Electronics retail merchant Best Buy is hoping to fight lost sales from "showrooming" – the practice of checking out an item in-store only to buy it online later – by deploying employees with tablets to enable customers to do more research.

Employees at Best Buy stores will be given tablet devices that customers can use to research a product. If they find a different merchant with a better price, the employees are allowed to match the price. Mike Mikan, interim CEO of Best Buy, believes this strategy will improve the customer experience by showing customers the chain has their best interests in mind.

At the same time, Best Buy is also focusing on developing a stronger ecommerce presence.

"We can no longer just focus on the box," Mikan said at the shareholders meeting, as quoted by Internet Retailer. "We must focus on both the physical and virtual customer experience, and our capital investment must reflect that."

Retailers are leveraging tablets to improve store operations in a number of ways, ranging from point-of-sale (POS) payment processing to inventory management.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012 at 9:11 am .

Retail theft is a billion-dollar problem that merchants throughout the world are faced with. Fortunately, the issue is getting better for retailers, with a recent report from the National Retail Federation suggesting that theft rates declined in 2011.

The NRF's Retail Security Survey suggests that retail shrinkage (which includes inventory loss stemming from employee theft, shoplifting, supplier fraud and paperwork errors) decreased to 1.41 percent. However, that still translates to $34.5 billion worth of sales, highlighting the severity of retail shrinkage.

"Retail theft continues to plague the industry, with billions of dollars of merchandise walking out of the store every day without ever being paid for," said NRF vice president of loss prevention Rich Mellor. "Fighting these self-serving and unethical criminals has been a tedious battle, but we remain resolute in our efforts and our partnerships with law enforcement to combat this growing problem."

Many companies supplement their store operations by leveraging technology to detect shrink. These tools can help them better monitor their inventory levels and identify when merchandise has gone missing.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Monday, July 2nd, 2012 at 9:49 am .

As computers and other modern technologies become more mainstream in India, retailers are reacting and launching their own multichannel shopping experiences. Indian IT services firm Wipro believes the growth of ecommerce in the country will further drive retail growth, the Economic Times reports.

Srinivas Pallia, senior vice president for the Wipro business unit, explains that the proliferation of the web is enabling more shoppers to buy online. As a result, both domestic and international merchants are looking to integrate new solutions that improve store operations while also extending brands' presences to the web via ecommerce.

"Big retail houses are investing in technology solutions that integrates various channels, both offline and online," said Pallia.

"Digital natives are coming," he added.

In particular, technology and analytic software will be focus points of many Indian retailers as a means of delivering a better retail experience, one that will make shopping easier for customers but also more profitable for merchants.

Retail Pro's software solutions are being used by many merchants in India and the Middle East. One of our business partners in the global Retail Pro Community is even located in Bangalore, India.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Thursday, June 28th, 2012 at 10:04 am .

The summer break may just be starting for many school children, but parents are already planning their budgets for the upcoming school year, according to a new report from PriceGrabber.

The survey suggests 46 percent of online shoppers plan to spend more for school supplies this fall than they did during the same timeframe last year. Comparatively, only 13 percent of respondents said they would spend more money in 2012, suggesting consumers are in a financially sound position right now. Meanwhile, approximately 35 percent plan to spend just as much money in 2012 as they did last year.

"In today's challenging economic climate, it's important for families and students to save on back-to-school items," explained Graham Jones, general manager of PriceGrabber. "Many consumers are harnessing the power of the internet to find deals, compare prices, set price alerts, print coupons and take advantage of online promotional codes and free shipping to save extra cash."

Retailers can encourage more consumers to come and buy back-to-school products by improving store operations. By staffing up and making deals more apparent, businesses may better meet the needs of these back-to-school shoppers.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Thursday, June 28th, 2012 at 10:03 am .

Healthcare retail is gaining traction throughout the globe, with key acquisitions highlighting the profitability of the sector.

For example, the largest drugstore in the United States – Walgreens – recently finalized a deal to acquire 45 percent of Alliance Boots in the U.K. Alliance Boots is Britain's largest pharmaceutical stores, which means Walgreens now has control of nearly half of the brand.

Walgreens paid upward of $6 billion to complete the strategic partnership, Retail Digital reports. The move should cement Walgreens' place as one of the largest players in the category.

"This strategic transaction represents a further vital step in achieving our vision of becoming a global healthcare leader," said Stefano Pessina, the Italian businessman who invested millions into Boots, as quoted by the news source. "The fit is natural; Walgreen's consumer profile in the U.S. is similar to Boots in the U.K. in many ways: a trusted and much-loved pharmacy brand with a strong heritage."

With an aging baby boomer population, the pharmaceutical retail market is expected to explode over the next few years.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Tuesday, June 26th, 2012 at 10:08 am .

In the United Kingdom, consumers are still spending cautiously as uncertainty stemming from the European debt crisis and other factors loom overhead, Retail Gazette reports.

Colliers, a real estate firm, suggests the debt crisis, as well as poor weather, have created a sense of apathy among U.K. consumers, which is why they aren't spending as much on retail. While spending is up on food and beverages due to recent celebrations, many residents are still neglecting to spend money on big-ticket items until prospects improve.

"The U.K. economy in terms of retail remains soft. There may be months of more positive growth but the sector is suffering from less customer wage increases meaning people have less to spend," explained Neil Saunders, an associate at Colliers. "The general underlying trend is weak confidence which dissuades and discourages people from making purchases."

In other countries, such as the United States, prospects for retailers have been much better. Although sales growth is slowing, it has still been up in the U.S. for the past several months.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Tuesday, June 26th, 2012 at 10:04 am .

Small and mid-size ecommerce retailers experienced a lag in sales this past April, but prospects brightened considerably in May, according to a new report from Dydacomp.

In April, web sales declined by 4.3 percent, but they shot back up by 8.6 percent in May. Dydacomp CEO Fred Lizza was quick to note that this marked the single largest year-over-year growth rate, both for gross sales and number of orders. The size of the average order was up 1.8 percent, while total growth in the volume of orders increased by 6.7 percent in May.

"Books continue to be a high-growth category despite the dominance of Amazon.com and the popularity of e-readers, recording a 22 percent year-over-year increase in total sales in May," Lizza says. "We believe this growth is influenced by many religiously affiliated organizations that publish unique content not available through mainstream distribution channels."

Separate data from comScore has noted the growing popularity of online shopping. During the first quarter of 2012 alone, ecommerce sales were up year-over-year by double-digits.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Monday, June 25th, 2012 at 10:04 am .

For ecommerce merchants, one of the most disappointing things is losing a customer who visited a site and left without buying anything. However, they may be able to get a second chance at reaching these individuals, thanks to a new advertising offering from Facebook.

Facebook will now allow for real-time ad bidding, which means the social network will make use of cookies to monitor customers' browsing histories. For example, a shopper who leaves a retail website to then browse Facebook could be targeted once again on the social network if the merchant is participating in the advertising initiative.

"This means that advertisers can deliver more relevant advertising in a timely manner at a scale not possible before," a Facebook spokeswoman told Internet Retailer.

There are two major caveats, though. First, the program is only open to American brands. Second, because the initiative only involves the marketplace ads on the right-hand side of the screen, merchants won't be able to target mobile consumers.

Facebook has slowly but surely given merchants new ways of interacting with consumers. Most recently, the social network launched Promoted Posts, which enables retailers to set a promotional message at the top of their profiles.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Monday, June 25th, 2012 at 10:02 am .

Specific regions of Atlantic Canada are due to see a slight increase in retail sales, according to the latest RBC Economic Provincial Outlook issued by RBC Economics Research.

For example, Newfoundland and Labrador has exhibited somewhat stronger than expected retail sales growth. The group attributes this rise to the high percentage of the province's population that is now working – unemployment recently fell to the lowest point in a year.

Meanwhile, Prince Edward Island has similarly witnessed improved retail sales. Both exports and retail sales showed double-digit growth. However, the sudden surge has puzzled RBC because employment growth has been modest while population growth has also been stagnant, which are generally key drivers of improvements.

Additionally, Nova Scotia's retail sector was up and even covered the province's struggling exports.

"Excluding export performance, Nova Scotia's improved employment picture and its healthy increase in retail sales have supported moderate growth in the economy," noted Craig Wright, senior vice president and chief economist at RBC.

Retail has shown similar growth in the United States, with new data from the Commerce Department noting that while growth has slowed, it is still improving month over month.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Monday, June 25th, 2012 at 9:59 am .

Maximizing user experience can be a pain. When retailers are operating an ecommerce website, they need to account for shoppers browsing through a number of platforms and technology, ranging from smartphones to different internet browsers. This also creates more work for design teams, which adds additional expenses to operating an ecommerce platform.

Kogan, an Australian technology retailer, has come up with an interesting solution to that problem. The retail brand recently decided to begin leveraging an additional tax for users still browsing with antiquated software, such as Internet Explorer 7.

"Internet Explorer 7 has long since passed its use-by date," Ruslan Kogan, CEO and founder of the ecommerce site, told News.com.au. "It’s a constant source of frustration for our web guys and we're sick of burning cash on a browser that hit the market nearly six years ago. It goes against everything Kogan stands for."

Kogan believes he is doing customers a favor by encouraging them to upgrade to browsers that provide a better shopping experience.

While Kogan's move may be extreme, it highlights how much time and energy retailers should be investing into making the best user experience. Often times, business owners create a single site – given the sheer number of web-browsing platforms, that isn't enough anymore.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Friday, June 22nd, 2012 at 10:07 am .