Stores Magazine - December 2007 - (Page 81)

INSIDE TRACK Compiled by Anastasia Van Engelen NRFnews RACie Award Finalists NRF’S RETAIL Advertising & Marketing Association (RAMA) recently held the first round of judging for its annual RACie competition. The industry’s most prestigious creative contest for retail broadcast and print advertising, the RACies are held during RAMA’s Retail Advertising Conference, the largest single gathering of retail marketing and advertising executives. The RACie competition is judged by professionals from the retail advertising and marketing industry, partners from agencies and media and consultants who service the industry. This year’s finalists include Bass Pro Shops, Best Buy, Buca di Beppo, Cub Foods, Finish Line, For Eyes, Gulf States Toyota, Half Price Books, Jockey, John Lewis, Kohl’s, Lord & Taylor, McDonald’s, Metro Transit, Nike Bauer, OfficeMax, PetSmart, REI, Saks Fifth Avenue, Scheels, Seattle Aquarium, Seattle Mariners, Target, The Great Indoors and The Home Depot. The RACie Awards Gala Pre-Party begins at 5:30 p.m. February 7 at the Hilton Chicago. For more information, visit www.ramanrf.com/rac08. & WHO WHAT WHEN the street. Immersive shopping modules that allow for the creation of a 3D virtual shopping persona will also be displayed. Other X08 displays will include: • Immersive dome shopping experience • Intellimat and countervision technology • Mobile local product search tools • Interactive storefront technology • Interactive kiosk demonstrations • New uses for RFID • Mobile wallet and payment options NRF-ARTS Retail Technology Summit THE FIFTH annual NRF-ARTS Retail Technology Summit, held for the first time in Brussels, Belgium, featured speakers from JCPenney, Galeries Lafayette and ETAM Group presenting case studies on maintaining real-time storelevel stock inventory and expediting tax credits to exempt customers at the point of purchase. The summit focused on how IT can better support business through implementation of a services-oriented architecture (SOA) and ARTS standards, and was attended by retailers and vendors from Europe and the U.K. Technicians from Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM, PCMS and AMR Research discussed the practical business reasons why SOA makes sense for retailers, as well as ways to ensure that retail technology is coordinated with business goals and that the business benefits of an SOA approach are understood and valued by senior retail management. SOA can have a direct impact on the business bottom line by providing: • Agility – enabling rapid change to existing applications • Ease of integration – reducing the time and cost of installing new applications • Reusable business logic – ability to develop new business applications by assembling components from existing ones • Channel transparency – applications can operate on the web or in the store ARTS technical committee meetings, held in conjunction with the summit, were attended by ARTS members from 12 countries. STORES / DECEMBER 2007 81 X08: Beyond the Walls THE STORE of the Future at NRF’s 97th Annual Convention & EXPO (January 13-16) will move retail beyond the walls of retailing. NRF’s X08, developed in partnership with Hybridia Design, will display the technology that gives companies an opportunity to sell anything anywhere — a new concept that is changing the traditional retail store. The technology of the 21st century will allow retailers to move out of the store and onto cell phones, kiosks and other interactive media. NRF’s X08 has expanded its capabilities to demonstrate an in-store shopping experience of the future, as well as how customers are now able to shop 24/7 with the use of new interactive technologies. The Store of the Future will share the integration of technology and design to broaden the scope of traditional retailing. Attendees will be able to view specially-designed interactive visuals and holographs and will be able to virtually shop from window fronts, allowing real-time shopping on WWW.STORES.ORG http://www.rama-nrf.com/rac08 http://www.rama-nrf.com/rac08 http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Stores Magazine - December 2007

STORES - December 2007 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Holiday Shopping Extravagance What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Niche Marketing Eight Predictions for 2008 Concept2Watch Merchandising Strategy Sourcing E-Commerce Supply Chain Warehouse Management Software Contactless Payments Marketing Marketing Online Loeb Retail Letter ARTS Update Point of View NRF News Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

Stores Magazine - December 2007

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