With the Oracle Retail system supporting its e-commerce site and 26 stores in 11 states, Von Maur is able to respond more quickly to customer demand, maintain appropriate inventory levels, and increase sales by having the right products

Von Maur department stores has rolled out the Oracle Retail Merchandising System suite of applications to support same-store revenue growth, as well as expansion into new markets. With the Oracle Retail system supporting its e-commerce site and 26 stores, the retailer is able to respond more quickly to customer demand, maintain appropriate inventory levels, and increase sales by having the right products in the right location. "At Von Maur, it's about providing our customer with the best service possible, while simultaneously offering a unique mix of products," said Joy Place, vice president of merchandising for Von Maur.

"Oracle Retail solutions have helped to optimize our operations," said Joy Place, VP of Merchandising, Von Maur, in a company press release. "Achieving the balance between inventory levels and customer satisfaction has been key to our success, and we expect to maintain that balance in the future as we continue to grow."

...According to "The Connected Consumer 2012: Evolving Behavior Patterns," an Oracle survey of more than 1,000 consumers, store associates make a big difference; 40 percent of respondents said a savvy store associate can impact their final product selection more than a website. As a result, says David Dorf, Oracle's senior director of technology strategy, "a lot of retailers need to invest in their store associates, and make sure they're armed with at least as much information about their products as can be found on the web."

SurfStitch, Australia's leading online surf and fashion retailer, has chosen to extend the use of Oracle ATG Web Commerce to support its growing international presence and the expansion of its brand portfolio. Launching as Australia's first online retailer for surf and fashion in 2008, SurfStitch has grown rapidly through its passion for providing exceptional customer service and an extensive brand offering that includes all well known surf brands, such as Billabong, Quiksilver, RipCurl, Volcom, Nixon and many others.

Finish Line selected the Oracle tools and a cloud computing environment "to provide a single, integrated platform with which to transform our merchandising, planning and stores processes," said Scott Hoffman, Executive VP and Chief Merchandise Officer of Finish Line

"We selected Oracle Retail because they can provide us with the breadth and depth of enterprise systems we need to support our growth." - Finish Line chief information officer and senior vice president Terry Ledbetter

...To create more compelling marketing campaigns, best-in-class retailers are focusing on collecting psychographic data that will complement demographic information, resulting in more in-depth segmentation, according to David Dorf, Senior Director of Technology Strategy for Oracle. Mobile and social media, he revealed, are two breeding grounds for this psychographic data. "Instead of just collecting information about age, gender and income, retailers today are starting to get information from social sites around interests and opinions to obtain a better picture of consumers," Dorf told Retail TouchPoints. While this more granular approach enables retailers to target consumers and refine marketing strategies to create more relevant campaigns, messaging and offers across channels, a lot of infrastructure is required to collect and manage all of this information. "Retailers need a full-time staff that creates the marketing messages and really engages people so that they'll give up that information," Dorf noted. "Then, of course, technology is required to process the structured and non-structured data and make something of those insights."

As part of a larger initiative to upgrade the customer experience and localize offerings in its 640 stores nationwide, The Finish Line will roll out new Oracle Retail merchandising, planning, stores and CRM solutions. The athletic-goods retailer is leveraging Oracle's cloud computing services in the process

"The ability to gain insight into our customers' preferences to make more informed merchandising decisions is a critical component of our strategy to exceed the expectations of our customers." - Finish Line executive vice president and chief merchandising officer Scott Hoffman

To maximize performance while reducing costs and decreasing the complexity of its IT infrastructure, Finish Line will also implement Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud.

"At the umbrella level, personalization is about guiding the consumer to the best products and services for them in the easiest way. It's the notion of 'guided serendipity.'"

How are customers using the Web to make their buying choices? That's the key question in a new report from Oracle

Consumers buy based on retailers' ability to connect interactions across multiple channels, according to a survey of more than 1,000 North America consumers by the e-tailing group and sponsored by Oracle

To help retailers improve customer service and increase efficiency, Oracle today introduced Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service