Target is rolling out a service that allows customers to order products online and then pick them up at its stores as the discounter seeks to cater to tech-savvy, time-pressured customers.
As a Target "beauty concierge," young Chelsea Mathison prowls the cosmetic aisles at the retailer's Nicollet Mall store, sweetly asking shoppers if they need beauty tips and recommendations. The pixieish clerk seems an unlikely front-line warrior in the Minneapolis-based retailer's effort to embrace showrooming -- where consumers fiddle with products in stores, only to surf their smartphones to see if they can buy the items cheaper somewhere else.
There have been plenty of predictions about the "bring your own device" trend, but that's not stopping Gartner from making a few more. Gartner's latest research shows 38 percent of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016 and half of companies will mandate BYOD by 2017.
