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Sears Innovates with Multichannel Strategy (Chief Marketer)
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Posted: 03/18/2010
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Chief Marketer recently spoke with Sears' senior vice president online Imran Jooma to unravel the success behind the brand Sears Holdings Corp’s (Sears and Kmart) aggressive approach to bring merchandise and marketing to online communities (MySears.com) and mobile commerce (Sears2Go). The new campaign, “ShopYourWay”, is a multichannel strategy with new initiatives including Marketplace at Sears.com, which gives online shoppers the opportunity to locate and purchase products from outside retailers. Jooma credits Sears with having a robust fan community at MySears.com, which allows the company to pinpoint and deliver additional categories of interest. To maintain ease-of-use and minimize cumbersome navigation, Sears launched Quick View and ClickSee, which gives customers a quick visual of related and compatible products. The company is in-touch with customer feedback to improve both in-store and online shopping experiences, and recently added an iPhone app to its Sears2Go mobile shopping initiative.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Retail & Products
Topic:
Content Strategy,
E-Commerce,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
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On-the-Go with Target’s Mobile Gift Cards (Promo Magazine)
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Posted: 03/18/2010
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Now, with its mobile gift card option, Target, the second-largest U.S. discount chain, makes paying with plastic old school. The retailer is letting customers use mobile phones to redeem gift cards as more consumers use phones with Internet access. Shoppers simply save the account numbers for their Target GiftCards to a PIN-protected area at either online or at the retailer's mobile-optimized site. Customers access the mobile site on their phones, enter the login and PIN for the card and complete the purchase when the cashier scans the unique 2D barcode on the display screen into Target’s P-O-S system, which has been outfitted across all 1740 Target stores nation wide. Customers can also access the mobile site to view merchandise, check product availability, manage gift registries and find locations, among other things. Other retailers like Starbucks and 7-Eleven are testing similar barcode technology to incorporate into their mobile business strategies.
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Industry:
Retail & Products
Topic:
E-Commerce,
Experience & Interaction,
Technology Implementation
Region:
North America
Audience:
Business to Consumer
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iPhone App Enables Paying with Plastic (CNN Money)
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Posted: 03/18/2010
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Operating businesses remotely just got even better. While credit card transactions were standardized in traditional business settings long ago, paying with plastic was only a pipe dream for those conducting business on the road. Now, a host of software is on the market allowing mobile businesses to process credit card payments on their cell phones. From Apple's iPhone applications to Inner Fence, which developed the first iPhone app for processing credit cards, there are a slew of applications out there that allow proprietors to issue refunds, review sales, and email electronic receipts for transactions.
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Industry:
Retail & Products,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services,
Telecommunications
Topic:
E-Commerce,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer
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Where New Technologies Emerge: The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (New Media Knowledge)
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Posted: 03/18/2010
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Driven by innovation, the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas again brought hot products to the forefront. A traditional showcase for new and emerging technologies and gadgets, the show provides an interactive forum for companies to reveal their latest and greatest products and services. This year, Yahoo announced a host of new partners for its Connected TV project, which aims to provide Internet service to televisions. In addition, Panasonic TV’s new built-in video camera allows customers to make Skype video calls. Andrew Lim, editor of mobile reviews site Recombu, told NMK, “It's about giving consumers better access to existing services….” Car manufacturer Ford is integrating social media into their services with its Sync MyTouch in-car Internet system, which allows on-the-go drivers to access the Web via WiFi or 3G mobile connection. CES 2010 demonstrated that once-complex technology continues to become more user-friendly.
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Industry:
Retail & Products,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic:
Experience & Interaction,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Consumer
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Programming With Screen Shots, Not Just Code (Dr. Dobbs)
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Posted: 03/04/2010
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed a new system that allows one to program with screenshots. For more than three decades, the graphical user interface (GUI) has dominated computer programing, but its underlying reliance on code manipulation means it’s still relatively labor intensive for computer programmers to customize or build programs. The new system, Sikuli, enables programmers to develop programs using GUI screen shots. While it requires some knowledge of Python, the system enables even casual users to create new programs without mastering complex programming language. The user simply draws a box around the desired content, captures the screen shot and then places it appropriately into the Python code. The research team plans to present a paper entitled GUI Testing Using Computer Vision at CHI, the premier conference on human-computer interactions, where they will describe new applications of Sikuli aimed at large software development projects, both for programmers and non-programmers.
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Industry:
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic:
Experience & Interaction,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer
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