Insight-Driven Retailing Blog

Walmart's iPhone Application

By David Dorf on November 5, 2009 2:03 PM

I downloaded two more iPhone applications from retailers and played with them a bit. The first is Gucci's app, which is unique presumably because their customers are unique. They run "iPhone only" specials like $500 designers sneakers (limit one per...

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Twitter Me Not

By David Dorf on March 25, 2009 10:04 PM

Before bed, my wife and I usually watch a movie from Netflix or TV from the DVR. But it rarely garners my full attention, so I usually have a laptop on my lap (how appropriate) and I surf. (This is...

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Speedy and Scalable Analytics

By David Dorf on March 18, 2009 9:48 AM

Mike Olson, formerly from Sleepy Cat and Oracle, has a new startup called Cloudera. Much as Sleepy Cat supported the open-source Berkeley Database, Cloudera will be supporting the open-source distributed file system Hadoop. First, what is Hadoop, then how is...

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Sears and Social Search

By David Dorf on March 12, 2009 2:42 PM

When you have a question, how do you search for the answer? Beyond the search techniques you use on the Web, you probably mentally traverse your social network. If I have a question about camping, I'll ask Jerry. Steve knows...

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Social Media Means Business

By David Dorf on March 9, 2009 12:08 PM

RSR posted an excerpt of some research on Retail Wire today that got me thinking. Are retailers really pursuing social media? So I set out to find some examples and settled on Best Buy. They have a dedicated team within...

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The Power to Predict

By David Dorf on February 23, 2009 2:03 PM

When you call CapitalOne, they identify the caller (using CallerID) then determine the most likely reason for the call. For example, if you were just assessed a late fee, chances are you're calling to complain about the fee. This prepares...

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Retailers on Facebook

By David Dorf on December 15, 2008 4:45 PM

eMarketer published an interesting chart listing 30 major retailers that maintain a "fan page" on Facebook. My first thought was, why? Basically, Facebook users can sign-up to be a fan of actors/comedians, politicians, bands, movies/TV shows, and now products/businesses. For...

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Web 2.0 Honeycomb

By David Dorf on December 4, 2008 10:00 AM

If you caught my article in RIS News entitled Web 2.0 Shapes the Next Generation of Enterprise Retail Software, then you have some idea of Oracle Retail's direction for user interface design. But here's a little more detail for those...

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