Tracking Shoppers: Paper from the CACM

An area we worked in for years,  in our labs and in real stores. here a n excellent update from the ACM:

"Tracking Shoppers," by Keith Kirkpatrick, explains how brick-and-mortar retailers, like their online counterparts, are using technology and to track shoppers through stores and leveraging that data to build sales and customer loyalty.  .. ..  "

Amazon to Open first Non Whole Foods Retail

What will such a location look like, the technology, the merchandising mix?   Affluent clearly.

Amazon said to be opening its first supermarket in February
in Yahoo Finance

Amazon’s first non-Whole Foods grocery store is under construction at 6245 Topanga Canyon Boulevard in the Woodland Hill’s community of Los Angeles, an affluent area consistent with Amazon.com’s core demographic. Interestingly, the site is only 1.7 miles from a Whole Foods, supporting the theory that the company will experiment with a different merchandising mix than what is found at the natural foods grocer.  ... " 

Brick and Mortar Making a Comeback

I have my doubts,  but there will always be specialty examples, new kinds of channels.

Brick-and-Mortar Stores Are Making a Comeback in HBS Working Knowledge

Left for dead alongside the retail highway, physical stores are suddenly finding new ways to compete, say Jill Avery and Antonio Moreno.

While legacy companies like Sears are shuttering their doors, a growing number of online-first companies—from Amazon to Rent the Runway—are opening new storefronts and transforming the shopping experience. Senior Lecturer Jill Avery and Associate Professor Antonio Moreno discuss the new rules of retail.

Q: What’s different about the physical storefront in this renaissance of retail?

Jill Avery: There’s a lot of experimentation around what a store is and what it could do. In this new worldview, a store has to create a branded experience that goes beyond the purely transactional—one that aims to build a relationship with the customer and communicate the brand in an experiential way. There’s still a purpose for physical shopping in today’s environment; it just has to feel different from what we’ve gotten used to as consumers.

Antonio Moreno: People still like going to a physical store to have an experience and learn about products, but now that can be decoupled from the act of taking possession of a product because there are better and cheaper ways of doing that. Malls are going to increasingly transform into places for experiences, not just for taking inventory home. What probably will not survive are the retailers that are more like a warehouse, or just physical repositories of goods. Real estate is too expensive for that purpose. The opportunity to think about online and offline as complementary channels has opened up possibilities that would not have been imaginable with the more traditional, siloed approach. 

Avery: I would give the example of Glossier, which is a digitally native, direct-to-consumer cosmetics company. They have one permanent showroom in New York, but everything else that they’ve done, from a physical retail perspective, has been a pop-up. The whole point of the retail experience is not to sell the product, but to introduce you to the brand in a way that can be shared with others through social media. There are special areas in the store that are set up for selfies, where you can take a picture of yourself in Glossier pink and share that on social media. They might serve a small number people during a pop-up experience, but if those people send that message out on social media, the effect is an exponential multiplier. Glossier’s expectation is that you will move your purchasing to the digital space after visiting the pop-ups, so it’s not meant to be a channel of distribution; it’s an acquisition engine and a way to make a brand splash in a particular market. ... "

Hand Scanning Payments at Whole Foods

Another payment simplification idea from Amazon.

Amazon Tests Tool That Scans Your Hand to Let You Pay at Whole Foods 
The Telegraph (U.K.)
By James Cook
September 4, 2019

Amazon is reportedly testing a hand-scanning payments system to enable shoppers to pay for groceries. Shoppers using the Orville system hold their hands before a camera; the system measures the size and shape of the hands to confirm their identity and allow the purchase to proceed. Amazon reportedly plans to implement the system in U.S. Whole Foods stores in the coming months (the retail giant bought the supermarket chain in 2017).  ... " 

Physical Stores as Media

They are media, which is what we researched for years in innovation centers.    But how do they effectively collaborate with other channels?

Stores as Media  in Retailwire.   by James Tenser

Innovative, digital-first retail concepts are sprouting physical stores as the revolution continues in how consumer goods are brought to market.

In a session at this week’s Shoptalk conference, the founders of three successful, but very different, born-for-the-web retailers shared their formulas for cultivating business models firmly rooted in both digital and physical ground.

Ethan Song, co-founder and CEO of Frank And Oak, a Montreal-based apparel seller, said its 17 physical stores are located in “up and coming, creative neighborhoods” in major cities “coast-to-coast” across Canada. The company serves more than three million mostly-Millennial members via a web site that offers individual items or a subscription service that delivers a personalized box each month.

“We view the store as media,” said Mr. Song. “E-commerce-only misses much valuable data about our customers. It’s smart to feed store data into the rest of your business and use different KPIs to measure success.”  .... " 

Center Store Resets (Again).

We were old hands at trying to better understand the center store.  It was one thing we worked on in our innovation centers.  So this article struck me.  What tech can be best used to make this work?  Store directories?   With discussion:

Do grocers need to reset the center store?    by Bryan Pearson   in Retailwire: 

Through a special arrangement, what follows is a summary of an article from COLLOQUY, provider of loyalty-marketing publishing, education and research since 1990.

Kellogg, Kraft Heinz, General Mills and other major food brands are seeing their sales slide due to a consumer preference for more natural foods. But the declines are more directly caused by supermarkets.

Many grocers are dedicating more space to healthier options, including wholesome prepared meals, private labels and in-store dining, all of which crowd out national brands in the middle aisle. Few events may accelerate this change as dramatically as Amazon.com’s acquisition of Whole Foods.

Private label foods, which are becoming a staple for more retailers, are penetrating packaged foods in greater numbers and with more natural ingredients, threatening to shoulder out big food brands. ... "

Softbank Pepper Sales Robot

A relook at the SoftBank humanoid Pepper robot.   Seems the test they mention that showed increases in sales is far too short, and could have largely been driven by publicized novelty.   In Recode:

SoftBank’s humanoid robot Pepper is improving sales at brick-and-mortar stores
Turns out people like to shop with robots.    By April Glaser

SoftBank, the Japanese company recently in the news for a meeting between its CEO and Donald Trump and its promise to invest $50 billion into U.S. tech companies, has been working to bring its humanoid robot Pepper to American markets for the past year.

And after launching a few pilots with Pepper helping customers in California retail stores in 2016, SoftBank says the robot actually pays off.

In one pilot at B8ta, a tech retail shop in Palo Alto where Pepper worked customer service for a week-long stint last August, SoftBank says the store clocked a 70 percent increase in foot traffic. At another pilot at a B8ta in Santa Monica in December, the store reported a 13 percent increase in revenue and a six-fold increase in sales of a featured product, according to SoftBank. ... "

SoftBank says there are already over 10,000 Pepper robots in use around the world, including at a Pizza Hut in Singapore, on cruise ships and even in homes across Japan. ....  " 

List of personal assistants examined

Checkout in the Aisle

Mashable writes:   An old idea, back again.  Have followed it and related tests for years. How relevant will it be in an online world?  Now from Diebold.

Brick and Mortar Analytics

On the use of analytics for physical stores.  In Forbes.  I was reminded of this as I looked back on some methods we worked in the 90s.  More data, but not very different today.

Skip: More In Aisle Checkout

One of the holy grails of retail is to much decrease or even eliminate the checkout experience .  It would cut labor needs, and also eliminate one of the most common complaints of shoppers, the long checkout line. We examined a number of methods that used kiosks or checkout devices loaned to the shopper.  But better yet, why couldn't they use their own smart phones to scan items?   Minimizes retailer cost.    At last week's Brandery  event we were pitched another such approach called Skip.  http://GoSkip.com   A partnership with Microsoft and P&G was stated.   " ... A mobile POS integration system giving shoppers the power to scan, pay and skip the line -- all from the convenience of their smartphones ... " .   Ideas were good.  Look forward to seeing a live demo.

Shopper Time Management

Excellent piece on a favorite topic.  Including a number of good discussion comments.   My favorite expert on this, Herb Sorensen, sums it up:   " .... Excellent discussion here, with a few still arguing to waste shoppers' time in hopes of selling them a bit more. The fact is that retailers, by and large, do more actual sales suppressing than actual SELLING. Let the data speak for itself: What you do not measure... you will NOT manage! ... " 

Addressing Customer Showrooming

In K@W:  Good piece includes some useful statistics that address customer in-store behavior when they are looking for information  " .... It’s obvious that customers will prefer to deal with sales associates who know what they’re talking about when it comes to the products they’re hawking. But what has been less obvious is just how much of a difference knowledgeability makes to the bottom line. ...  "

Cisco Managing Video

I reported on this some time ago, as it related to Video Content Analysis. (VCA) and its use for ad management in store.

Cisco introduces ‘videoscape unity’ to manage the future of video everywhere
Cisco is the world’s networking giant, and today it showed what it is doing to make sure that it can provide the plumbing for the explosion of video on live TV, paid services, and the wide-open Internet.  ... 

For the consumer, this means that Cisco will make it easier to manage video content, regardless of where it is coming from. Cisco is creating apps that allow a user to search through videos in a visual way, organized based on the user’s own tastes. You can login and your own profile will come up. The user interface will show you the videos that are relevant to you. Cisco refers to its unified approaching to managing content as Videoscape Unity.

Digital Closer to Dominating Physical Retail

Deloitte: Digital moving closer to dominating physical retail 

Digital interactions are expected to influence 64 cents of every dollar spent in retail stores by the end of 2015, or $2.2 trillion, according to Deloitte Digital's latest study, "Navigating the New Digital Divide." Is the influence of digital and mobile reducing the value of traditional in-store shopping and browsing?  ... " 

Personalizing Pricing in Store

Much talked for loyalty, or online.  Beyond that in Brick and Mortar? We built some test models for experimentation for engagement interaction.  How does this change if pricing and checkout moves to the aisle?

" ... According to the author, grocers probably won't deploy personalized pricing at the point-of-sale for every item to each customer any time soon. But the technology is there and the strategy is in practice — in fact it pretty much copies the targeted-offer tactic that Amazon.com has made an art of delivering. Do you see digital coupons and online ordering paving the way to more personalized pricing options for retailers?  ... " 

Maps Warn When a Store Will Close

When navigating to a place we would like to have enough information to use that place before we spend the effort to get there.  What is more important than knowing a place is open for business when we arrive?  In essence augmented reality,  or key information about a place. Google maps plans to have this in place.  I recall a previous effort that included inventory information about places as well. But have never seen that implemented in places I mapped or visited.  What other information is key? In Mashable.  How about in hospitality applications?

A Store as an Internet of Display Panels

Attended an Ascendum meeting this evening and got a demo from their Zingo subsidiary.  They have a projectable sign system that is suitable for retail augmentation via personalization.  Nicely done approach.  The system was described in a recent Biz Journals piece.    A kind of internet of displaying panels.  The result can be a very adaptable approach for signage in a store, without the expense of flat panels.  Clever idea.

Unilever to Track Online, Offline Retail Gap

Unilever is investing $50,000 in startup Glimr as part of an effort to connect consumers' online and in-store shopping experiences. "We are hoping to bring an actual understating of who you are as an individual based on what stores you visit and help Unilever understand their target audience in a much better way -- so for the first time bridging the offline and online gap," said Robert Hedberg, CEO of Glimr, which helps brands build consumer relationships based on data from beacons  .. " 

" .... Precision. .... Glimr revolutionizes advertisement by allowing brands to truly build 1-1 relationships with their customers by using offline data.  ... "  

Checking out in the Aisle at Sainsbury

An approach we examined over the years in many forms.  In aisle checkout.  Recently took a close-up look at how Kroger was testing this idea with a handheld device.  The Sainsbury test will also include store item location and a shopping list.

In Gizmag: 
" ... No-one likes spending any longer at the supermarket than they have to. Whilst self-service checkouts may have sped things up a touch, one UK supermarket is now set to trial doing away with checkouts altogether. The new Sainsbury's app lets users scan items at the shelf and pay via their smartphone.   .. "

Gamifying Intelligent Digital Signage

A concept we looked at in the innovation centers.  How do you engage with participants in alternative contexts?  Here, from RMG Networks.   A thoughtful white paper on the integration of gamification concepts with digital signage.  Primarily here in internal business settings. This can be problematical due to culture and different motivational goals.

" ... To summarize gamification researcher, futurist and author of Reality is  Broken Jane McGonigal, games provide us with “real positive emotions,  real positive experiences and real social connections” during a challenging time [work]. She goes on to state that the real world is at once too easy, depressing, unproductive, hopeless, isolating, disconnected,  trivial… the list goes on. But reality is our destiny, she goes on to say, and  our mission is to engage as fully as possible with reality. ... " 

See more resources from Jane McGonigal at her site.