Over the next three years, manufacturers increasingly plan to use service as a competitive differentiator and aim to grow business through product service innovation and value-added services for existing products, according to Business Strategy: Modernizing the Service Chain with Smart Technology, a report from IDC Manufacturing Insights.

When it comes to e-commerce, competing with Amazon is the name of the game, says Ian Hobkirk, managing director of Commonwealth Supply Chain Advisors. Here, he shares his views on the degree of the difficulty of taking on the e-tailing giant and on the future of online commerce in general.

Pinterest boards, QR code walls, showrooming, mobile couponing, pop-up shops, mobile apps, Tweet Mirror, Facebook walls, digital circulars, augmented reality, flash sales"”it's a digital jungle out there for retailers today. As consumers embrace new technologies and services, companies find it difficult to stay current"”and harder still to determine where and how to invest their budgets. It's all too tempting simply to jump on the next new thing (and the next and the next), just in hopes of keeping pace.

The back-to-school shopping season has already gotten underway with 29 percent of households reporting that they have begun to shop, according to a special ICSC-Goldman Sachs consumer tracking survey. While the percentage of consumers shopping for back-to-school items at this time of the season is lower than in 2012 (33 percent), it is still higher than in all other years since 2004. Although the season has officially begun, two-thirds of households reported that August is when they will do most of their back-to-school shopping.

Retailers' in-store merchandising process is broken and outdated for a majority of today's national and regional retail chains, according to a study by RIS News sponsored by RBM Technologies.

Regardless of having registered a phone line with the Federal Trade Commission as a telemarketer-free zone, a growing number of consumers are saying that some businesses are ignoring their stated preference and calling anyway.