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Retail Paradox Weekly
Retail News Analysis by RSR Research
April 8, 2008
'Green' the HP Way
By Brian Kilcourse, Managing Partner
4/8/2008
Preliminary responses from RSR’s current survey, What Can Green Do For You?, indicate that retailers and their partners believe that “packaging and materials costs” are most in need of an environmentally friendly overhaul. As a matter of fact, more than 60% of our early respondents indicate that this is a top priority, compared to less than 50% for such things are energy costs in the stores or the supply chain. Packaging is indeed something that needs addressing; one has only to attempt to open a box of Lightning McQueen action toys to wonder where all that plastic will go, and perhaps think a little about the Texas-sized mass of photo-degraded plastic material now floating around in the Pacific Ocean.
One company, Hewlett Packard, is doing something about it... More
Mobile Commerce: Look Out America, Amazon is Infiltrating your Stores
By Paula Rosenblum, Managing Partner
4/8/2008
This week, a story about Amazon’s new texting application came to me from Greg Buzek, founder and head of IHL Consulting Group. For those of you that don’t know him, Greg is one of the good guys and most researchers and analysts count him as a friend (those who don’t probably haven’t met him). If you haven’t seen IHL’s database, Sophia, it’s well worth a look. You can find out the relationship between retailers and the technologies they use easily with the tool. It’s quite an impressive accomplishment and very easy to use.
Before I put pen to paper on this article... More
Mobile Phones, NFC, and Retail Interactivity: A View from the Front Lines
By Nikki Baird, Managing Partner
4/8/2008
The NFC Forum, an industry organization formed to advance the use of near-field communication technology, has announced the finalists in a competition it is hosting that is designed to show the cutting edge innovations that may well become the future of what NFC can do and how it can be used. You can read all about the competition and the finalists at the NFC Forum website on the topic. What amazed me about the list of finalists was that there are so many of them with retail or retail-related applications – and there are even a few contenders from the
US , long the step-child when it comes to mobile phone innovations.
To expand just a bit on what this is all about, near-field communications is basically... More
Digital Downloads Work for Music: Any Other Takers?
By Steve Rowen, Partner
4/8/2008
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