Shopping

Lessons from a Shopping Mall

On a cloudless summer day in suburban Chicago, a woman put her two children in the car and drove to the shopping mall. There she met one of her best girlfriends, who also came to the mall with her kids.

The group of two moms and four kids spent the whole day at the mall, having lunch in the cafeteria and then leisurely strolling, shopping and people watching. An afternoon movie in the attached theatre and malted milkshakes at the ice cream parlor finished off the mall excursion before the women drove back to their respective homes to prepare dinner.

These two women absolutely loved the mall. In their minds, it was one of the greatest places on Earth. After all, the mall was exciting, full of the latest and greatest retailers, a state-of-the-art movie theatre and plenty of free parking. Even better, the climate controlled indoor environment made it possible for a whole day of shopping and entertainment without being subjected to Chicago’s often extreme weather. No doubt about it; the mall was THE place to see and be seen.

That was 1968. It was the heyday of the enclosed regional shopping mall in America.

Here’s how this story might read in 2011:

A well-educated, working mom is able to duck out of her office for a couple hours at lunch to catch up on some long-deferred errands. With the kids in school, it’s her chance to actually get things done. That’s critical, because evenings and weekends are filled with dance lessons, soccer practice and select-league baseball games that often require the family to spend weekends at out-of-town tournaments.

Her challenge is to fit a whole day’s slate of errands into two hours. She drives her minivan to the power center located along the freeway. There she takes advantage of a 30%-off discount card she received in the mail from Kohl’s department store before stopping by the Wal-Mart Super Center to stock up on non-perishable consumables mostly manufactured in China. She takes care of mailing packages and dropping off dry cleaning at her friendly mega grocery store’s customer service counter.

Next, she speeds over to the lifestyle center, an outdoor mall with heavy landscaping, upscale national-chain retailers and a nice-but-fake-looking faade. There she purchases high-end cosmetics (the all-natural kind that are never tested on animals) and a dress for the coming weekend’s formal dinner. Before jumping in the minivan, she grabs a double latte, a little reward for getting so much done so quickly. She must head back to the office and cram in her work before picking up the kids from their after-school program.

Indeed, times have changed.

As the lives of retail customers have evolved, the retailers and the shopping mall owners have had to change in order to keep up. Today’s harried shopper simply doesn’t have the time to spend the whole day at the mall. Speed and convenience are critically important. Shoppers still want luxury and entertainment, but they have to be easily accessible and located close to homes or offices.

Consequently, we now see many of those old malls, the ones that were gleaming and glorious in 1968, being torn down and replaced with big-box retailers, open-air lifestyle centers and mixed-use “walkable” villages.

A perfect example is Randhurst Mall built in 1962 in the Chicago suburb of Mt. Prospect, Ill. According to Midwest Real Estate News, the once-popular Randhurst is now desolate, so crews are demolishing most of it to make way for a mixed-use center that will be home to offices, a hotel and a bunch of entertainment businesses in addition to an updated mix of retailers.

Retailers and retail landlords either keep up with the trends or they die.

Well, retailers certainly aren’t alone, are they? Your business needs to adapt too.

Keep in mind that, as a person, you are essentially a business. You are a business of one, a business unto yourself. In a lot of ways, you (as a business of one) have much in common with retailers. Like a retailer, you are selling a product (yourself). Like a retailer, you want to portray your product in the most desirable way while making it extremely convenient to your customers. Like a retailer, you must adapt to the changing needs and preferences of the public.

Regardless of what you do for a living, you must place your clients on a pedestal. Their needs and wants are not only paramount, they’re moving targets.

Are you doing whatever it takes to keep up? Are you willing to tear down a 1960’s-era mall and replace it with one of today’s hot new shopping developments? Stay ahead of the trend or risk being squashed by it!

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Shopping

Dynamics Gp With Popular Shopping Carts Magento, Asp.net Storefront

If you are committed to one of the popular ecommerce shopping cart platforms, such as Magento/PHP/Linux, or ASP.Net Storefront, we recommend you to keep your existing ecommerce website application. There are various options to integrate major shopping carts to such Corporate ERP application as Microsoft Dynamics GP. We would like to discuss them in this small paper. Before we go there, we would like to give you a suggestion, that maybe looking very attractive so-called turn-key ecommerce solutions might lead you to the complete abandoning of your prior investments in custom ecommerce programming. Plus there might be questions about how turn-key solution preserves your historical data: paid shopping carts, customers, items, historical promotional pricing, etc. Lets now move on to the paragraphs:

1.Custom shopping cart integration. This might be the best approach if you are large organization with high volume of ecommerce shopping cart transactions per day (lets say several thousand). If this is your case, please review the option to do eConnect SDK programming in MS Visual Studio to integrate your transactions with Dynamics GP Sales Order Processing Invoices and Sales Orders with Customer Deposits (in the form of Credit card payments, if you do not sell on account, otherwise you may send out customer statements in mail or email them in PDF format directly from Dynamics GP). If your ecommerce is on Linux platform, you can still try econnect, by calling its encrypted stored procedures via MySQL to MS SQL Server ODBC connection. We also saw successful Linux/PHP custom ecommerce shopping cart integration via Microsoft Dynamics GP Integration Manager, where on Dynamics GP SQL Server computer Windows scheduled job was set to fire the integration every twenty minutes (this was implemented on Dynamics GP version 10.0, and we believe that Integration Manager is a way more faster on Dynamics GP 2010, where more eConnect connectors were introduced for IM). Also, if you are on non-Microsoft platform with your ecommerce shopping cart, such as Oracle, DBII, Btrieve, we recommend you to consider simplified version of eConnect, which is Alba Spectrum Order Connector, where the set of SQL Stored Procedures is really small and it is not too complex to call few of them with just several parameters

2.Ecommerce products. Each product has to make a compromise on keeping your legacy ecommerce web application and switch part of its business logic to the ecommerce product. eCommerce products for Microsoft Dynamics GP or virtually any other ERP or MRP application are really good, when you are starting from the ground zero (just got venture capital, where decision makers ordered your company to launch ecommerce presence). However, for the rest of us, and this is typically the most common situation, we already have at least several years of existing ecommerce shopping cart application in production. Having said that, lets still give the products a try

3.Ecommerce Add-On for Dynamics GP, designed as a connector. Lets assume that we are integrating Magento Shopping Carts into Great Plains Sales Transactions. Here, we need to know what is our default ecommerce warehouse (inventory site in GP terminology). Second question is what is our ecommerce invoice document type ID in GP SOP module. Next question is – do we require automatic inventory allocation per SOP line, or we would like to delay allocation and do it on the warehouse floor via laser barcode scanning (Warehouse Management System). These are some of the dilemmas in designing ecommerce add-on product for Dynamics GP. In Alba Spectrum we believe that we found balanced solution, where you can integrate your existing web site and shopping cart in wizard driven manner

4.Another good words paragraph on Great Plains Integration Manager in shopping cart integration scenarios. Integration Manager validates business logic and doesnt allow you to compromise data integrity. This might sound like a bit abstract and philosophical statement, but it is real if you already have experience in recovering and fixing Corporate ERP data directly in SQL tables (for Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Great Plains Dynamics on Pervasive SQL/Btrieve or Ctree). In our opinion the most dangerous decision is to use direct SQL data feeding (via Insert statements in SQL Stored Procedures). Again Integration Manager could be scheduled to run every X minutes and this means it is compliant to ecommerce shopping cart quasi real time integration standards

5.Dynamics GP ecommerce on the international market. If you work for multinational corporation, where Dynamics GP is implemented in its headquarters, it is generally good idea to expand the same Corporate ERP application to foreign subsidiaries, especially in such global regional markets as China, Japan, Brazil, Russia, India, Europe, Australia , South Africa, Latin America. However this is not that simple. Microsoft Dynamics is available Worldwide, but in some countries you may have Great Plains, in other Axapta (plus Navision, especially in Europe or in historical trend, plus of course Solomon, however we didnt see large number of booth, in proportion comparable to GP and AX on Microsoft Convergence 2010 in Atlanta)

6.eCommerce and Great Plains Dynamics historical versions. Our recommendation is to upgrade to at least Dynamics GP 10.0. eConnect and most of the ecommerce add-ons for Great Plains are not compatible with Pervasive SQL 2000 and Ctree database platforms

7.To request support call, please call us 1-866-528-0577, We need to discuss your cards in order to recommend you the best solutions, which is not contingent to our preferences. We serve you USA/Canada nationwide via remote support (web sessions and phone/skype conferences). Local service is available in Western Michigan, Chicagoland, Southern California (LA, Orange County, San Diego), Houston area of the state of Texas

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Shopping

J43176 Would Like To Get Probably The Most Of Shopping Online Look At This By Marilynn O. Reimnitz

May 13, 2013 – The most effective things an individual may do is always to save money. We might have to watch what we spend, but we can still keep shopping. Shopping on the web, for instance, provides a convenient and flexible way for you to reap the benefits of some really outstanding bargains. Read on for more information on finding cheap deals.

When you shop online, you must do some comparison shopping. It can be quite easy to find precisely what you want on the right price online. However, ensure you only search for prices on websites online you are comfortable purchasing from. It is never worth the risk to get from a mystery site in order to get a good price.

Use newsletters from your favorite stores to find the very best coupons. Often stores give their best coupons and discounts to those that have signed up for the first time. You can even expect to get discounts and special offers on a fairly everyday, so signing up is definitely worthwhile.

If you’re thinking of buying something from a seller that’s not used to you, try to look for reviews on them first. Feedback from past customers can provide you with an excellent notion of the level of customer care they provide, and also the quality of the items or high waisted bathing suit. If their ratings and surveys are repeatedly low, you might like to shop elsewhere.

Confirm the URL before entering credit card information. You may notice an address that starts with HTTPS, you can proceed safely, simply because this means your personal information will be encrypted. When the “https” is not present, then fraud is a possibility; important computer data is not guaranteed safe storage.

Don’t enter credit card info or any other sensitive information into a website. Look at the URL from the address bar to make sure that security. Websites beginning with “https” are encrypted to your safety. If it does not, then you have to know that you are leaving yourself offered to possible fraud in the foreseeable future as your info is not necessarily being safely stored.

Choose online stores which offer an active chat option. These live options typically help you get questions and issues answered and solved faster than email and speak to calls. With regards to the retailer and and the details, you might be able to request small discounts and free shipping. If you promise to acquire immediately, you can aquire a great deal.

Look for the charts that relate sizes on clothing store websites. One of the primary challenges of getting clothes online is that you can’t quite tell if the piece will benefit you. Online stores will often have sizing charts that can be used to determine your correct size. Also, it is not uncommon for online retailers to offer free returns for undamaged items which do not fit properly, so do not let fitting fears deter you. The assistance mentioned make shopping online quite painless.

If you need to find things online faster, use the websites that only deal with Internet commerce. Although Yahoo is an excellent website for searching on the internet retailers, you will likely encounter so many results you won’t ever be sure which to begin with. Utilizing shopping on the web portals will narrow your results and provides just those that closely fit needs.

When you shop online, try to postpone non-essential purchases until holidays. Holidays like President’s Day or Independence Day are common times for traditional and internet based stores to keep a sale. Holiday bonuses might be discounts reely shipping. Sometimes, it’s both!

A high level first timer and would like to get into sale, you must discover how complaints are resolved when the buyer and seller differ. Many websites also become the intermediary if you have a dispute which needs to be resolved. Others play host, and they refuse to get involved when issues arise.

The businesses that you frequent the most could have an app for the phone, so check into this. It offers a superior many rewards. If you are not home and awaiting the doctor, it is possible to shop somewhat. Also, should you be in a store and also you want to do a bit digging with all the store’s app, you will discover if that’s the top price you will get.

If you plan to offer out personal data, only do this if the URL begins with HTTPS. This lets you known that this website is secure because it encrypts information. Get a padlock sign on any shopping site you want to make a purchase from.

Be certain that you recognize the retailer’s refund policy before you make an investment. This will keep you satisfied and give you mental assurance split up into a product.

It is essential that you keep an eye on your bank account while confronting online purchases. It might take awhile to pop-up, but it is imperative that you make sure the total is proper. Get in touch with the net retailer’s customer satisfaction immediately should you spot the other charges which you believe mustn’t be there. Never hesitate to own your bank stop payment in such instances.

Many online stores with physical locations will provide free store shipping. If you are shopping online for the store located in your area, find out if they offer site to save free shipping. You can save a lot by not having it shipped to your residence but just to some store near where you live.

Be certain that you’re tracking the quantity that is being spent when you shop. It is not only checking your monthly bank statement. Create limits and budgets, then be certain to ensure your spending will not exceed the allotted amount.

Take that which you have read on this piece and absorb the knowledge. Use these tips, and you should soon be saving money while you shop. When you shop online the proper way, you save money, some time to stress.

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Shopping

Interpretation Of Online Shopping For Your Advantage

The reason why online shopping in full swing, in addition to promoting the development of a variety of objective circumstances beyond their own consumption patterns and the charm of this is inseparable. The reality of the traditional consumption patterns than to go shopping, it has many tempting advantages and characteristics, so that consumers have to look askance.

1Compare products more intuitive

There is a saying “shop around, preferred to buy” in online shopping we can open multiple pages, browse multiple stores in the same class / price items, functions and distribution methods were introduced various comparison.ugg boots
In real life, we will need to compare the same site to more than a commodity business, take a look at the things Which is more cheap, do not say the extra mile, but also a number of test samples added to the embarrassment of not buying.

2Convenient way to gift

In real life, if you want to give gifts to distant friends, relatives, customers, etc., need to buy goods, and then packaging, mailing went out, the whole process is very cumbersome. And if by way of online shopping, you can simplify this step, by providing one-stop e-commerce sites directly to the other hand, is very convenient.

3Have more options

We know the business from the dry physical store space is limited, and there is no shop on the network space limitations. Thus, in principle, the network stores the types of goods can be sold much more than physical stores. In this way, consumers will have more options. Especially for consumers, the relatively underdeveloped areas, are available to residents of other developed cities, like the range of goods to buy.

4A wider

Internet without geographical, national boundaries, making the online shop not only limit the scope of services in a fixed area. Users regardless of where can buy goods around the world. Especially through the online store to find what you want to buy but the local shops in the entity is not difficult to find or basic commodities, which complement the traditional way of selling product shortages in different regions or weakness.

5Save shopping time

Because homes can be purchased online shopping to the desired product, thus greatly save shopping time, if in real life is far from the shopping areas also eliminates the trouble of commuting. Thus, this way of online transactions daily to work for the family is particularly busy for Office, even if no time for shopping and other reasons to work overtime, moncler jackets the gap can also use a little work to complete the purchase of goods.

6Cost savings of shopping online

shop simplifies the manufacturer to the retailers by the middle link, saving the entity to pay the rent premises sales, labor costs, business utilities, inventory, fees and other charges, thus making the additional cost of goods sold less not even, to varying degrees, are generally priced below the market retail price. For example, the denomination of 50 yuan or 100 yuan mobile phone recharge cards, discount purchase online generally. It can be said in the traditional shopping malls, general rate of profit to reach 20% or more, it may be profitable vendors; and for online stores, its 10% profit margins in the seller can profit. Moreover, it can save arrival of goods sold out of traffic areas, parking, time and other related costs. In addition, online shopping through the relevant price ratio can be very fast search function to find the most affordable of the seller, unlike shopping in reality have one by one inquiry, more.

7Shopping fatigue remove

General non commodity shopping home delivery service is not available and therefore often are large shopping bags each time to a rewarding experience, which could make the shopping process is very tired, even if the hosting package can be very troublesome. The online shopping consumers can choose the appropriate delivery of goods means, enjoy home delivery services.

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Shopping

Extravagant Dubai Shopping Festival

Dubai is the dream destination for many people. This city has changed the definition of globalization in last few years. The best time to visit Dubai is winter. There are other reasons than just weather to visit Dubai during winter. In last 15 years Dubai shopping festival has turn out to be one of the major attractions of this city. There are various Dubai shopping festival offers you can get. In that time various airlines and hotel offers discounts to attract more tourists. If you have not planned for anything this winter then you can definitely go for a trip to Dubai.

Dubai tour packages-

You can check on the internet to discover various tour packages to Dubai. The shopping festival in Dubai starts from the end of January. You need to book your tickets 2-3 months prior to the date of journey. Once the Dubai shopping festival dates come out you wont get much time to book the hotels and tickets. The airlines and the hotels start offering attractive packages so that people can easily avail them and enjoy the shopping excitement in Dubai.

You can opt for different facilities. The cost of the tour package will vary on that. You need not pay much if you just opt for the basic facilities. In time of Dubai shopping festival you definitely want to spend a lot of time there in the festival. That is why you need to plan your trip accordingly. Dubai shopping festival offers some exciting offers to the customers. You need not pay any tax for whatever things you are buying. This is definitely a great chance to get your favorite brands in an affordable price.

Best tour packages-

During the shopping festival one can find various lucrative tour packages to Dubai. However, you must not rush. You need to take your time and search about the offers. Some of the offers are not as good as they look. Dubai is an expensive place and that is why proper tour planning is very important. You need to find a place from where you can easily go to the shopping festival and can also attend the other exciting events.

Shopping festival and other events-

The shopping carnival is extravagant with all the well known bands and people from all over the world. Besides various dance shows, music shows, theme fashion shows and games are there. You can take part in the games. Tennis, football, rowing and various other games are there. You can take part in whatever you like the most. During the shopping break it can be a good way to enjoy. Shopping festival in Dubai is a month long fiesta. The date for the next year festival has already been announced. You can definitely start planning whatever things you are going to buy from there.

Conclusion-

Dubai is at its best during the shopping extravaganza. There are some people who come back every year to enjoy the biggest festival of Dubai. You can get things for everyone from here. No one returns in empty hand from this shopping festival. You should visit this shopping carnival, I am sure you would definitely to come back here again in the next season.

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