The promise of artificial intelligence (AI) is beginning to make its mark in real-world applications, impacting industries from gaming to education and everything in between. Expected to reach a staggering $35,870 billion (USD) by 2025, the market for AI lends itself to be a serious business consideration for the retail sector, which is currently applying…
What percentage of online orders are at risk of fraud? 2.32 percent of U.S. transactions in 2017, and 5.07 percent of international orders. That’s the data from the latest Fraud Attack Index from end-to-end fraud protection company Forter, in collaboration with the Merchant Risk Council. In some ways, that’s good news: it’s less than last…
Talk doesn’t come cheap, and this is especially true in retail, where managing customer care costs across the ever-expanding landscape of communication is top of mind for retailers. While retailers will spend exponentially more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one, taking care of an existing one is expensive. Recent research…
Amazon.com is upping its virtual reality game. CNBC reports Amazon has patented a blended-reality mirror that lets you try on clothes virtually while placing you into a virtual location. The imagined mirror works by scanning the environment to generate a virtual model, and then identifies the face and eyes of the user to determine which objects…
While the debate will continue around businesses’ expectations of virtual reality's potential vs. the realities of consumer adoption, VR has gone ahead and found a growing number of ways to make business and industry more efficient, more effective and better connected to its customers. And not always in the most obvious ways. Take VR retail…
According to Cisco’s Midyear Cybersecurity Report, security remains one of the most important concerns for retailers as we head into 2018. In the past year alone, security breaches impacted store operations, finance and brand reputation. For those retailers surveyed as part of the study, the results are tangible: 54 percent said they had dealt with…
Kroger announced it will be testing “cashier-less” technology in 2018. Business Insider reports Kroger's new "Scan, Bag, Go" technology allows customers to scan and pay for goods as they shop. Here's how it works: shoppers scan the barcodes of items they wish to purchase using a handheld scanner, provided by Kroger, or the chain's "Scan,…
It hasn’t been a slow year for cyber attackers, and with holiday shopping wrapping up, retailers should pay special attention to their cybersecurity practices. In a survey conducted in November, cybersecurity company Tripwire found that a large majority of retail organizations aren't fully prepared for data breaches this holiday season. This is especially concerning given…
Do small and new online retailers have a chance to succeed anymore? Industry analysts say that 2017's parade of acquisitions by major retailers — Whole Foods by Amazon.com, Kate Spade by Coach, HSN by QVC, among others — are making it harder for smaller retailers to survive. How can SMB sellers compete with these players’ same-day…
