RPW 5-20-08

Retail Paradox Weekly

Retail News Analysis by RSR Research

May 20, 2008

A Day Late and a Dollar Short? Congress Threatens Credit Card Processors

By Brian Kilcourse, Managing Partner
5/20/2008

Last week, a U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee anti-trust task force took up proposed legislation (H.R. 5546) that is intended to force Visa and MasterCard to directly negotiate the “interchange fee” with retailers for each online credit card transaction. According to the proposed legislation, if such negotiations fail, a panel of three administrative law judges in the Justice Department would set the rates. This is the latest move by lawmakers to put more controls on the credit-card industries. Visa (of course) says the bill is anti-competitive.

In his opening statement on May 15... More

Store as Brand

By Nikki Baird, Managing Partner
5/20/2008

I have written and spoken a lot about “the customer buying process”: the idea that you can’t view your retail business in terms of how you sell, but in terms of how your customers want to buy from you. I use an example all the time of a 13-step process for buying a vacation home, showing all of the touch points managed by the seller (“retailer”) and those touch points that the consumer went through but were unmanaged by the seller, and so were opportunities for competitors to steal customers away. For the record, in the example, only 5 of the 13 steps were managed by the seller.

Last week I was in London attending a half-day thought leadership event put on by IBM and Sterling Commerce on multi-channel... More

Any Good News? Yes

By Steve Rowen, Partner
5/20/2008

I’ll admit that I don’t watch a lot of television. And when I do, apart from sports, it’s never live. I’m a full season behind in Lost (on DVD) because I’d rather not have to wait a full week in between commercial-laden episodes (advertisers will simply have to find another way to reach me). And I simply can’t stay up to watch Bill Maher on HBO Sunday nights. But through the beauty of on-demand, I catch each episode of his “Real Time” series a few weeks after it’s already run.

So last night I finally caught... More