem prevented customers from receiving their DVDs for about three days.
Almost a year after TJX settled with banks and bank associations impacted by the worst data breach in credit card history, another bank has come forward with its own lawsuit against the retailer, claiming the incident compromised some 4,000 of its customer accounts.
The number of data breaches reported as of Aug. 22 of this year has already surpassed the total number in all of 2007, including a new one from Macy's impacting some 4,100 customers.
On the best-paid list of CIOs at publicly held companies, Best Buy's Bob Willett ($4.7 million), Home Depot's Bob DeRodes ($4.3 million) and Kohl's Thomas Kingsbury ($2.5 million) stand at the top, doing the pocket-protector crowd proud.
With the frequent product changes executed by any large e-tailer's site, the tech hurdles of launching a mirror site in another language can be daunting. But this challenge has created a small industry of companies that are trying to facilitate rapid globalization for e-tailers.
JCPenney is testing the Australian waters a bit with an online push. The retailer has a local URL and an Australian company handling all operations, but it's still shipping merchandise from the States and asking Australian shoppers to wait "12 to 14 working days. This "request" prompted one Australian publication to ask "whether Australians would be prepared to wait two weeks to receive something purchased online."
In an overall down market where the 150-store Nordstrom chain is seeing a 4.3 percent sales drop, online operations are accounting for 15 percent, hitting almost 8 percent of all sales. Company execs there now project online to soon top 10 percent.
The new version of PCI due out in October will let the outdated WEP wireless security standard stick around for almost two more years, while also reducing the required frequency of firewall rule reviews.
It's late on a Friday night and as Jane Smith walks into her local grocery frozen food aisle, she notices a neighbor walking away carrying a frozen pizza, right near a digital advertisement for 20 percent off of a Budweiser six-pack. Jane reaches into the freezer to grab her favorite Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream but notices that the digital ad instantly changes to hawk 40 percent off fresh apple pie in the bakery section.
It's generally accepted that any key economic issue—whether it's a housing slump, rising gas prices or tax refund checks—can have a sharp impact on business spending. But the IHL Group is floating an interesting theory that recent gas price hikes are going to have a very specific and direct impact on IT spending next year.
After years of trials with only the rarest evidence of CFO-friendly RFID ROI, shelf stock monitoring is quickly emerging as "the first major application of RFID in retail with a strong business case," according to a new report from London-based RFID analyst firm IDTechEx.
While North American retail execs are planning for trivial—if any—IT investment increases this year, with "more than one-quarter of retailers expecting lower IT spending," more than half of their Asian Pacific counterparts are preparing for significantly higher IT spending, according to new Forrester numbers released this week. A bit of the Tortoise and the Hare perhaps?
A gang of data thieves in Ireland has well learned the lesson that the best place to hide is in plain sight. The group hit a large number of retailers throughout Ireland and grabbed more than 20,000 payment cards by placing skimmers on card-swipes by wearing what appeared to be maintenance uniforms and saying that they were performing bank repairs.
These days, when U.S. government officials want to ask questions about privacy and data security, it's never clear if they want to protect consumers' privacy or learn the best way to violate it themselves. But retail execs who want hints can drop by a Sept. 22 hearing at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's Washington, D.C., headquarters.
Retailers who are worried about RFID security problems will have more details available to them now that a federal judge has killed a gag order on MIT students who had identified flaws in Boston's contactless RFID subway cards.
Based on the PCI Standards Committee's official hints about what will be in the 1.2 release, it appears that clarifying when and how virtualized servers can be PCI compliant didn't make the cut. But before the server and security geeks start lighting their torches and getting all "vigilante" on the card brands, let GuestView Columnist David Taylor make his case for why it won't matter in the slightest.
As major chains are doubling up their focus on computer-savvy young consumers, some are finding their aversion to avatars giving in to their adoration of avarice.
A "persistent and mysterious technical glitch" has severely disrupted business operations at the massive online film rental site Netflix, "potentially affecting millions of its customers."
July 20th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Completely agree. It’s a bit of a stretch to say that consumers want these systems just because companies are making them readily available. People will transact with whatever options are available to them. Sometimes self-checkout makes things easy, other times it does not.
July 20th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Completely disagree. I seek out and will always use the self-checkout if it is available, especially on a trip without many items. I especially like the ones that also provide the ability to get cash back when paying with a debit card.
July 20th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Grocers want me to help them eliminate jobs for checkers and baggers who also have to put food on their tables, and don’t even try to bribe me with a self-service discount? I don’t think so.
I currently drive PAST a self-serve Albertson’s and drive an extra 2 miles to shop at a full-service Albertson’s.
July 20th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Home Depot’s 4-kiosk self-service area is patrolled by a responsive employee and the machine accepts both cash & plastic. Winn Dixie’s self-service area is unmanned and requires me to bag, then juggle my purchases at another line where payment is made.
So I’m happy to use the self-checkout at Home Depot, but do my grocery shopping at Publix - with friendly cashiers & baggers who offer to take my purchases to the car.
July 20th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
These comments–thus far–are quite interesting. Even Christina’s comment, which starts with “completely disagree,” doesn’t actually disagree because it doesn’t make the distinction between various kinds of retailers using self-checkout. As Beth points out, that can–and does–make a huge difference.
July 20th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
I use self service checkouts at every opportunity, including Grocery and Hardware stores. More specifically, I use whichever method will get me out the door the quickest and/or is the most convenient. This is a primary factor in the success of online shopping.
July 22nd, 2007 at 12:17 am
I remember when all gas was full-serve, and there were lots of arguments that it would never go self-serve …. too dangerous, too impersonal. We know where that went. Its inevitable, the economics will eventually make it happen very broadly.
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:19 am
Exactly right. Works in some venues and not in others . . . I think there’s a growing number of consumers who want less interaction with store employees. I’m one of those customers: Be available and easy to find if I need help, but no, for the fourth time, I DO NOT need any help finding anything, except for a way to convince you that I’m a full grown adult who has a lifetime of experience negotiating department/electronics/video store aisles.
But I’ve found grocery self-checkout to be a dud. Buying alcohol means signaling for a check-out attendent, which–because they don’t staff properly–means the cash register manager who’s trying to juggle the needs of 6 - 10 cashiers, self-checkout, and a cutomer service kiosk. And, in support of your caveat against one-size-fits-all solutions, both the Domick’s and Jewel self-checkouts freeze up if I try to double bag something.
Of course, that’s not a condemnation of self-checkout in-and-of-itself, even at grocery stores; it’s their staffing/implementation that’s made it so aggrevating . . . though given State and local laws, there’s probably not much they can do about the alcohol thing (other than, of course, having sufficient staff to make it as painless as possible).
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:31 am
I also tend to be on the side with people who prefer self checkout. (Although I will always pick the fastest option, so that is important to consider as well.)
I think a survey on grocery self checkout would be interesting. Some people may be slower to adopt the technology just because they find it intimidating, others may have other reasons. In order to draw any real conclusions about consumers and there preferences with regards to self check out there needs to be a study done. Anecdotal data doesn’t really tell us anything.
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:41 am
I am a manager at a Supermarket that offers self-checkout, so maybe I can offer some insight into this topic. D. Garcia seems to have the attitude many customers have, that is, using whichever method appears to be fastest at the time. However, an important factor to consider is the demographics of your shoppers. For example, in my particular store, only 15% of all orders checked out are through the self-service line. Approximately 80% of our clientele is 50+ years old and most of them either want someone to wait on them (I have heard comments of “we pay you to wait on us”) or don’t use the self-checkouts because they don’t feel as if they should have to learn how to use them. Another portion of that group is simply intimidated by thinking they have to use “new-fangled” technology. These same people still use checks and/or cash for their purchases. Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is that another variable that should’ve been used is that of who it is doing the shopping.
July 23rd, 2007 at 2:08 pm
A couple of comments:
1. If the grocery stores are saving a good amount of money with self checkout why don’t they offer some type of incentive (such as bonus coupons or double points) when you use the self checkout. Heck you could even get one of the brands to sponsor it as part of the marketing program so there would be no cost. This would really boost usage and make people ‘happy’ to use self checkout as they are getting something for their effort.
2. The self checkout is still too slow. You have to frequently wait for the system to catch up. You can’t enter multiple items (i.e. if you are getting 4 bottles of coke you have to scan each one).
3. Don’t close the self check out late at night. In my area they all close around 10pm. If you go shopping late, there is one cashier and a very long line and all the self checkouts are “closed”. I understand you need one employee to monitor but eliminating the lines will boost sales.
July 31st, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Location, location, location…
I have installed and currently maintain several Self Checkout Systems… PSI(now IBM), IBM Baltimores, U-Scan, and NCR.
Some of the Wal-Marts are choosing to remove their Self Checkout because of loss… While other Wal-Marts seem enamored… I believe it boils down to how they are managed, and I try to convey this to the stores. The stores that are succesful with them, have a dedicated person who is trained and comfortable with customers and the equipment, to monitor them and assist customers as needed. Stores who are not succesful are the ones who seem to forget their customer service skills, and thus have unhappy customers.
Grocery stores in my area who are known for their customer service, have a large number of customers who will use Self Checkout if it will get them out quicker, but some grocers have never been known for their customer service, and their customers will use Self Checkout regardless of lines, to avoid cashiers.
I try to dispel the idea that Self Checkout is automatically putting people out of work. Sure, it can happen if the store makes that choice, but the success stories that I have seen, utilize those people elsewhere, either walking the floor helping customers, or some stores often times will still sack orders on the Self Checkout. It also allows having additional lanes open with the same number of cashiers, cutting down on lines. Grocery has such a small margin of profit, customer service is still a vital part of winning and keeping customers.
I think it will continue to improve and become more user-friendly, and not just accepted, but appreciated.