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At OpenWorld, Oracle Retail tried holding Birds-of-a-Feather breakfast meetings where customers could sit down with other customers to discuss specific topics (and get a free breakfast to boot) in an informal setting. A table-moderator handled the introductions and kept the conversations going. Based on the success of those breakfasts, we're doing something similar at NRF this year, although the program has been renamed to Affinity Group Discussions (I like BOFs better, but maybe that's because I'm a JavaOne Alumni).

If you're a retailer that doesn't already have plans for breakfast or lunch on Tuesday, you'll probably want to sign-up to attend these networking opportunities. The topics are:

--Hosted Deployment Models for Major Retail Projects
--Unleash the Value of Your Oracle Merchandising Applications
--Green Retailing in the Real World
--Where Phones and People Meet: Delivering the Perfect Retail Experience in Telecommunications
--Emerging Challenges within Retail Loss Prevention
--Why Settle for Tracking your Inventory When you Can Manage It?
--Bundle Store Applications, Hardware and Services to Decrease Cost and Optimize Store Operations
--Retail CRM
--Worst of Times, Best of Times: Retail Real Estate Management in 2009
--The People Factor: Managing Talent In Today’s Retail Market

Oracle is also sponsoring this year's Members-Only lunch on Monday. You'll want to arrive early because space is limited. Michael Gates Gill, author of the bestseller How Starbucks Saved My Life, will be speaking followed by a book-signing. Get your copy of his book signed before its turned into a movie (starring Tom Hanks, no less).

At next week's NRF Conference, retailers that are interested in technology standards should stop by the ARTS booth where they can speak with various committee members about the retail standards that ARTS develops. Oracle is an active participant (Jerry and I with occasional help from Dan) and believes strongly in the goal of lowering integration costs for retailers. Those standards fall into four groups:

1. Peripheral integration standards (JPOS+OPOS=UPOS)
2. Data models (both operational and warehouse)
3. XML schemas
4. Request for Proposal (RFP) templates

You can hear from Richard Halter, Chief Architect at ARTS, in this previous post. The SOA Blueprint for Retail v1.2 and SOA Best Practices v1.2, two documents aimed at helping retailers implement SOA, will be released at NRF. Since I've been participating on both committees for over a year, I'm excited to see them in the hands of retailers. I believe they are now complete, so we don't plan any new updates in the near future.

Also in the booth will be interesting demos from several vendors. Two that jumped out at me are focused on mobile commerce, a topic I follow closely. Both IBM and Epson will be demonstrating how the ARTS standards can help enable mobile POS.

On Monday and Tuesday from 11am to 5pm the ARTS booth with host conversations with special guests on the following topics:

Even if you're not interested in the demos or the discussion topics, its always good to check in with Dick Mader, the director of ARTS and knower of all things retail. As a former CIO at a department store, Dick keeps the committees grounded and working toward content that delivers real value. His latest endeavor has been putting together training to educate retailers on the use of ARTS standards. A small investment up-front could have big payoffs if integration costs can be lowered.

Here in Texas it's relatively warm. I spent Christmas and New Years day outside playing with the kids or working in the yard. But every January I dig out my winter-wear and make the trek to New York City for NRF's Big Show. This year the conference is a week earlier than normal, so I have a little less time to prepare.

With the economic downturn and the slow holiday season, I wonder if attendance will be as good as past years. Regardless, Oracle will there in full force, ready to show retailers how to make the best of a bad situation. And as always, there's the Oracle Red Hot Party Monday night. My advice: don't schedule any meetings for early on Tuesday.

Of course I'm anxious to see what the Eternal Order of AccessVia will be up to this year. Dean Sleeper, known as the Richard Branson of Retail, is always full of surprises and knows how to get your attention. Check out their short flash production, New Consumer, New Messaging. Top quality work for sure.

If you're interested in hearing viewpoints from some accomplished retailers that have written books, read this blog entry over at NRF.com. I just ordered my copy of Retail: The Art and Science. I hope it arrives in time for the plane ride.

Duncan Angove will be speaking on retail imperatives for growth and value creation on Monday 1:45 – 2:30 pm ET in room 3D04. Duncan is an engaging speaker, mixing his retail acumen with a dash of technology and large portion of English accent. Its a great combination that requires very few slides (something to which I aspire). "In this session, learn how retailers are able to scale customer intimacy and pursue fresh growth opportunities to give them unparalleled competitive advantage with the help of Oracle’s complete, open and integrated footprint for retail."

More NRF info to come...

Now's a good time to return that pink bunny suit (aka the Pink Nightmare) your aunt bought you so that you can instead buy the Red Ryder you've always wanted. Now is the time when the gifts gone wrong are made right.

I have a friend that bought iPod drumsticks in late November for Christmas. When his daughter finally opened the gift, they found that one of the sticks did not work. Unfortunately Buy.com's return policy is for 14 days, so he had to exchange many emails and phone calls to get them to relax the policy. In November the NRF said that 52% of surveyed retailers planned to relax their return policies for the holiday season. For example, Amazon.com modified their return policy:

Items sold by Amazon.com and shipped between November 1 and December 31, 2008, may be returned until January 31, 2009 for a full refund, subject to our other returns restrictions.

That's good customer service. (Speaking of good customer service, shortly after Christmas I received an email from Amazon.com thanking me for my holiday purchases and giving me a $3 credit to download music. I used the $3 and found an album I also wanted -- a win-win promotion.)

Creating a return policy that promotes good customer service but also prevents fraud is a tough proposition. I think the only good policy is one that's flexible. Retailers need policies that are dynamic, taking the customer, the product, and the situation into account. This used to be the domain of the store manager, but emotions and prejudice can get management into hot water quickly. A better approach is a scientific scoring mechanism based on policies and rules assessed in real-time.

Return authorization software that's directly connected to the checkout can reward the best customers by accepting returns out of policy and penalize those customers that habitually return products. Its all about mining the data to determine the right decision free of bias.

Last week both Fry's Electronics and Best Buy found leaks in their respective ships in the form of embezzlement. A VP at Fry's convinced the company they'd save money letting him handle vendors directly. He then proceeded to take $65M in kick-backs over the course of three years, spending much of it in Las Vegas casinos where he already had a reputation with police.

The Best Buy saga isn't much different. A couple owning a company called Chip Factory managed to underbid and overcharge Best Buy for computer parts by having the manager of vendor-relations in their pocket. Between 2003 and 2007 they allegedly netted at least $31M from their lucrative scheme.

I suppose its pretty easy for a buyer to overpay or overbuy and take a little something for his troubles. Audits are part of the answer, and job rotation is probably a good thing as well. Occasional background checks would have unearthed lavish lifestyles not in sync with pay-grades, but apparently none of these precautions were followed. I guess SOX doesn't plug all the holes.

I have two favorite stores, both of which are online, that I visit daily: Amazon and Newegg. Both provide excellent product information that includes customer reviews, photos of products, and related product suggestions. I recently discovered that both have customer forums that facilitate more free-form discussions about their products. This is another case of leveraging the internet community to help people make better buying decisions. Its also cost-effective to let customers help other customers rather than tie up support lines.

Amazon's Amapedia is really a community-based wiki with detailed product reviews. From their website:

Amapedia introduces a new way of organizing product information that we call “collaborative structured tagging”. Articles about products are tagged with terms that describe what the product is (“This Is A”) as well as their most important features (“Facts”). We believe that this way of organizing information will make it easy for you to write about the products that you like most. This structured information will also allow other community members to easily discover, filter, and compare related products and product features. Check out Real-time Strategy Games to get a sense of what collaborative structured tagging is about.

So far I haven't been too impressed with the site, but they are on the right track if they can generate more content. A better site is Newegg's Eggxpert, which has forums, chats, blogs, and newsletters. They are also on Twitter, though I don't find that very useful. When building a PC, its often good to get people's opinions on compatibility, so this resource hits the mark. From their website:

EggXpert.com is an extensive and easy-to-use online tech community designed specifically for PC & consumer electronics enthusiasts. Via our online forums, blogs and regular interactive events, community members can take part in tech discussion, political debate and network with other EggXpert members. Join our growing community today, and make EggXpert.com your place to meet with tech fans from around the world!

Another good site I found is BestBuy's Community. They have message boards, polls, podcasts, blogs, and twitters from executives. Reading some of the posts, it really feels like they are taking care of their customers. I noticed there were several comments bashing Best Buy, but they were untouched. That's they way it has to be -- keep the posting even if they cast the retailer in a bad light.

While researching computer cases on Newegg's site, I saw a customer comment that complained some parts were missing from the product he purchased. Immediately following was a response from the manufacturer (not Newegg) apologizing for the issue and asking them to call the help desk to arrange for a free shipment of parts. That's the right way to respond to customer complaint.

Any other community sites from retailers out there?

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 example, Michael Phelps has 1.7M fans, Homer Simpson has 1.4M fans, Silversun Pickups have 10K fans, and Obama has 3M fans.

Becoming a fan does a few things, most of which are benign. First, it announces to your friends your preferences. A person that's a fan of George Bush, the NRA, and Lynyrd Skynyrd kinda paints a picture. Second, it shows support for up-and-coming artists, politicians, causes, etc. And third, it provides a medium to interact. Its the third area that is of interest for retailers.

I decided to pick four trendy fashion companies and see what they're doing on their Facebook pages. (Incidentally, three of the four use Oracle Retail Point-of-Service!)

Abercrombie & Fitch has a pretty basic page with a few discussions and pictures, but nothing very engaging. The American Eagle Outfitters page looks a little more like an e-commerce site with advertising and discounts. Gap takes it up a notch for their fans by referencing their iPhone application, several videos and polls for voting on fashion trends. They offer a more interesting and engaging page so people are more likely to join discussions or leave a comment. The best of the four was Urban Outfitters (although Gap was really close). Their fans get gift ideas, pictures of new merchandise, a concert video, and occasional fan discount codes. This is, of course, quite subjective and I'll admit I'm probably not in the demographic they are targeting (sadly).

Retailers should be using social sites to enforce branding, solicit customer opinions, and market new products via fan-only discounts. But this takes investment, as content can get stale fast. Pages need to be engaging, leveraging more than what's available on the website. This is, after all, social so conversation needs to be encouraged.

The other day, just as I was leaving for a flight as it were, our washing machine died. Its about 10 years old so its not worth repairing, especially when we can get a more efficient front-loading model. So I did some research, found the best model in our price range, and found it on sale at Best Buy. But when my wife went to purchase it, they were out of stock. With three kids we could not go without a washer for three weeks so I asked my wife to try Home Depot and see if they would price match. It worked!

Price matching has gotten easier with the Web, and with smart phones it will get easier still. I recently read an interesting posting called Keep Your Barcode Scanner off My Merchandise over at AppsLab. The ShopSavvy mobile application discussed allows users to scan or enter the UPC of an item and get product information and price comparisons. Imagine scanning an item, showing the manager his competitors prices, and getting the price match. It couldn't be easier.

So I downloaded Snappr.Net, an iPhone application that does basically the same thing. Although I didn't have much luck with using the camera as barcode scanner, the rest of the application seemed to work well. Finally the in-store consumers may get to enjoy the rich information available on the Web. And of course retailers need to much more aware of their competition.

I've had my iPhone for a while now, and my favorite non-Apple applications are Facebook, Evernote, and More Cowbell. But its not all fun and games. In a previous post I discussed some of the research we were doing with Twitter on the iPhone for store managers. I started wondering if retailers were doing anything with iPhone applications, so I did a little research.

The iPhone has applications that track shopping lists, find the best sales, and even calculate final price after discount and tax. But there are very few that come from retailers. I could only find four, which I'll review below. All are free, so try them out.

Amazon
The Mobile Amazon application basically gives you an iPhone view of a subset of the standard website. Once you've logged in, it recognizes you so it can make recommendations, show you your wishlist and shopping cart, and allow product searches. Your shopping cart is constant so you can manage it on your PC and your iPhone. The iPhone application also allows you to complete your purchase just like you would on a PC.

The more interesting feature is called "Remembers." It allows you to take pictures of things that you want to remember, principally future purchases. So if you see a sweater that you like but you don't want to buy it right away, snap a picture so you remember it later. The picture are accessible from your PC later, so you can do further research. Amazon will also try to match the picture to a product, but I just don't think that will be very accurate.

Target
The Target Snow Globe is very holiday specific. It suggests gifts, let's you keep a shopping list, and helps you find the closest Target store. For gift suggestions, you choose male or female, then use a slider to set the age range. With every shake of the iPhone, the snow globe reveals a new gift suggestion. I let my kids play with this while waiting for a table at a restaurant, and they thought it was great. The animation, sounds, and use of iPhone features are top-notch.

Sam's Club
The Gifter Stress Lifter, as its called, helps you find gifts by having you take a personality quiz for the each recipient on your list. The list can be constructed from your contact list, which is a great feature. You choose the relationship (e.g. wife, son, friend) and the age range, then it asks you 6 questions about the person, allowing you to select 3 pictures (out of 9) that best answer each question. Its very fast and intuitive. After the personality quiz, it recommends gifts.

I tried to find a gift for my wife. At the end of the quiz, it classified her as a Caregiver, Avid Reader, and Travel Fiend. The first two are spot-on, and the third would be true if we didn't have young kids. It then listed 20-30 items that matched her personality, most of which were applicable. After selecting an item to purchase, I was taken to the Sam's Club website (which was not optimized for the iPhone).

Gap
The Gap application offers videos of celebrities wearing Gap clothes singing holiday songs called "Merry Mixed Carols." I guess its entertaining, but a little too hip for me. Of course anything with Rain Wilson (aka Dwight Shrute from The Office) has to have some merit. The second option is "Mix Not Match" which allows you to mix different outfits on a picture of a man or woman. It makes good use of the "finger drag" to slide different sweaters, scarves, and hats onto the "manikin."
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I was impressed with this first crop of iPhone applications. I found them entertaining and useful. I think we'll be seeing more iPhone (and probably Blackberry) applications from retailers in the near future, and I'm looking forward to it.