The Retail Realities Column on CBS News

The coming digital sign blitz: help or horror?

Retail Realities: The day may come when suppliers pay for digital signs at retailers

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Data breach pits police against processor

Retail Realities: Is saying you're blameless too early a bad edea? (Hint: Yes, it is)

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The spy who shopped me

Retail Realities: When retailers let their Web sites transmit secret messages, we should ask why

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Will Wal-Mart TV cry when your team loses?

Retail Realities: World's largest retailer exploring in-store video ads that change with the weather, sports scores

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Get ready for the mobile payments era

Retail Realities: You may soon buy your coffee—and a refrigerator to store the milk—from your phone

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Target thinks little bribe will do wonders

Retail Realities: Target is getting serious about discounts for one card type: Its own

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'IT' must learn to be comfortable failing

Retail Realities: Take it from McDonald's CIO: Retailers must learn to "fail really small"

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Bid farewell to coupon clipping?

Retail Realities: That quaint money-saving practice is fading as consumers increasingly opt for high tech

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Holiday hints: sales down, crashes up

Retail Realities: The economy will impact sales, but mobile is going to rewrite everything else

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Phone shopping? not any time soon

Retail Realities: Phone sales soaring but mobile-commerce just can't seem to make a connection

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Trusting Wal-Mart to do the right thing

Retail Realities: How data from a Wal-Mart test may wind up determining how consumer information gets used

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Credit cards' unintended security hole

Retail Realities: Why zero liability programs are a wonderfully early holiday gift to cyberthieves everywhere

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Canada delays ultra-secure payment card system

Retail Realities: Canada's move to Chip-and-PIN still nagged by high gitch rates

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Walgreens and Rite-Aid: dueling chat strategies

Retail Realities: Pharmacies divided on safest way to offer chats with pharmacists

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An ice cream machine that measures smiles

Retail Realities: Unilever's testing a vending machine that takes smiles as payment

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Their security holes, your money

Retail Realities: How glitches let strangers tap cash from your shopper gift cards

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Flawed assumptions in the Albert Gonzalez case

Retail Realities: Whether it's stock pricing, consumer apathy or retail cynicism, lawyers were getting it wrong

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Will retail ever 'get' mobile cmputing?

Retail Realities: Too many retailers still believe mobile technology is a very temporary point of convenience

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Analysis: Best Buy wrestles with ethics

Retail Realities: Chief ethics officer helps managers think beyond immediate profits

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Clock winding down on patent scams?

Retail Realities: Supreme Court seems ready to snuff out frivolous patent applications

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Starbucks' mobile app can't buy anything

Retail Realities: Starbucks' iPhone application is beautiful, stable and virtually worthless

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Retail versus privacy: new questions

Retail Realities: To protect privacy, a retailer first must understand it. Does Wal-Mart?

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An e-commerce survival plan

Retail Realities: In a recession, e-commerce needs to start listening to consumers

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The diabolical duplicate debit debacle

Retail Realities: How a debit card glitch can turn you into an inadvertent debtor

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Maine Supreme Court: consumers' time not valued

Retail Realities: The unanimous decision is a very temporary piece of good news for retailers

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Another bump in the mobile payment road

Retail Realities: The move to shift mobile payments to carriers is a good one, but politics doom it

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Microsoft's catch-22 in mobile commerce

Retail Realities: For impatient consumers, smartphone services remain a work in progress

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The Web's Achilles heel

Retail Realities: Try searching for anything small and specific

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Amazon to limit e-mail among customers

Retail Realities: Setting up online shopping communities is great, but some retailers are getting nervous

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Saks doing the robotic Web

Retail Realities: What can 700 ultra-strong robots do? Saks Fifth Avenue is trying to find out

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7-Eleven mobile, ethics questions

Retail Realities: In a test of mobile coupons, the convenience chain finds underage consumer sensitivities

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Will e-commerce catch the flu?

Retail Realities: A GAO report paints a nightmare scenario, but is it realistic?

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New privacy question for social networks

Retail Realities: New technology lets retail sites siphon off names of friends and contacts without so much as a password

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When thieves order off the menu

Retail Realities: A glitch in the system threatens to become a huge problem, especially with fast-food chains

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The license plate loyalty card

Retail Realities: A science fiction scenario is about to come true

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Sears' Web goof: 5 Million customers blocked

Retail Realities: The accident was a surprise at the end of another site makeover

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Down for 8 days: American Eagle's site disaster

Retail Realities: One of the longest site outages ever hit a multi-billion-dollar retailer

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The paradox posed by mobile commerce

Retail Realities: As retailers jump on board, they discover the downside of popularity

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Announce a data breach and say it's no big deal?

Retail Realities: When a Web site started accidentally posting customer payment card numbers, things went from bad to worse

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Cyberthieves discover bluetooth

Retail Realities: The target is gas station credit card data and the bad guys are getting savvy

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How slow can mobile sites go?

Retail Realities: Best Buy does OK, Costco tanks. Can't anyone do a good mobile site anymore?

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Retailer wants breach kept secret

Retail Realities: Major chain wants court to protect its "dignity," keep shareholders in the dark

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Going back in technological time

Retail Realities: After a data breach, one retailer got off the grid

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New hurdle for mobile commerce: success?

Retail Realities: Companies are about to find out it's a double-edged sword

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Data breach bill's flawed assumptions

Retail Realities: Sen. Patrick Leahy's data breach bill likely to boomerang

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Still trust your Web site? Don't

Retail Realities: Is a product in-stock? The Web site may have no clue

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Could chat transcripts be security minefields?

Retail Realities: Security concerns over Rite-Aid and Walgreens idea for pharmacist chat

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Check your bill next time the register rings

Retail Realities: Technology to automate pricing ringing up more errors than ever

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Time to stop mailing fully-activated gift cards?

Retail Realities: People have stopped mailing twenty-dollar bills in the mail. To a thief, a gift card is even better

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Amazon bid to make an (expensive) privacy point

Retail Realities: Battling over online sales tax, the e-commerce giant gets personal

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Why let eBay have all the fun?

Retail Realities: Best Buy borrows a page from the giant internet retailer

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Talk, talk, talk about computer security

Retail Realities: CEOs still have not internalized the importance of computer security

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Google's clout causing retailers to fret

Retail Realities: The slower a retailer's site, the lower its Google ranking

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Behind the 'governator's' surprise veto

Retail Realities: California governor, no fan of data breach rules, delivers thumbs down decision

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Is e-commerce due for cosmetic makeover?

Retail Realities: Demands of makeup retailers spark new use of interactive tech

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The credit card reform backlash

Retail Realities: Bottom line is that you'll be feeling the pinch

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Beyond ice cream and hamburgers

Retail Realities: Dairy Queen's bold mobile coupon experiment with RFID

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Next from Apple: a privacy nightmare?

Retail Realities: Apple envisions taking secret pictures—and recordings—of people using their phones

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When thinking mobile, think inside vs. outside

Retail Realities: What works inside a store may fall flat once you step outside

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Secure credit cards: still a pipedream?

Retail Realities: What will it take to make Chip-and-PIN happen in the U.S.?

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Consumers changing attitude toward Web savings

Retail Realities: Having different Web/in-store prices is no longer a big deal

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FTC: Web site security seals are lies

Retail Realities: The Federal Trade Commission proved what most suspected: There's nothing behind those seals

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The mobile triple threat

Retail Realities: Retailers now realize they need to support three distinct mobile strategies

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Bargains despite Black Friday gloom

Retail Realities: A weak economy—coupled with strong online sales growth—means that opportunity awaits

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Open season for retail cyberthieves?

Retail Realities: New questions as details of past retail data breaches come to light

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A cyberthief conundrum for the cops

Retail Realities: Is the hacker detained by the Feds a master criminal or pawn in a larger scheme?

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When states attack, retailers relax

Retail Realities: After 41 attorneys general tried to punish $19 billion retailer TJX, guess who came out on top? (Trick question alert)

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Does data impose a duty?

Retail Realities: A case involving lead and childrens' necklaces heads to court

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