One upscale clothing retailer invested in flashy technologies in its flagship store in Manhattan, such as digital dressing rooms, RFID-tagged clothing, and sophisticated software that allowed the systems to make recommendations for products that went with the items the customer had selected. This technology was expensive and turned out to be more of a novelty than a delivery of real value to customers. The technology ended up getting shelved when it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. In contrast, the retailer Zara—one of the fastest growing companies in the world10—is often
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