Tag: shops

Crooks stole 61 million customer records

IBM logoResearch from IBM said that in 2014 cyber attackers stole 61 million records from retailers.
But that’s just in the USA.
IBM’s survey said that there had been a 50 percent decline in attacks on retail web sites in 2014.
The report said that even though the number of cyber attacks had fallen, the attacks have become much more sophisticated.
IBM’s security services analyse over 20 billion security incidents every day – presumably worldwide.
The attackers are developing sophisticated techniques to grab “massive amounts” of data with each attack.
“The threat from organised cyber crime rings remains the largest security challenge for retailers,” said Kris Lovejoy, general manager of IBM Security Services.
IBM suggested that not all cyber breaches are disclosed.
Big Blue said the primary way cyber gangs gained access was through a method called Secure Shell Brute Force, which now outweighs malicious code.
There has been a rise in attacks however in point of sale systems using malware, but most were through command injection or SQL injection.
IBM said lack of data validation in SQL databases by system administrators made retail databases a favourite spot to attack.

 

Shoppers face full on technology blast

highstreetCompanies using technology to track and attract shoppers mean the number of retail deployments by the end of this year has risen 100 percent compared to 2013.

This year, most deployments were in clothing, grocery and shopping malls using information like customer analytics, offers, product search and navigation.

But next year burger joints and coffee shops are expected to take up smartphone applications.

ABI Research senior analyst Patrick Connolly said: “We are seeing growth across all major technologies, including BLE, Wi-Fi and audio, with 2015 being an important year for handset based location, sensor fusion, magnetic fields and LED.”

Most deployments so far have been in the USA but that’s set to change next year and in coming years, without any single company having a dominant market share, he said.

“In 2015, we also expect to see camera analytics companies like ShopperTrak, Irisys and Brickstream playing an increasing role as they expand their offerings into BLE, Wi-Fi and in-store analytics,” he said.

Apple knocks Google off top spot

prismThe internecine war between Google and Apple took a further twist when it emerged that the Cupertino company now holds the pole position on indoor location technology likely to be widely used in shops.

ABI Research said that “Apple has taken the bull by the horns” in the retail market with several firms vying to win the war.  Technologies using LED from ByteLight, Qualcomm and Philips and magnetic field  technology from companies like IndoorAtlas are going to change the way shops look.

Apple leads the way with its iBeacon, otherwise known as Bluetooth Smart or BLE.  Other vendors can license this name for their own products.

Electronic shelf labels using protocols like NFC and BLE are set to increase and app companies are filling the gaps.

Patrick Connolly, a senior analyst at ABI said the world is likely to see the first deployments of light systems next year.

Connolly said: “The widespread availability of BLE beacons makes it very easy for retails to deploy a light system to test the water and measure shopper acceptance.”

He added that Zebra/Motorola, Ruckus and Aruba will combine wi-fi with BLE and other location technologies.

NCR claims we all love self checkout

A supermarket checkoutA report commissioned by NCR claims that the world and its dog all love to use self checkout when we’re shopping in supermarkets.

The survey covered nine countries – Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, the UK and the USA – and polled 2,800 shoppers.

It shows that 90 percent of the respondents use SCO technology and most of them – 78 percent – agree or strongly agree that shops using this tech give better customer service.

The results fly in the face of our own experiences in the UK where most people grumble when they’re forced to use self checkout and many line up to see a friendly human face.  Of course, the supermarkets are saving money and costing jobs by employing this technology.

And NCR’s survey, obliquely shows that’s right because suggestions to improve self checkout showed 43 percent of people would always like an attendant to assist.

NCR said that self checkout is “an important component” of many shops’ “omni channel” strategies. NCR bends the truth a little by saying self checkout “helps increase customer satisfaction, customer loyalty” and – this is the crunch one – “profitability”.

Shoppers shun brand snobbery for cheap prices

light blueShoppers are shunning “premium shops” as the place to buy premium brands, and instead are happy to buy them at the cheapest possible price, research has revealed.

In the latest survey of 1,000 consumers, ShopperCentric said just over three quarters cited ‘product quality’ as the key defining feature of a premium brand.

A measly 16 percent said that they felt that upmarket stores were the place to go to buy these brands, with half of those questioned saying that it was the pricing that attracted them into stores.

Snobbery around premium brands was also shunned, with six in ten shoppers claiming that they hated the status these products held, and just 28 percent stated that they wanted to feel ’special’ when they bought these.

In fact, it seems lower prices and promotions are the way to a consumer’s pocket, with 74 percent of shoppers claiming that they loved finding a premium brand with a price discount and 61 percent said they only bought premium brands when they were on offer.

Manufacturers could face a lose/lose situation. 59 percent of shoppers admitted that if they saw a premium brand on reduced price, it would make them question whether the full price was too high.

Despite that, 37 percent of shoppers agreed that the types of brands who don’t discount, don’t care about their shoppers.

Danielle Pinnington, Managing Director of ShopperCentric said that the findings showed that  that price alone clearly did not “denote superior quality for shoppers any more”.

Instead, “great (and proven) quality appeared to lie at the heart of an unequivocal premium brand definition.”

She pointed out there was a role for expressing this through price, packaging, image or even channel and in store.

“For many shoppers it appears, it isn’t about where you sell a premium brand, but how you sell it,” she added.

“Emergency measures” required to fix London’s high streets

highstreet“Emergency measures” must be put in place to improve the state of the high street, the London Assembly has said.

In its Open for Business report, the organisation said a vicious cycle on the high street has led to an increase in empty shops across the capital – up five percent to 3,400 in the past two years.

Businesses should be encouraged to open pop-up shops in vacant premises to help boost struggling high streets, a London Assembly report said today.

It said outer London high streets were particularly struggling because of tough economic conditions and changes in the retail industry, as people chose to shop at out-of-town centres and online.

However, it also blamed the number of vacant shops as a contributor to the decline, claiming these stores discouraged shoppers, and led to the closure of other retailers that might otherwise have survived.

The Committee has now said it wants immediate action from the Mayor, the Government and local boroughs.

It claims businesses should be encouraged to open pop-up shops in vacant premises to help boost struggling high streets. It also wants an expansion of small business rate relief paid for through a reduction in landlord’s rate relief on empty properties and a new register of owners of vacant shops so landlords can be easily traced.

The report also sets out other ideas to boost high streets, including improving accessibility especially for walkers and cyclists and prioritising turnover of car park spaces over maximising income.

Andrew Dismore AM, Chair of the Economy Committee, said: “The Mayor, the Government and local boroughs need urgently to follow our recommendations to bring empty shops back into use, stop the rot and so help our local high streets thrive again.“

The Committee also suggests boroughs should have powers to control any plans for betting shops, payday loan shops or pawnbrokers, to encourage more diversity in London’s high streets.

What HP really told its dear partners

HP Global Partner ConferenceLet’s face it, us journalists are like a dangerous bacillus for vendors. Although the press are important to HP, we must be kept in isolation, and any HP execs that come anywhere near us must be inoculated beforehand and go through extensive health checks afterwards to ensure they haven’t been contaminated.

So in the ICU unit at this week’s Global Partner Conference, we were kept carefully away from the 2,000 partners invited to the glittering jamboree at the very glittering Venetian hotel in swinging Las Vegas.

We attempted to visit a server briefing but we were ejected by an HP bouncer because he noticed that we were wearing a red badge – red standing for warning, of course.

It was hard to prevent us chatting to sources close to Avnet, Ingram Micro and Tech Data, however, and to sundry HP employees who hadn’t been inoculated. Because these chaps and chapesses haven’t been press trained, we will have to not name them and describe them as “sources close” to the companies. And we can relay the undoubted fact that although folk from the big distributors welcomed Meg Whitman’s pledge to be nicer to the channel, they will believe it when they see it, if you get my meaning.

We hacks didn’t get invited to the Gen8 Petting Zoo, which is a shame. We would have loved to see HP petting the channel. Nor did we learn about the new compact servers (need three pedestals), the future HP Smart Update Manager (SUM), the future HP BladeSystem interconnect and we weren’t briefed on HP’s Smart Storage Futures (power, monitor, internet).

We do know that Synnex is HP’s largest North American distributor, delivering over $3 billion sales every year. It’s HP’s number one distie and has over 45 percent channel share. A Mr Eric Doyle, from the Intel Corporation, delivered the message that Intel, HP and resellers are “better together”.  This Eric Doyle is different from UK hack Eric Doyle, who had a package waiting for him in reception. Confusion arose. The UK’s Eric Doyle was being asked to pay $7 to collect the Intel package. We didn’t see Intel’s Mike Magee there, either.

Dan Forlenza from HP and Aaron Arvizu from Intel impressed on delegates the importance of the enterprise tablet revolution. Those would be HP tablets with Intel chips inside, then. Scott Wiest, from HP, invited the resellers to “ignite new opportunities” with X86 servers and how to migrate IBM and Oracle Sun servers to HP ones, instead.

Ray Carlin from HP told partners that while there have been many predictions of the demise of bricks-and-mortar shops, lots of people still want to go into real shops. As ChannelEye knows only too well, people like to go into shops to eye up the goodies but fewer and fewer are buying there and after they’ve taken a dekko, go online to buy the kit instead.

All in all, the event was a very revealing snapshot of how HP treats its partners.  We were successfully confined to sealed test tubes and shipped out of Vegas with due despatch and without the plague breaking out in a widespread kind of a way.

Phones 4U gets ads banned by watchdog

phonesPhones 4U has earned itself a ban over two adverts after the Advertising Standards Authority  (ASA) described them as “misleading”.

The retailer fell foul of the toothsome watchdog after people complained that its “upgrades 4u and u and u” ads, aimed at trying to show that people could upgrade with the retailer on any network and not the one they were signed to, were misleading.

They said that  the claims didn’t apply to customers on all networks, including Three and Tesco mobile, as the voice over in the comical broadcast ads suggested.

Both ads  focused on a range of “comical characters”, being told they could upgrade their phones despite their traits.

The voice over said:  “Listen up you lot. You can upgrade your phones at Phones4U”. The ad featured a number of characters with a range of habits such as smelling of fish, keeping a lot of cats and wearing gilets. The voice-over indicated that they could all get upgrades saying “Upgrades for you and you and you at Phones4U”. The on-screen text stated “T&Cs apply”.

In the second ad the voiceover said: “Listen up you lot. You can upgrade your phones at Phones4U.” A woman asked, “I’m scared of long-term commitment. Can I?” The voice-over replied, “I hear you lady. With our exclusive jump contract you could update your phone every 6 months … Upgrades for you and you and you at Phones4U.” The on screen text said: “T&Cs and exclusions may apply”.

When questioned by the watchdog, Phones 4U tried to plead its innocence, telling the ad police that the purpose of the ads was to tell customers that it was possible to upgrade their handsets at its shops. It said there was a common misconception that this could only be done with an existing network provider and that it aimed to show that it offered upgrades on the majority of network providers, even if the customer did not originally get the handset or contract from its stores.

However, the shop chain acknowledged that some networks such as Three and Tesco Mobile were not partnered with it, and so customers of these networks would not be able to upgrade. It said that it had covered itself against this claiming that its  “T&Cs apply” text showed there were exclusions, as well as offering further literature on its site to back this up.

However, the ASA remained unimpressed, claiming that the content in the ads suggested that everyone could upgrade as a result of the characters used. It said that while some customers would understand “upgrade” as meaning a new phone, they may not have expected to change networks to do so. And while Phones 4U had tried to cover its back with the on screen text referring to T&Cs, the ASA wasn’t convinced these made it clear that it was only possible to upgrade on certain networks.

As a result the company was ordered not to show the ads again in their current form.

However, the ruling is probably a drop in the ocean for the chain which yesterday announced that it would be expanding its services to the mobile network industry.

The company said it plans to launch its first mobile network –  “Life Mobile” – which will run as a mobile virtual network operator on mobile operator EE’s 2G and 3G spectra when it launches in March.