A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience
Technology will have a profound effect on the way convenience stores conduct their business.
Steve Jobs once cautioned, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward.” You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
Continue reading… “The future of convenience retailing”
Futurist Thomas Frey: What music comes to mind when you try on your new pair of jeans? Does that “music in your head” somehow change when you try on a different brand?
Continue reading… “Rethinking Retail and 18 Examples of Change”
Fifty-one percent of shoppers are more likely to buy from retailers with mobile-specific websites.
Retailers must answer the call to make mobile shopping easier and more engaging or they risk getting disconnected from the majority of mobile device users. While 89.7 percent of the U.S. population aged 18 to 64 have mobile phones, only 49.1 percent are using their phones to shop, according to Arc Worldwide, the marketing services arm of advertising agency Leo Burnett.
Continue reading… “Retailers Need to Reach Out and Touch More Mobile Users”
Tesco delivery van
The supermarkets, which are laid out in the same manner as normal stores, will be used exclusively by staff doing virtual shopping for online customers. Instead of the public browsing up and down the aisles, teams of Tesco workers will push their own trolleys around as they complete more than 1,000 shopping lists every day.
Continue reading… “Supermarket Giant To Open Customer-Free ‘Dark Stores’ In Britain”
As many as 10,000 U.S. stores are expected to close by the end of this year, according to a retail report by Grant Thornton LLP.
Continue reading… “10,000 Stores In The U.S. Expected To Close By The End Of 2009”
A software engineer from California is on a mission to visit every single Starbucks coffee shop on the planet.
Winter, 37, has spent 12 years drinking coffee in 9,100 chain stores. He estimates he has 3,000 left.
Continue reading… “California Man On A Mission To Visit Every Starbucks In The World”
Wal-Mart Stores is striding into the market for electronic health records, seeking to bring the technology into the mainstream for physicians in small offices, where most of America’s doctors practice medicine.
Continue reading… “Wal-Mart Plans To Move Into The Digital Health Records Market”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIhUwe7sUPo&eurl=http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/12/symphony-of-54-shoes&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
It isn’t that hard to imagine music coming from shoes, but there is usually a person wearing the shoes and using the shoes to make the music. Still an innovative person, Ingrid Bachmann, created the Symphony For 54 Shoes out of 27 pairs of recycled shoes.
Continue reading… “Ingrid Bachmann’s “Symphony For 54 Shoes””
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG3_2lvoL8A[/youtube]
For it’s latest trick, Microsoft’s engineers have given the multi-touch Surface PC table a bartender’s sixth sense. If you set your drink down on top of it, the Surface will be able to detect just how full it is. At least, if it’s in a special glass.
Continue reading… “Multi-Touch Surface PC Table”
For an impatient geek there is nothing…NOTHING more annoying than standing behind someone in a grocery store that has the audacity to write a check in the 21st century. That is why I head for the self-checkout lines.
Continue reading… “Do You Prefer Self-Checkout Lines?”
