Retailers get a Q4 wake up call

Neo: “That’s not possible.” Morpheus: “I promised you the truth, Neo, and the truth is that the world you were living in was a lie.” Neo: “How?” Morpheus: “I’ll show you.” —From The Matrix (1999), starring Keanu Reeves as Neo and Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus. What if you woke up in January 2005 and discovered that much of what you thought you knew about driving shareholder value was wrong. That you’d been living — and selling — in a world that looks real but is a distorted version of the truth. That’s the situation facing major retailers as they look back on the 2004 holiday season. Here are some of the rules that appear to …