Does history teach that a token-based currency works only if it is anchored to some unambiguous real store of value that a government cannot inflate away?
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But as anyone who has a pair of ill-fitting, online-purchased pants hanging in the back of the closet knows, there are still unique advantages to shopping in a real store.
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The site now carries 3, 000 items, with plans to expand to 25, 000 products. (The real store carries more than 100, 000 products.) Prices are the same in-store and online - with razor-thin margins - but Ahmad reckons the website is advertising as much as a revenue source.
It is no wonder merchants are feeling frustration and anger that their stores are being considered as little more than showrooms by some shoppers -- showrooms displaying merchandise that, if the people wandering the aisles go home and buy from an online vendor, will provide not a cent in revenue to the owner of the real store.
This new stand-alone beauty and fragrance store was a real shock for store operators throughout the world.
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In-store real estate is a precious commodity.
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The loser is the owner of that real-life store: the person who has stocked the merchandise, hired the staff, paid to keep the store cool in summer and warm in winter, written the rent checks and the tax checks.
Another reason is Chinese upper middle class use real estate as a store of value.
An online store sells real "MU" merchandise like hoodie sweatshirts and window decals.
Five stars can earn you a free drink or upgrade, but the thirty star Gold Level is a very real example of in-store attention.
Lane Crawford, the glitzy Hong Kong department store owned by real estate billionaire Peter Woo and overseen by his daughter Jennifer, has two units in Beijing.
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Now, instead of offering up fairly generic tracks at fairly generic prices, the MSN Music store will offer prospective listeners the choice of hopping over to Microsoft's Zune store, or Real's Rhapsody.
In 1996 Donald took over floundering Pathmark, a privately held, moneylosing 143-store chain with good real estate and a crushing debt load.
Failed marketing campaigns and management decisions on real estate strategy resulted in an increasing store base and falling sales.
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Most impressively, the profit gains come mainly from pulling more people into every store rather than adding expensive real estate.
While this data explosion cannot be ignored, the real story lies in how corporations can store, govern, and manage their data in order to leverage it as an asset.
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Adidas, for instance, with its agency partner iProspect, determined that including the real value of a click on a store locator button, which it had identified from store data, proved that mobile ads were paying off in in-store sales.
The size of the game terrain would normally be limited by available system resources, since just the contours of a single map can weigh up to 128MB -- too burdensome for most systems to store, process and display in real-time.
The false memories were about getting lost on a shopping trip and included real details, such as the name of a store where they often shopped and siblings they were likely with.
"Football players are not very creative, " says Mr. Torres, who first began working with athletes after a chance run-in a decade ago with former Real Madrid star Fernando Hierro at a Madrid clothing store.
When Amazon decided to get into the bookstore business, Sahlman noted, it decided not to try to compete for locations but used real estate in a different way to store millions of books in warehouses that it would ship to customers after they ordered online.
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Of course, store location is always important and research on real estate takes time and guidance by local experts.
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The concept of building a financial department store covering operations in brokerage, insurance, real estate and banking came apart at the seams in 2008.
Borders plans to unveil their eBook store next month, and it is the real reason why Borders is attempting this land grab strategy with Kobo.
Real money and real prices not only makes Xbox Live just like any other store, it removes a barrier between the customer and their purchases.
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None of it gave me that instant gratification I felt upon seeing the shuttered Apple Online Store re-open a few hours after a real breakthrough product announcement.
As ever, we'll be your go-to source for breaking news served straight to your browser as it happens, and we also have a few more surprises in store that you'll be finding out about real soon.
McGranahan says the board is going to find someone willing to do bolder things such as get out of China to raise capital, whack payroll at the store level and figure out the Web in a real way.
Your old school is showing when you ignore the fact that while Amazon.com may not have a physical presence in the brick and mortar sense of a store or warehouse, it most certainly has a real physical presence in its day to day business operations at more than a half dozen locations throughout California.
They have mobile-like features such as real-time notifications and one-click installation through the Pokki store.
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