A new study by Tata Consultancy Services done in conjunction with Forrester Consulting looked at the state of IT within the global retail industry and CIOs’ attitudes and plans toward key trends and ever-more disruptive, challenging technologies.

TCS Study Shows Retail CIOs are Primed to Lead the Innovation Agenda

In-depth interviews with senior business and IT executives at global retailers found that the potential for CIOs to embrace disruptive technologies are too often hampered by a lack of key resources and business alignment. This is illustrated through the fact that almost two thirds (64 percent) of global retailers consider cost reduction as a major focus over the next few years, versus only two fifths (38 percent) citing innovation.

While the focus is still revenue growth, Retail CIOs believe that the disruptive technologies of mobility, social media, cloud and Big Data will continue to radically transform the retail industry status quo, yet they are not staffed or structured adequately to take full advantage.

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2012 Future of Food Retailing Report (Needs registration)

With the U.S. economy experiencing slow growth, persistent unemployment, and stagnant household incomes, consumers are moving toward extremes. Cost-conscious shoppers continue to seek extreme value and acceptable quality or better at low prices. Other shoppers less affected by the downturn have returned to upper-tier food retailers. Retailers who cater to the middle are finding their positions more challenging to maintain.  With the most recent bout of food inflation seeming to moderate, the pressure on their sales and profits is likely to continue.

This year’s edition of The Future of Food Retailing Report highlights market share figures for grocery and consumables by store format, illustrates which formats are thriving and look to continue growth in today’s challenging economy, and forecasts how these key formats will perform over the next five years, i.e., by 2016.

PODCAST: John Orr, Trends in Human Capital Management for Retailers

On this two-part podcast, we talked about trends in human capital management and what retailers need as it relates to human capital management.

On part one of the podcast, we focused on compliance among labor laws and visibility of the business. On part two, we addressed the need for speed as a big trend in retailer human capital management.

Retailers are under attack from many angles. There is scarce talent, they’re in a high turnover industry, they’re being legislated left and right, whether it’s gift card legislation in NJ, or California labor laws and class-action lawsuits. We discussed the challenges retailers face navigating through this landscape.

Concerning the challenge of visibility, more and more retailers are expressing the need for better visibility at the store level and above store. Legacy applications, however, have fallen very short in giving retailers access to the information they need. Most retailers are fraught with manual processes, inefficiencies and spreadsheets. The reporting from these systems is not timely enough for the executives to be proactive and make the decisions they need to do on a day-to-day basis. Retailers need solutions that provide intuitive real-time information, and should not be held hostage to legacy systems and interfaces and processes.

How deep are your pockets?

The internet, by allowing anonymous browsing and rapid price-comparing, was supposed to mean low, and equal, prices for all. Now, however, online retailers are being offered software that helps them detect shoppers who can afford to pay more or are in a hurry to buy, so as to present pricier options to them or simply charge more for the same stuff.

Technology Grows in Importance for Retailers, New CompTIA Research Study Reveals

Seventy-two percent of retailers surveyed rate technology as important to their business, CompTIA’s Retail Sector Technology Adoption Trends Study reveals. That figure is projected to increase to 83 percent by 2014.

A net 63 percent of retailers expect to increase IT spending in 2012 with the remaining 37 percent planning to cut back or hold the line. Large retailers expect to boost IT spending the most – 4.8 percent, on average. For all firms, the planned average increase is 4.2 percent.

Competing With Amazon on Amazon

Thousands of small merchants depend on Amazon.com Inc. to reach customers who otherwise wouldn't know they exist. A few of them complain, though, that Amazon sometimes eats their lunch.

According to some small retailers, the Seattle-based giant appears to be increasingly using its Marketplace—where third-party retailers sell their wares on the Amazon.com site—as a vast laboratory to spot new products to sell, test sales of potential new goods, and exert more control over pricing.

Retailers using pent-up cash; 58% plan to increase capital spending, with IT No. 1 priority

While waiting for the recovery to take the hold, 58% plan to increase capital spending over the next year. The highest priority investment area is information technology – including data analytics and digital marketing channels – cited by 51% of the executives in the KPMG survey. Other significant areas of investment for retailers are new products or services (43%), geographic expansion (33%), and advertising and marketing (24%).

When asked about digital marketing channels, retail executives in the 2012 KPMG retail survey indicate that online shopping (59%), social media platforms (58%), and email campaigns (49%) are having the most significant impact on their businesses. Additionally, executive indicate that the incorporation of mobile technology is also having a significant impact, specifically mobile shopping (36%), mobile promotions (28%), and mobile payments (21%).

Executives also say that the use of data analytics is playing a larger role in their strategic decision making – including areas such as customer insight, brand and product management, pricing decisions and market expansion.

Why Loyalty Programs Can Be Bad for Business

In my work with companies on pricing strategies, it's common for executives to feel compelled to offer loyal customers something for free. My immediate question is: "Why?" Giving something away for free as a gesture of thanks has become almost reflexive in business. But when you examine the strategic value and underlying costs of these programs, I've found that loyalty discounts are rarely necessary to close a deal, nor are they always highly valued by customers.

Why Sephora Is Betting Big on Digital Shopping

Sephora is one of the brands that’s leading the way in shaping digital experiences for its customers. The company recently invested in an entirely new shopping experience that integrates mobile, social and in-store activity. On this episode of Revolution, Julie Bornstein, SVP Digital at Sephora, shares with us the importance of delivering a holistic digital and “IRL” experience, while also enhancing the individual path each customer takes to engage with the brand and their favorite products.

Brazilian fashion retailer displays Facebook ‘likes’ for items in its real-world stores

Through its new “Fashion Like” initiative, C&A has posted photos of a number of the clothing items it sells on a dedicated Facebook page, where it invites customers to “like” the ones that appeal to them. Special hooks on the racks in its bricks-and-mortar store, meanwhile, can then display those votes in real time, giving in-store shoppers a clear indication of each item’s online popularity. The video below (in Portuguese) outlines the premise in more detail:

Home Depot Rolls Out New Mobile Devices for Workers

Home Depot has started to roll out a scaled down, second generation mobile device for its sales associates, allowing more workers to use wireless technology to assist customers, CIO Matt Carey told CIO Journal. The 25,000 device roll-out is intended to make it possible for more store workers to help customers locate items and give information on products, even in areas for which they don’t have specialized expertise. It’s also an example of how Home Depot is attempting to use technology to increase the amount customers spend on each trip to the store, as well as sales to new customers, an area of focus as the chain has slowed the opening of new stores.

The device, called First Phone Junior, is a scaled-down version of the Motorola phone the company put in the hands of some associates two years ago, which allowed employees to better manage inventory, assist customers and speed checkout lines.

Overstored: How Retailers Can Retain a Profitable Physical Store Network in the Face of Growing Migration to Digital Channels

While the long-predicted demise of the bricks-and-mortar store has been greatly exaggerated, there is no doubt that customers are migrating to digital channels in growing numbers. Accenture looks at the issues, and identifies three steps that retailers can take to rethink the way they attract, serve and retain customers, then allocate capital and resources accordingly.

IBM Survey Reveals Marketers Face Tech Dilemma in Reaching the Connected Consumer

IBM's new survey of the marketing industry finds that chief marketing officers (CMO) and chief information officers (CIO) must join forces in order to connect with today's consumer across new channels including mobile devices and social networks. Fully 60 percent of marketers point to their lack of alignment with the company's IT department as the biggest obstacle to reaching today's consumers.

Top 500 retailers take a liking to social networks

Facebook is in the news almost daily and the social network continues to grow, with more than 500 million members at last count. And Top 500 retailers want to be right there with them. 432 of the companies listed in Internet Retailer’s 2011 Top 500 Guide —86%—have a presence on Facebook. That’s 16% more than the 371 that had pages on Facebook last year and a 52% increase from 284 in the 2009 edition.

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Twitter, the network that enables users to “follow” the daily doings of other participants via 140-character message bursts, continues to grow in web retailers’ social media strategy. Of the current Top 500 online retailers, 347, or 69%, have a presence on Twitter and feeds are up by 37% (254 companies) from the 2010 edition and 221% (108) from the 2009 guide.

Just in time for 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, Sears has launched a new social media initiative called the Sears Blue Blogger Crew. From the Sears blog.

What is the Sears Blue Blogger Crew?

The Sears Blue Blogger Crew is an opportunity for our peers (i.e. fellow gadget geeks) to share their knowledge and experience in the technology space with their readers and followers, as well as our customers. The Sears Blue Blogger Crew is a group of experts who will write about technology, trends and products that we carry here in the Sears Consumer Electronics Department! (NOTE/DISCLOSURE: For CES, Sears Electronics is covering travel costs + expenses for the bloggers in attendance, as well as providing each a small video camera.)

Currently the crew consists of five bloggers, Jenna Hatfield, lead blogger at Stop, Drop and Blog; Kris Cain, lead blogger for LittleTechGirl, Andru Edwards, CEO of Gear Live Media and lead blogger for Gear Live, Kelly Clay, a veteran blogger, works for Lockergnome, Barbara Rozgonyi, founder of the Chicago chapter of the Social Media Club, blogs at WiredPRWorks.

Great initiative as long as these bloggers remain neutral and not become the PR for Sears.

Branded retail apps are hot right now—they’re sexy, but they’re also an effective way to connect with customers. A new service from ILoveVelvet, launched today, combines mobile and social media elements in app form, and allows direct engagement for fans of individual retail brands.

Velvet VIP is a branded mobile application that allows retailers to offer e-catalogs, special promotions, personal recommendations and even collection previews. The social media elements enable consumers to provide feedback directly to the retailer and share with friends via Facebook and Twitter.  Customers can even pre-order items through the app—meaning that they don’t have to put their names on a waiting list for that hot designer bag.

ILoveVelvet, a leading provider of technology to enhance the retail customer experience, has launched Velvet VIP, a customized retail application designed to reward loyal fans of specific brands. The application, developed for retailers and available to customers enrolled in loyalty programs, provides personalized shopping recommendations based on customer interests and purchases, along with special benefits not available to the general public.  The entire system also has built-in options to share reviews via social media.

Velvet VIP, a customer-facing adaptation of ILoveVelvet’s Velvet Suite and Velvet Store software, engages directly with customers on Apple iPads, iPods and iPhones. The retailer controls the interface branding and available content, so that customers have an encounter consistent with the in-store experience. Velvet VIP also offers a social media component, through which customers can push reviews out to Facebook and Twitter and become unofficial brand ambassadors.

Press Release.

Altimeter Group has released a new report titled Rise of Social Commerce – A Trail Guide for the Social Commerce Pioneer which discusses the use of Social Technologies to connect, listen, understand and engage to improve the shopping experience. The report provides a four-stage process to assess where companies are at and the path forward.

• Let’s Be Social: Programs are launched to drive brand advocacy and increase volume/market share.
• Enlightened Engagement: Companies create interconnections of e-commerce and social platforms – both owned and in the wider web – to influence influencers, improve decision-making, and distill the voice of the customer for the enterprise.
• Store of the Community: Fans drive assortment, selection, and services through open innovation networks and social networks.
• Frictionless Commerce: Companies redesign the shopping experience across channels and categories, to create a truly customer-centric shopping experience.

Read More.

Meet the new shopper. Underneath the keys of the keyboard, they are shopping in a new way. Unleashing the power of the social network, the digital consumer is shopping with friends, sharing recommendations, and actively engaging in dialogue with brand owners on how they want to be served. But, can you listen? Can you serve the new shopper? Or are you so busy YELLING your brand message, that you will miss this opportunity to listen, engage and serve the consumer in new ways? With the rise of social commerce, you have new opportunities to anticipate, personalize and energize the shopping experience; but our finished research report documents that the biggest barriers are enterprise processes that are designed to broad-brush markets, push big-brand messages, and serve markets through conventional channels.

More and more retailers are adopting Facebook “Like” button. Facebook Like button provides an easy mechanism to share content you like with your friends on Facebook. Retailers like Best Buy, Sears, eBay are actively using Like button on their websites.

In recent weeks, a growing array of shopping sites have placed "Like" buttons on their pages, too, including those of eBay Inc., Best Buy Inc. and Gilt Groupe Inc., expanding Facebook's influence into a $140 billion industry in the U.S. that drives both online advertising and a growing portion of retail sales.

For e-commerce sites, adding a "Like" button lets shoppers quickly share a product or deal with their Facebook connections, potentially encouraging them to buy the product themselves.

"Customers are looking to other friends in their social network to figure out what product is right to buy," said Tracy Benson, senior director of mobility customer solutions at Best Buy.

While the Like button can increase traffic, there is not established case study/research which shows increase in conversions for traffic originating out of Like button.

Daniel Mandell, a director of business development at Wenner Media, the owner of Us Magazine, said the celebrity website soon will roll out the Facebook "Like" button after years of allowing its visitors to share content on Facebook through other sharing buttons.

Visitors from Facebook are valuable because they "are an extremely engaged audience," spending an average of three minutes on the US site, about 20% higher than visitors from search engines, he said.

For shopping sites, though, the key measure of success is sales, not traffic. After Gilt introduced "Like" onto its "flash sales" pages at the end of June, the site saw a 50% leap in sales coming from Facebook after the first week. "We are watching to see if it continues, beyond an initial bump because it is new," said Jag Bath, the company's vice president of product management.

"Everyone is hoping that the endorsement of a 'Like' button will be the thing that gets consumers from browsing to actually buying," said Fiona Dias, executive vice president of strategy and marketing at GSI Commerce Inc., which runs about 100 retail websites. But among her clients who have implemented "Like," there has been no direct correlation between top-selling and most-"Liked" items.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703787904575403512335975240.html#ixzz0wKpmOExb

eMarketer reported last month a good increase in Retailers adopting Facebook Like button and other Social Plugins.

Mashable ran a story few days back showing How Online Retailers Can Leverage Facebook’s Open Graph. Good Read.

Great Infographic on the number of followers of US Grocery Retailers.

Jeremiah Owyang has a video on how Best Buy uses social technologies internally. I agree with Jeremiah that success of Social Media hinges on how many employees really believe and are active users of all things Social. Check it out here, Video: How Best Buy Uses Social Technologies To Change Internal Culture.

JC Penney seems to have hit run with a very viral marketing campaign titled, Beware of the Doghouse. The campaign allows women to put their their significant other in the "Doghouse" for bad gift choices this holiday season. This new site and the marketing campaign behind it provide a fun, interactive way for women to encourage the men they love to get out of the “Doghouse,” by purchasing affordable diamond gifts from The Jewelry Store inside JCPenney. Not just that the campaign makes use of Facebook Connect application, which allows Facebook users to easily log into their account and select potential “Doghouse” candidates from their Facebook Friends list. The application also allows photo downloads from the profile pages and feeds stories from the site to the candidate’s Facebook Wall. The website and video has spread like wildfire over the web this past few weeks.

This is a great example of how Retailers are using Social Media and innovative marketing to connect with customers and generate sales.

Read more:

Retailers find Facebook friends in hopes of finding sales

Why JCPenney's 'The Doghouse' Went Viral

In the past, I have written how Retailers use the Social Media sites like Facebook, MySpace (1, 2, 3) for Marketing. A new report from eMarketer reinforces the same.

Consumers' use of social media is altering the way they make purchase decisions. To stay relevant, retailers must determine how to incorporate social media, such as social networks and blogs, into their marketing strategies.

Generation Y (those born after 1979) online buyers are more immersed in online and mobile activities than any other generation, according to 2008 research from shopping comparison site PriceGrabber. Some 85% of Gen Y respondents said they participated in social networking, and 57% reported involvement with blogs.

To reach this demographic segment, Web retailers are marketing to them on their own turf. Data from an August 2008 survey of Web merchants sponsored by Internet Retailer found that, of the 39.3% of retail respondents that use social networks, 32% have a page on Facebook, 27% on MySpace and 26% on YouTube.

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