retail

Alex and Ani, a popular jewelry chain, is testing Swirl, a mobile app that offers discounts to in-store shoppers via geofencing.

There's a fine line between tracking the behaviors of customers in your brick-and-mortar store and spying on them. The technology discussed here uses data from customers' smartphones in conjunction with opt-in apps to offer patrons deals and show retailers what's happening in their stores.

If Google truly plans to get into same-day shipping, it'll head down a path that has felled other major e-tailers.

Google is seeking a greater retail presence with plans to open stand-alone shops in big cities, with the first ones expected to launch in time for the busy holiday shopping season.

Wi-Fi radios in mobile devices can now be used by retailers to better understand customer behavior at their stores, and then change window displays, catalogs, and promotions based on that knowledge.

For retailers, protecting customer payment-card information is critical, and encryption is the typically the way to do that today. But Crutchfield Corp, which sells electronics and other goods online and through catalogs, has decided to migrate away from encryption in favor of an alternative security technology known as tokenization in order to shield sensitive customer data.

Facebook and Google aren’t the only companies with the ability to spy on you. Brick-and-mortar stores can too – thanks to some creepy technology.