EBAY's Store of the Future

English: A photograph of eBay's Whitman Campus (corporate headquarters), taken from Greylands Dr. on Memorial Day 2009. For more photos of eBay and Google, visit http://www.foothillwebdesign.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I had the opportunity to tour EBAY's store of the future courtesy of my friend Veronica Katz. (OK, I don't know that they call it that, but that's what it is anyway). It has a variety of sample formats, from a toy store to a food truck, and demonstrate how integrated messaging, customer access via mobile devices, real-time inventory measures can improve retail productivity.

While I have some reservations about how some of this works under the restrictions imposed by the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards for isolating credit card info, they assured me that they understand that complexity and it is comprehended in their systems.

It is very impressive and very cool technology. I would think that retailers would be quite interested - and perhaps a little intimidated - at how fast this stuff is moving.

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