Retail and Hospitality

The key to retail success is understanding the shopping journey, and video can play an important part in that process. Sandra Acham talked to me this week as she wrote a blog about how video supports a comprehensive approach to understanding customer behavior (read the blog). The thing is that today…

Digital disruption is here. According to a 2015 survey from the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation (DBT Center), a joint initiative of Cisco and the Institute of Management Development (IMD), 47 percent of retail executives say digital disruption increases the risk of going out of bus…

Retail’s Big Show offers ideas and insights into the ever-changing industry of retail. This year’s NRF 2016 drew a large and influential group of the most innovative retail leaders. Throughout the show, these leaders held extensive one-on-one conversations and hosted general sessions by some of the…

These are especially difficult times for the retail industry. For starters, several of retail’s marquee names announced store closings or layoffs following a disappointing holiday sales season. Retailers simply haven’t benefited from cheaper gas and a relatively strong overall U.S. job market —retai…

Life in the Digital Vortex is challenging—especially for retailers. In an environment where averaged across industries four of the top 10 incumbents will be displaced by digital disruption in the next five years, retail ranks as the third most vulnerable out of 12. Retailers are also being squeezed…

Retailers are in the business to sell, not to be stolen from. And they don’t set up shop to buy security products from companies like Cisco. However, attackers who target retailers have discovered that it’s much more lucrative to shoplift virtually rather than physically. So even if you focus on sec…

This holiday season customers have more ways to shop than ever before. Retailers are making it easier to get the right presents by providing enhanced delivery options – from buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) to curbside pickup. While this freedom is empowering for customers, it creates a new leve…

Retail companies face a landscape filled with growing and increasingly complex threats. And the financial impact of these breaches is soaring. There are obvious financial incentives for attacking retailers because they typically don’t spend as much on security as financial institutions or government…

Holiday shopping isn’t like it used to be. Retail sales associates – a.k.a Santa’s helpers – are taking on more than just ushering shoppers into fitting rooms and helping them check out. Today, their role more resembles that of a concierge. Here are three ways the role of the sales associate is chan…