Tag: retail

JCPenney and Shopkick Inspire Cinderella Moments for Consumers

Posted on by Lab Team

JCPenney has tapped into the ever-growing trend to combine mobile and retail to stay relevant amongst competing ecommerce and mcommerce channels. Consumers who visit JCPenney will notice an array of Cinderella-themed merchandise for promotion of the latest Disney movie.  The retail chain has partnered with mobile app, Shopkick, in an effort to create buzz and boost foot traffic in their stores.

The Lab took a visit to JCPenney to discover just how this brick-and-mortar store is using mobile to drive traffic into the store.  What we found were various plaques decorating the store that read: “Use the Shopkick app as your magic wand for a chance to win JCPenney gift cards to complete your own Cinderella look”.  Consumers can then scan a barcode and gain “kicks” that lead to discounts.

JCP-Shopkick5 JCP-Shopkick1

A unique discovery we also uncovered—Shopkick promotes healthy living. After chatting with other consumers participating in the magic, we found that some users are motivated to get out and walk as opposed to taking the NYC subway just to gain more kicks by passing storefronts.

How A Finnish Mall Found Success With “Physical Cookies”

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: Mashable

Last fall, a mall in Helsinki, Finland reportedly started testing a new VIP loyalty program in which individually targeted deals are offered to shoppers who agreed to carry a plastic key fob embedded with an RFID chip with them. Since then, over 14,000 customers have tried out this “physical cookie” device, which can provide valuable insights on the shopper’s preferences.

The mall worked with local ad agency TBWA\Helsinki to create the RFID key chains, which don’t require registration or sharing any personal information. After a four-month trial, the mall reported some promising results, as customers with “Physical Cookies” spent 21.7% more time in stores than those who didn’t.

 

What Retailers Need to Know about Facebook’s New Ad Tool

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: AdWeek

Facebook is giving Google a run for its ad money by launching a new Dynamic Product Ads platform specifically for retailers. With this new offering, retail brands such as Target will be able to upload their product catalogues and allow the social media giant to generate targeted ads for each item. By harnessing insights from the behavioral and location data of its users for product-specific offers, Facebook might just have a shot at competing with Google AdWords.

Beacon-Influenced Sales Predicted To Grow 11 Times More Next Year

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: MediaPost

$4 billion this year, $44 billion next: BI Intelligence’s Beacons Report on beacon-influenced retail sales are certainly eye-catching. Despite its predicted substantial growth, it is important to remember that this still takes up less than 0.1% of total store sales for now. More retailers need to get on board with the proximity technology for beacons to hit mainstream. According to the report, consumer adoptions will be driven by coupons, loyalty programs and personalized messaging.

Know Your Audience: Why Fab Flails And Zulily Thrives

Posted on by Lab Team

Ecommerce can be a tricky territory for retail startups to navigate. A few years back, mobile retailer Fab was one of the hottest startup on the scene, yet the company started to flail in 2013 after blowing through $200 million in two years without finding a sustainable business model. Flash forward to now, PCH Innovations is set to close its acquisition of the what’s left of Fab for a meager $15 million. Meanwhile, fellow digital retailer Zulily has been steadily growing and just posed an impressive $1 billion in 2014 annual revenue.

The difference between the fate of the two retailers comes down to “know your audience.” Over the years, Zulily has greatly benefited from its unwavering focus on young moms and a nuanced understanding of its targeted audience through purchase data analysis. The company stayed true to its core value offering daily updated collections of well-curated products that caters to its niche costumers. In contrast, Fab simply cast too wide of a net with its aggressive, uncalibrated expansions, including some costly over-scaled marketing campaigns and a hasty venture into the European market. At the end of the day, a deep understanding of your audience is what leads to targeted offers of true values, something all brands need in order to thrive in today’s market.

Do you know your audience?

 

 

What We Learned From The Digiday Retail Summit

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: Digiday

Last week we closely followed the coverage of the Digiday Retail Summit, where executives from the retail world came together to talk about the future of retail and the challenges facing the industry. A lot was discussed, but two themes stood out for us:

Attribution technology still needs work

With the growing number of devices and the dizzying array of ad types, cross-channel attribution keeps fracturing ad measurements. Insiders from the retail industry are increasingly impatient for the attribution technology to be precise enough to pinpoint exactly where their sale is coming from, but it looks like we might still need a few years for it to fully catch up.

Digital retail starts to converge with physical stores

As online commerce starts to circle back into physical space and converge with brick-and-mortar, how to efficiently make both work together poses an ongoing challenge for retailers today. Some are willing to experiment with cutting-edge technologies to tackle the challenge. Lowe’s, for instance, is using 3D virtual-reality rooms in their physical stores that allow customers to see a 3D model of their renovation projects.

 

By The Numbers: A Stats Breakdown Of Apple’s Monster Quarter

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: TechCrunch

Charts courtesy of ben-evans.com

Apple just had the most profitable quarter of any company, ever. The Cupertino company announced on Tuesday the financial report for its fiscal 2015 first quarter ending December 2014, and the results are staggering.

The tech giant posted record quarterly revenue of $74.6 billion and record quarterly net profit of $18.04 billion. To put it in perspective, that means Apple makes around $8.3 million per hour in profit.

AppleUnitSales

Thanks partly to the holiday shopping season, a record number of 74.5 million iPhones was sold in Q1, which saw a 46% year-to-year increase.

One side effect of the rising popularity of “phablet”-sized iPhone 6 Plus is a 21% drop in iPad sales compared to year ago, but at 21.4 million, tablet sales are still holding strong.

AppleRevChina

Another source for Apple’s record quarterly revenue comes from its aggressive retail expansion in China, its third biggest global market following the US and Europe. The company reports $16.1 billion in revenue from the greater China region, up 70% from the same period a year ago.

 

3 Reasons Why Startups Are Succeeding In Online Retail

Posted on by Lab Team

Read the original story on: TechCrunch

E-commerce startups like Bonobos, Warby Parker and Birchbox have been thriving in online retail—some have even made their way back to brick-and-mortal stores—but some traditional retailers have struggled with the transfer. Kit Hickey, co-founder of online menswear store Ministry of Supply, sums up the three key reasons behind such the contrast:

  1. E-commerce startups are tapping into flexible and unique spaces such as vacant storefronts, with short-term leases.
  2. E-commerce startups have centralized inventory, which leads to significant savings on storage cost and shipping.
  3. E-commerce startups have a better understanding of their customers thru purchase data and customer profile.

All of these factors are hugely beneficial to e-commerce companies as they continue to scale both online and offline.

 

Event Recap: Retail News From NRF’s BIG Day 2015

Posted on by Lab Team

The NRF’s BIG Day is a little like CES for retail: there are big tech announcements, thought-leading keynotes, and large showcases at New York’s Jacob Javits Center. Here’s a recap of a few of the larger news reveals:

  • NCR is releasing a new touchscreen pay kiosk, called SelfServ 90. With a small and nimble form, it’s meant to upgrade the self-service checkout experience. Wincor Nixdorf also premiered its new moPOS system, as did Panasonic.

  • Panasonic also premiered PowerShelf, an electronic shelving unit equipped with beacons that can be enabled for both advertising and inventory management.

  • Lots of partnerships this week: Samsung is integrating with tagging/payment system PowaTag. Gimbal, which is also premiering its new Series 21 Beacon, is partnering with audio recognition giant Shazam and mobile offers solution Koupon Media.

  • Spearheading the intersection between retail and tech, Intel has a big booth this year. It is showcasing beacon solutions, mobile payments, a Beef-o-Brady tabletop tablet payment implementation for Beef-o-Bready, its SteadyServ iKeg system for intelligent bar inventory, and its Memory Mirror apparel virtualization tech (on display at Neiman Marcus).

  • IBM released a suite of sales apps, called MobileFirst. Developed by Cognitive Scale, the apps will be Sales Assist (for customer acquisition + management), and Pick & Pack (smart inventory via beacon integration).

Stay tuned for more product news—this is only the beginning of retail innovation in 2015.

Best Of The Lab 2014: Seize The Moments That Matter

Posted on by Lab Team

 Here at the Lab, we are always looking for emerging technologies that capture the attention of audiences at the most effective moments. Kicking off 2014, we experimented with incorporating micro-games at point-of-sale using Vengo’s vendor machines, which produced some quite promising findings.

Fast forward to June, we teamed up with Kiip and conducted a mobile engagement study that reveals that moments-based advertising increases purchase intent. We then joined forces with YuMe to explore measures of receptivity and attentiveness, with the findings neatly presented in a short video.

IPG Lab + Kiip Release Moments That Matter Study

Experimental Ad Product: Sponsored Micro-games At Point-Of-Sale

Bonus Video: IPG Media Lab And YuMe Present: Pursuit of Audience Attention