Jeffrey Roster
Research VP
12 years at Gartner
15 years IT industry
Jeffrey Roster is a research vice president at Gartner as part of the Industry Market Strategies Worldwide unit covering the retail and wholesale industries. In this capacity, Mr. Roster consults on market strategies, competitive assessment of the IT services landscape, technology trends and the direction of IT spending to provide market research for IT vendors. Read Full Bio
by Jeff Roster | January 14, 2009 | 2 Comments
Another NRF has come and gone. I thought I’d share some of the recurring questions and my answers.
1. How is attendance/floor traffic at the show- Any time you talk about numbers or percentages it’s critical to properly define what you are talking about. When the NRF talks about attendance they are referring to registrations. I believe when analysts and technology and service providers(TSP’s) talk about attendance they really are thinking traffic on the trade floor. Usually those should be in sync. However this is not a usual year. In my opinion traffic on the trade floor was down over years past. I’ll pass on putting a percentage on it. So if there was a dip in attendance(traffic on the trade floor) what does that mean? The short term impact is less then some might think. Here’s why. I’m aware of very few companies, retailers or TSP’s, that don’t have a travel restriction of some kind in place. Many have instituted business case justifications for incurring the expense? I believe retailers answered the question by bringing smaller teams. The people that stayed home were the junior staff not the senior folks. That’s the important fact and a perfectly logical response to the current financial climate. Plus seeing an increase in the percentage of senior executives is a very good thing if you are making quicker decisions and talking higher level strategies with thier vendors.
2. What’s the vibe of the show/What’s the mood of the industry? I think there’s no question that there was a somber feel both here at the show and in the industry. The key question to me is what does this have to do with tech? I believe virtually every retail CIO will be looking to tech to drive out costs and/drive revenue. Ok so what’s new about that? Projects this year will be smaller in scale with a faster payback timeframe. This i believe could be a key driver for innovation. I believe the only thing that is unacceptable is to do nothing.
3. What’s new or cool at ths show? That’s always a difficult question to answer because so much of my time at a show is spent meeting with senior executives from technology and service providers and retailers discussing forecasts, trends, survey data and strategy and not nearly enough time walking the floor. So instead of delighted a few and irritating the many I don’t answer this question publicly.
4. What does IT spend look like for 2009? The answer to that resides behind the Gartner firewall.
If you attended what are your thoughts on the show?
Category: Retail Industry Events Retail Observations Retail Retail IT Marketing Retail Spending Tags: NRF, trends
by Jeff Roster | January 11, 2009 | Comments Off
Weather delays had some impact on attendees but not nearly as much as feared. Easily the most asked question I’ve fielded today was on attendance. Will the recession steal the joy out of NRF’s Big Show? The answer to that I say is no. I would expect attendance to be off last years pace but not dramatically so. I think it will actually benefit the vendor community as the folks attending will be more senior executives who can make decisions.
Sunday has always been a lighter attendance day when compared to Monday or Tuesday. Today was no exception to that rule. The keynote session was full. One note: looks like there were a few additional rows of tables set up which would take up more space.
I thought the best quote of the day came from Tracy Mullin of the NRF in her opening remarks:
Usually we look back briefly to the previous year. But this year the only thing we want to celebrate is it’s passing.
Few would argue with that sentiment!
Category: Retail Industry Events Retail Observations Tags: NRF
by Jeff Roster | January 8, 2009 | 2 Comments
I’ve repeatedly been asked my thoughts on what Web 2.0 tools retail and technology executives should use. I am by no means an expert in this subject. But I have been exploring this area fairly aggressively and will pass along my observations.
LinkedIn – To me this is a no brainer. This is a powerful business tool that I constantly refer to. This week, in preparation for NRF, I will go through all my connections to look for changes in employment status, job descriptions etc. I see very little downside to connecting. If you are a retailer or an executive selling technology into the retail industry feel free to send me a connection request.
Facebook – My views here are much more complicated then LinkedIn. Yes I am active on Facebook and have enjoyed it tremendously. But for me this is a personal social tool and not primarily for business. I understand others take a different approach. That’s fine. But for me my Facebook page connects my personal, religious and political lives. It’s all mainstream points of view but I don’t see the need to connect business contacts through it.
Twitter - My experience with this tool dates all the way back to November 2008 so obviously I’m an expert. Just kidding. But in that short amount of time I’ve become a huge fan. You can easily follow people from many different perspectives. In many ways it’s much less personal then Facebook and other tools. To me this is it’s big differentiator. A nice feature is the 140 character max which forces brevity. There are a handful of retailers that I am following that appear to be using twitter effectively. I do caution that this can become a tremendous times sink so use with caution. Please feel free to follow me at JeffPR
Plaxo – I am on Plaxo and accept connections but haven’t pursued it aggressively. To me there’s redundancy between my LinkedIn and Facebook strategies. I understand the idea of linking all this information together in one but. But to me that’s the problem. I don’t want all this info lumped together.
I understand there are other networking sites that are trying to gain traction. But at this point I don’t see enough benefit to warrant the additional time investment.
What sites are you investing time in? Love to hear your thoughts.
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Jeff Roster | January 8, 2009 | 2 Comments
As promised here’s my NRF evening schedule. Hopefully I won’t regret doing this. But like the great NRF Twitter experiment 2009 we’ll see how this goes. If you are a reader to this blog feel free to look me up and say hi if you’re at any of these events. I’d love to hear your thoughts on Retail 2009.
Sunday
- NRF Reception -5 to 6:30PM
- Retail Insiders Reception – 9 to 11PM
Monday
- IBM Event – 6:30- 8PM
- Microsoft Event – 8 – 9:30PM
- RIS News Executive Cordials Reception – 9:30PM – 11PM
- Oracle After Hours event 11PM -?
Tuesday
MY Twitter id is JeffPR
Use #NRF with any of your NRF related Tweets.
Category: Retail Industry Events Retail Observations Tags: NRF, Retail events
by Jeff Roster | December 24, 2008 | 1 Comment
2008 has been a very difficult year to cover the retail industry for many reasons. In this post I won’t go any further down that road. But one of the very interesting trends that took on steam this year has been to see retail embrace social media. Don’t know what that is? Before 2009 is over you will, trust me. Social media is using LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and a host of other Web 2.0 sites to build and maintain loyalty with their customers. To be sure I’ve been late to this party. I didn’t know what Facebook was 2 years ago. My exposure came from a friend involved with mobility technologies. He updated his Facebook page while traveling together to a concert. Then I thought he was crazy and said as much. This morning on my Facebook page I’ve already posted one picture and a short video, commented on a theological position of a friend and made a lame attempt at humor, all before 2PM.
My latest dive into social media has been experimenting with Twitter. Like Facebook I didn’t get it at first. Twitter is a site that focuses on microblogging. If you think it, you can post it in 140 characters or less. But now a whole two weeks later I really see this as a marketing tool with great potential. Just go to Twitter and search on the term retail. What you get back is a raw slice of emotion, the good the bad and the ugly. Obviously at this time of year retail is on everybody’s mind. You bump into people microblogging about their thoughts of being laid off, of the horrors of dealing with the public and of interacting with retail associates that have clearly been pushed past the brink. Occasionally people actually having a good time during the holiday season. Fascinating stuff.
Below are a few of my favorites, with names removed. Just think how much information is communicated in a few characters. Yah at this point this is pretty basic stuff. But my bet is by year end 2009 every Tier One retailer will have a social media strategy in place. We’ll see.
- only in MN: camo Santa hats.
- I think lots of marketers have trouble understanding Twitter b/c they try to be interesting rather than try to be interested.
- We have two inches of snow and the news is acting like we already have 20″. At least it got them to quit talking about the economy.
- is off today and wondering where the day went. Probably the same place as last weekend. and lost socks?
- Today I was nice to two retail folks when nobody else was. By my math, this earns me two unspeakable cruelties for next week. Amirite?
- Just saw another BEAUTIFUL west TX sunset. About to brave Wal mart-pray for me
- Finished 1/3 of Christmas shopping this afternoon. Braving Wal-Mart later tonight for the rest. Pray for me. LOL
- God help me, I’m actually thinking of descending into retail hell the Saturday before Christmas. But if I go now, it won’t be bad, right?
- My iPod headphones have died but there is no way I’m going near any retail locations for at least a week. I’m in terrifying silence!
- one of the last four people left in a once-thriving retail headquarters office.
- Working retail during the X-mas season has made me feel like the lovechild of Ebeneezer Scrooge and the Grinch.
- Trying not to let working retail ruin my holiday spirit…it’s hard
- Eating a subway sandwich, after braving vast Wal Mart crowds in the name of motherhood, apple pie and Santa Claus. Does Santa work this hard
- Temp Store at the mall called Man Town. It’s like I was in a beer commercial.
- We now have a 8′ tall inflatable hunter complete with camo vest and shotgun in our front yard. Thank MIL and Cabelas. (sigh)
- surrounded by people saying “im in line at rei right now” into their phones
- Christmas is so close and I’m not done shopping! Running out of ideas for gifts.
- Oh good.. I work at a large retail store on the last weekend before Xmas. This will be interesting.
- Wow. Snow, fresh baked cookies, lemon cello,I finished my Christmas shopping AND Christmas movies on TV? THIS is the life.
- Done Christmas shopping!!!
Let’s all hope for and work hard towards a better 2009!
Jeff Roster
Twitter ID: JeffPR
Category: Retail Industry Events Retail Observations Tags: Christmas shopping, Loyalty, retail social media, Twitter
by Jeff Roster | December 22, 2008 | Comments Off
How many of us have dreamed of coming up with a solution for the pesky “Reply All” problem. Don’t know what that is? Lucky you. Here’s the scenario: Someone gets an email and because they think their answer is: A. either so witty or B. executing a CYA flanking maneuver they hit “Reply All” with their answer. Thus forcing everyone in the company to deal with their response whether they need to or not. This is a bad situation only made worse by having to perform an archaeological dig through layers of responses dating back to the Mesozoic Period to see if in any way possible your are involved. Ultimately this is a monumental time sink for all.
I’ve often asked my friends at Microsoft if there can’t be something built into Outlook that only allows a person to do this so many times before an alarm goes off. Yes I know there are times when it’s important to do this. I spent the afternoon of 9/11stuck in a hotel room in Boston going through the many hundreds of emails bouncing around Gartner. It was quite an experience to read the thoughts of analysts on 4 continents from many different religions or no religion coming to grips with that tragedy. Serious business indeed. I’ve also spend a morning reading the very funny responses to an analyst that thought it would be a kick to send an “all company” email asking for responses to the question, “you know you’ve traveled to much when?” By the time I booted up on the west coast I had a hundred or so responses and new ones were coming in about once a minute. Yes many were hysterically funny but it was not a productivity boom that day. Fortunately being in the publishing business we were able to turn that little miscue into a booklet. My favorite answer being:
Your room key won’t work in the door. The person inside comes to the door in a bathrobe, thinking it is room service. Suddenly, you realize that the room number is the one from the LAST hotel.
I actually lived that one personally. I just thought I was getting old. Glad to know other analysts have had similar experiences.
So what did a clever retailer do to solve this problem you might ask? Take a gander at the below link
Cathy Replied All
And lest you assume that the folks at Zappos don’t have fun with everyone that enters into their domain, think again. Take a peek at the link to see how they treat a poor hapless analyst that stumbled into a tour of their facility. I’ve been on a lot of store and facility tours ranging from the utterly fascinating to boring beyond belief. But I’ve never seen anything like my site visit at Zappos. As we moved from department to department we were cheered. To be quite honest it was startling at first. Then the light bulb goes off and you begin to understand the culture.
So why do I find this so fascinating? There’s clearly a passion about the business with these folks that you don’t see all that often anymore. The reason they can do this kind of thing and most of us in our organizations can’t is because they recruit people that have a similar passion. That kind of over the top behavior is what’s expected. You know it going in and you respond to it when it happens. We as consumers are drawn to that kind of energy. They prove the point you can be high performance but have high fun. It would be my wish that more retail executives would look for opportunities to instill fun and enthusiasm back into their businesses in 2009. Perhaps a return to the roots of retail is what’s called for to fix the ills now affecting our industry.
Category: Retail Observations Tags: Add new tag, retail blogging, social media, Twitter
by Jeff Roster | December 10, 2008 | 1 Comment
This year I’m going to participate in a Gartner series of reports titled “Cool Vendors” It’s designed to look at small emerging vendors. In my case they need to have a significant focus on retail. The definition is fairly squishy. See below:
“Gartner’s annual Cool Vendors Special Report focuses on lesser-known, emerging vendors that may havebeen or are ignored by organizations or the media due to their small size and relative immaturity, but from whom innovation or transformative IT may derive. “
This isn’t an area I’ve typically haven’t spent a lot of time looking at. So I want to make sure I’ve got a good population to draw from in making my selections. So the question I have to retailers and technology & service providers alike is:
Do you know any Cool Vendors out there?
If so send me a note with the company and a couple of sentences explaining why. I plan on keeping the responses confidential to avoid the temptation of vendors looking for free advertising. Looking forward to seeing what we all come up with.
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Jeff Roster | December 8, 2008 | 2 Comments
I have been very privileged to work on this study for the last 8 years. I started with Dennis Eskow as a wobbly kneed Analyst 2. Now under Joe Skorupa’s leadership I believe this is the finest study in the business, but I might be just a little biased. Under normal circumstances the data gathered provides a very unique insight into retail technology. But 2009 will be anything but normal. The insights coming out of this data will be eagerly anticipated by both retailers and technology and service providers alike.
So let me make an offer. If you have a question you’d like to see addressed in the study just post a comment. If you want to leave it prvate just note it and I’ll be happy to keep it confidential. Finally if you are a retailer please consider taking this study when the link comes out. If you are not on the list send me a comment and I’ll be happy to send you the link to the study.
Hope to see many of you in New York next month.
Category: Retail Industry Events Retail Observations Retail Retail IT Marketing Retail Spending Tags:
by Jeff Roster | December 4, 2008 | 3 Comments
Wednesday, the day before the US Thanksgiving holiday, was to be a quiet day of writing. I had no inquiries scheduled and definitely needed to get several reports completed as well as peer review several colleagues documents. Then the email arrived. It was a note from Timothy Kasbe, CIO of Reliance Retail, India describing his experiences in the then unfolding attacks in Mumbai. He was in the middle of it. The story is masterfully told by Joe Skorupa of RIS News in his recent blog post Terror in Mumbai so no need to repeat it here. But there’s a couple of points I’d like to add and also delicately provide some analysis.
I’ve gotten to know Timothy through our mutual efforts on the Retail ROI Initiative. No it’s not about technology payback. ROI in this case stands for Retail Orphan initiative where we both serve on the Board of Advisers. We both are avid bloggers. Timothy’s deals with the world’s orphans and you are reading my efforts. We’ve also connected on Linkedin as well as Facebook. I was just riveted to my mobile device checking Facebook again and again over Thanksgiving. That was the vehicle that Timothy was using to keep people updated on his status. OK Jeff so nice story but what does this have to do with technology or retail? Well Timothy and I have never met face to face or even been on the same conference call. But between all the various Web 2.0 connections we’ve established with each other we’ve exchanged an awful lot of information and have developed a relationship. I’ve spoken often to executives forty years or older about the need to understand these new communications channels. Some get it but many are far more skeptical. I always suggest they walk by any middle school to see kids texting each other. Hopefully they see what I do, a completely new communications strategy emerging. It’s my hope that retailers understand they will need to develop new communications channels to communicate with this generation. But it wasn’t until Mumbai did I realize that even curmudgeons like me have adopted these new channels of communication.
So if you are a retail executive or a technology and service provider working in the retail industry and are not experimenting with these technologies I would venture to say your view into the future of retail will be very limited. Retailers need to understand how this connected world we are all living in will impact their business, both pro and con. Imagine how one negative customer experience can literally roll across the world. The key here is it won’t play itself out on nameless faceless blogs but via very personal comments passed from friend to friend. That, I believe, is a very powerful 21st century version of word of mouth. I can personally vouch how quickly these virtual relationships can develop. How are you going to respond to these rapidly developing channels? I might suggest you start with a Facebook page.
Category: Retail Industry Events Retail Observations Uncategorized Tags: retail blogging, social media, Twitter
by Jeff Roster | November 28, 2008 | 2 Comments
6:44AM Morgan Hill, CA I’ve covered retail for 10 years and and have never been in the habit of enjoying Black Friday festivities. Perhaps it was the many, many years I’ve spent in the business end of the Christmas season, first as cheap child labor working in my dads meat shop, later at Mervyn’s. Once I shifted over to the analyst ranks I’ve sort of enjoyed staying away from stores this time of year as much as possible. But given the state of the retail industry in 2008 and the certain knowledge that the main stream media would find and report any negative aspect to Black Friday I ventured out. It was my duty.
Analyst Notebook:
- 4:40AM – In car heading to the Gilroy premium outlets with several purchases in mind.
- 5:01AM – Confidence in the US main stream media was rewarded. Some nameless reporter on a national news feed had declared confidently that Black Friday was a bust or something to that effect.
- 5:02AM – Turn into Best Buy parking lot to be greeted by a line slowly moving into the store but wrapping around the building. The parking lot is as full as I’ve ever seen it and none of the other stores are even open. Good sign. I manage to find a parking spot.
- 5:04AM – Store is packed. I manage to secure the items I came for- all great deals.
- 5:35AM – Back in the car. Success.
- 5:40AM – Wonder what’s happening at Wal-Mart up the road? Packed.
- 5:44AM- Target in the other direction. Packed. OK this is at least a decent sign.
- 5:55AM – Drive up to the front section of the outlets. The entire parking lot, and it’s a big one is packed.
So what are the takeaways from my very unscientific analysis of Black Friday?
Three observations:
1. Black Friday sales will be mildly disappointing. Much of the traffic will be driven by deep discounts
2. Christmas this year will be difficult. Most likely we will see negative growth
3. Main stream media should confine their Black Friday reports to length of lines, number of shoppers and the occasional fight over that last prized toy and leave the financial analysis to people qualified to do it.
Category: Retail Industry Events Retail Observations Tags: Black Friday
