Tag: retail

Event Recap: AdWeek – Reimagine Retail for the Connected Shopper

Posted on by Richard Yao

“Reimagine Retail for the Connected Shopper” is the second Ad Week seminar we attended earlier today. Presented solely by Michael Dill, Managing Partner of Match Marketing Group, the seminar explored the various facets that today’s digitally connected shoppers are reshaping the retail market.

Four Aspects Of Connecting

Dill started by noting that when Ad Week first started in New York 10 years ago, “neither Twitter or smartphones existed.” But things have changed, as social media and mobile devices have significantly altered the retail experience by keeping consumers constantly connected. Shoppers today are connected to stores, to the media, to each other, and most importantly, to the shopping experiences. The connected shopper “thinks of brands and retailers as providers, both in terms of value and experience”, and therefore expect to form a connection with them.

Three Types Of Connectors

While Dill did acknowledge that “the coveted Millennials are the mainstay of connected shoppers”, he maintained that “it’s not about the different generations or demos, but rather how different types of shoppers connect to stores and each other”. According to Match Marketing’s study, today’s connected shoppers can be behaviorally categorized into three archetypes: Mass Connectors, Task Connecters and Elite Connectors, each with their unique characteristics and demands.

Two Ways To Earn That Connection

To earn that valued connection with today’s shoppers, marketers need to utilize an insight-driven, shopper-centric approach to drive action while also building emotional connections with relevant and valuable connectors. “With transparent prices and ubiquitous social recommendation, it’s the retail experience that truly differentiates“, Dill explained, “so connected shoppers today are looking for something different and richer than the traditional shopping experience”. And as retail enters a new era where digital drives offline sales, “to connect with the shoppers is to win at the crucial moments of the connected shopping experience”.

Partner Spotlight: Roximity

Posted on by Lab Team

Roximity is a leader in the emerging space of “hyperlocal retail”: using its state-of-the-art beacon technology, the company aims to understand consumer behavior and advertising effectiveness at shelf. In the past two weeks, Roximity has released a new generation of beacon hardware with greater range, battery life, and security, in addition to partnering with shopping app giant Ibotta, which will use Roximity tech to send proximity-enabled offers on nearby products. The platform has been featured in the New York Times, USA Today and more, and has secured partnerships with everyone from Ford to the Brooklyn Nets.

How does “hyperlocal” retail work? Will people have to “check in” at every store aisle? 

Myriad hardware and software solutions are trying to maximize the relationship between brands on the shelf and the humans that buy them. “Beacon” technology—of which Apple’s’ iBeacon is the best known—uses Bluetooth to track the location and patterns of shoppers within the aisles. This level of tracking means that retailers can learn valuable data about their shoppers, and consumers can receive messages and offers based on where they are in a store.

How does Roximity’s technology work for advertisers?

For Alex Finkel, head of partnerships at Roximity, beacons close the attribution loop. ”Groupon might have an offer to your local restaurant, but your phone won’t know you actually went there. Beacons will be an integral tool for small businesses to have insight into their customers [that] they’ve never had before.” Roximity’s beacons link up with a consumer’s mobile device to send messages, deals, or calls to action at the shelf level. Retailers can understand the effects of their advertising campaign through Roximity’s platform as it tracks user activity within a store.

What advantages does Roximity hold for consumers?

Roximity sees hyperlocal technology as a return to a more intimate relationship between consumers and retailers. In big cities, Finkel says, “all the scale and density make it impossible to know your customers in the ideal version of the local small-town store we picture. That’s the relationship we strive for, but the urban economics make it difficult.” Beacons give retailers more information and more avenues to communicate with shoppers. It’s a futuristic version of the friendly handshake from decades past. For Roximity, beacons are “a step toward the personalization that used to exist.”

With beacons, consumers can make informed decisions at the shelf level. “If it’s contextual and meaningful,” says Finkel, “it’s not an advertisement for free pizza. It becomes a meaningful way to get lunch. That’s what I think of the broad vision and promise for beacons.”

How Macy’s Is Making Personalized Shopping Convenient Across Platforms

Posted on by Richard Yao

With the rise of ecommerce, brick-and-mortar retailers are facing increasing challenges from the digital stores. But national chain store Macy’s is staying ahead of the market with two power moves that make shopping more personalized and convenient for its customers across platforms.

The first step it took was embracing beacon technology. Macy’s announced that it is expanding the use of Shopkick-powered iBeacons to all of its stores nationwide over the next 2 months, just in time for the upcoming holiday shopping season. When completed, it will be the largest beacon installation in retail history, and provide Macy’s customers with highly personalized, interactive retail experiences.

Furthermore, the retail mainstay announced plans to offer same-day delivery service later this fall, effectively eliminating one key advantage of its digital retail competitors. Online shoppers in eight selected markets would soon have a consistent and convenient cross-platform shopping experience, whether on the web stores or mobile apps of Macy’s and its upscale subsidiary Bloomingdale’s.

As we pointed out in our recent POV on multi-platform shopping, successful retailers integrate points of sale to create a consistent customer experience, which is exactly what Macy’s is trying to achieve here. By embracing the beacon technology and on-demand economy, the 156-year-old retailer shows its strength in adapting to the changing market.

Amazon Expands Same-Day Delivery to Six More Cities

Posted on by Lab Team

After initially launching in L.A., Phoenix, San Francisco, and Seattle, Amazon is now expanding its same-day delivery program to six more cities, New York City included. For an additional charge of $5.99, Amazon Prime customers can opt to have their new purchases delivered to them before the end of day, provided the orders are made before noon. If it succeeds in the long-term, the digital retail giant is set to eliminate one of the few advantages physical retail stores still have over Amazon.

Amazon Introduces Dedicated Web-store For 3D Printed Products

Posted on by Lab Team

As the need for customizable goods continue to rise, 3D printing is ascending from a niche novelty to one of the hottest trends in tech right now. Now digital retail giant Amazon is hopping in on the hype and introducing a new web store portal specifically dedicated to 3D printed goods. By partnering with a few suppliers including Mixee, Scupteo and 3DLT, Amazon is set to make 3D printed items easily accessible and commercially viable. The market trend in online retail has seen a growing endorsement of direct production and selling, especially suitable for one-offs and small orders, which truly puts each individual customer’s need front and center. And that’s an edge that mass-produced retailers will never have.

HBC Stores To Deploy In-Store Beacon Technology

Posted on by Lab Team

Beacon technology is getting another seal of approval from the retail industry. Department store chains Lord & Taylor and Hudson’s Bay (both are owned by HBC) are rolling out in-store beacon marketing platforms, powered by Swirl, in over 130 retail storefronts across North America to deliver branded content and personalized offers to consumers’ smartphones while they shop. An ambitious application of beacon marketing in the retail industry, this marks the first time retail players test the technology. Pending customers’ feedback, the micro-location tech is ready to take the retail business by storm. Similar efforts would be expected in other retail stores soon, if offering a better, more integrated shopping experience is of their concern.

By The Numbers: Big Retail Data

Posted on by Lab Team

Arguably the most established commercial application of big data is the way retailers have been tracking and building their consumer database. Whether through building consumer profiles, analyzing purchase records, or even tracking in-store movements, data can reveal unexpected insights:

  • With systems in place to analyze unstructured data, retailers can now experience an uplift of 18 to 22% by doing simple behavioral profiling based on clickstreams.

This statistic, reported on retailcustomerexperience.com by Tushar Montaño and Monica Pal, highlights a big reason why retailers are jumping on the big data train.

Scouring through the consumer data for competitive advantage has become somewhat a standard practice among big retailers. Retailers like Zappos and Amazon are now also using personal data to develop customer relationships that could lead to brand loyalty. And if a simple, clickstream-based behavioral profiling could bring an increase of around 20% in purchases, imagine what the newer technology, such as measuring window conversion rates to measure storefront displays and connecting outdoor ad exposure to store visit through the WiFi-based platform, could lead to.

  • In 2010, just 1.7% of small businesses were using business software; by last year, 9.2% had adopted such tools.

Reported in New York Times by Ray Boggs, the small-business market analyst at IDC cited easier-to-use products and lower prices as prime drivers of the growth.

The sharp increase of small business embracing intelligence databases nicely dovetails with the trend within big retail chains to track customer purchases with memberships and teaming up with credit card companies. While small business might not always have the recourses to handle the same amount of data those bigger retailers have, nevertheless they could leverage the limited but crucial data they could manage into building a rewarding, intimate relationship with their customers.

The followings are some of the key findings from Inmar 2014 Coupon Trends Report:

  • Manufacturer digital offers in market are up 250%
  • The number of digitally connected loyalty shoppers is up 40%
  • Growth in digital coupon redemptions is up 141%, with over 66mm redeemed

While retailers have gotten fairly accustomed to managing the information they put out on traditional media sources, most of they are still trying to make sense of the new digital and mobile media. It is important to note that these fast growing new media offers the retailers far better channels for data acquisition, whose potential has yet to be fully explored. But with mobile-influenced offline retail sales expected to reach $700 billion by 2016, according to Deloitte, figuring out how to fully engage the online and mobile customers becomes increasingly crucial.

Kate Spade Brings Window Shopping Into The Future

Posted on by Lab Team

We all know window shopping is usually the first step to purchase so why not enable checkouts from the sidewalk? Kate Spade & eBay have installed interactive kiosks that allow you to purchase items, with different products featured in the window display. The products are also delivered in an hour so it has the same quick turnaround as in-store. While it’s buzzworthy during store hours, it should provide utility after closing.