The other day I noticed that my Tesco shopping trolley had a monitoring device on it. On the back of the basket there was a small black box with a sign on it that said, “We’re working to understand how customers shop so we can serve you better.” Yikes, I am being tracked! Digging into it deeper, being physically tracked through a store isn’t that unusual, it’s called “indoor positioning” and sophisticated retailers are using this capability. With the help of the Wi-Fi signal

Recently Facebook announced that it would give free beacons to US retailers that sign up to participate in its Place Tips program. Place Tips is a feature in Facebook that allows users to explore more about a place they are visiting, whether it’s exploring their friends’ photos or moments about which they have written. These locations can be stores or businesses and this connection is what Facebook is looking to exploit. Hence, Facebook is connecting the user to the store not

Alibaba was recently named the most valuable brand in the world by BrandZ’s global annual ranking, but how did it get there? And how did it get there is such a short period of time? The answer lies in what a recent Harvard Business Review article highlighted, it’s their ability to self-tune. According to the @HarvardBiz article called The Self-Tuning Enterprise, Alibaba continually reinvents itself and continuously self-tunes in algorithmic-style thinking. As with a self-tuni

There has been a noticeable change in the way we buy. While in the past we may have flipped through the pages of a magazine or browsed the shelves of a store for inspiration, today we are getting these great ideas from places that didn’t exist a few years ago, like Pinterest or blogs. Digital plays an important role in this shopping journey and it isn’t always about finding the best price. This new paradigm isn’t really about the mundane purchases like groceries and household