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Retail Paradox Weekly
Retail News Analysis by RSR Research
April 14, 2009
Creative Financing: Technology Investments in Troubled Times
By Paula Rosenblum, Managing Partner
4/14/2009
Some time ago, befuddled with retailers’ fascination with gift cards, I felt obligated to seek our readers’ wisdom to help me understand the source of this fascination. I received reasonable enough responses to say “Okay… I guess they do make some sense.” Once again, I’m coming to you looking for the “wisdom of the crowd."
This time, we’re in a subject I know more about, and that makes me even more... More
A Strategy Without a Plan or: How to Kill a Retailer
By Nikki Baird, Managing Partner
4/14/2009
In 2000, I was an IT Strategy consultant for PwC. I had the interesting experience of working at Montgomery Wards (MW) during the last few months of its existence. I'm going to share this now because the company is defunct, and has been for over nine years - and clearly, as Circuit City demonstrates, there are still lessons to be learned. Keep in mind... More
The Gods Must Be Laughing: 2.0
By Brian Kilcourse, Managing Partner
4/14/2009
In last week’s Retail Paradox Weekly, we made the argument that it is time for retailers to start looking at network-centric computing as a viable (perhaps even preferable) alternative to the “traditional” distributed IT architectures that have been favored for the last 25 years. This is not a particularly new idea (Sun Microsystems had a marketing program featuring the slogan “the network is the computer” in the early 1990’s), but there is a preponderance of evidence accumulating that its time is nigh.
The evidence we carted out last week relates to... More
Digital Signage: Is it Even Possible to Learn the Easy Way?
By Nikki Baird with RetailWire
4/14/2009
I probably sound the most like my mother when I'm talking about a technology learning curve. "Are you going to learn things the hard way or the easy way?" was a constant question when I was growing up, and one I constantly throw at retailers who, say, want to reinvent the wheel when it comes to price optimization or workforce management.
The "easy way," at least the way I've defined it in my life, is when you... More
Copyright © 2009 RSR Research LLC. RSR is a tradename of Retail Systems Research LLC. All Rights Reserved
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