Retailers Brining SalesPeople Online

Traditional Brick and Mortar retailers have begun to recognize the opportunity to extend the value of their trained consumer facing sales people into the online space, leveraging their expertise, and their branded recognition, to offer valuable information and service to shoppers. One case in point is Best Buy who has launched www.askablueshirt.com to allow consumer electronic shoppers to take advantage of the expertise of the trained Best Buy sales force to build shopping preference and drive instore traffic.

Additionally, they are using the distribution power of this environment to generate buzz around events like Black Friday, in this case, showing photos of people camping out prior to the big holiday sales event. It shows that Best Buy, and other leading retainers, are starting to experiment with online well beyond their e-commerce and general brand building activities online.

Ask ChaCha

Nielsen reports that ChaCha, launched less than a year ago, is the fastest growing mobile search service to surpass Yahoo! and Google. ChaCha's 300% quarter over quarter gain is tremendous, but also a result of an increase in mobile search supported by the latest hardware options.

Personally, I like the concept. Users text a question and get a reply in minutes. With so much content out there, it's useful. Users must, however, be specific or the relevancy in the results are lost.

Big brands including McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and even the Obama campaign, have leveraged the tool for marketing purposes and have reportedly seen response rates up to 5% which well exceed mobile industry averages.

The Obama campaign specifically, used the service to urge early voting. Folks using ChaCha received a prompt that offered the option of getting more information on how and where to vote early - and of course there was a plug for Obama.

This will be one to watch - although it might be hard to miss.

www.chacha.com

A Weekend In The Life of Today's Shopper

To help illustrate how digital technology is changing the way shoppers shop, we introduce you to a Young Gen X family and their digital shopping experiences over one weekend with the holidays appraoching.

Meet Bob and Sarah and their 4 year old son Zac. This dual income family lives in the suburbs of New York. Bob works full time in Manhattan at an advertising agency and Sarah works part time at a prestigious marketing services agency in Westport, CT. Their lives get crazier by the day.

Friday afternoon

·Sarah has picked up Zac from daycare and is back home. She needs to plan her grocery shopping list, so to keep Zac busy, she sets him in front of the computer and fires up the toy section at Amazon.com. Watching him, she chuckles, 4 years old and he’s creating his own holiday wish list. Dragging and dropping items…his total is over $10,000! Sarah uses this time to get organized. She checks the mail and remembers how her mom used to get those over-sized Val Pac mailers and store circulars. Now Sarah gets alerts on her cell phone to download new coupons in her pre-selected categories.

·The holidays are approaching and Bob is behind on his gift shopping. He’s walking down 6th avenue in New York City and wondering where he can get the best deal on a digital camera without having to pop into store after store. Bob opens the Slifter application on his cell phone and researches deals and product reviews within a 5 block radius. Bob’s turned 6th avenue into the main aisle of an electronics store.

Friday afternoon is turning to Friday evening

·Bob is rushing to Grand Central Station to catch his train. He gets a call from Sarah with a plea to pick up some dinner. Wanting to avoid the after work lines, and trying to eat healthy before the holidays, Bob goes to his favorite sandwich chain’s WAP site and places his order right from his phone. He’s pretty sure Sarah likes Banana Peppers.

Its Saturday morning and the family is up early.

·Bob and Zac decide its time for a little video gaming. They fire up the console and a welcome reminder tells them they have earned enough loyalty points to download a free, new adventure for their favorite game – Life is good!

·Sarah still needs to do her grocery shopping. She goes to her iKan unit in the kitchen and reviews her personalized, recommended shopping list based on purchase history. She presses the Buy Now button to have her groceries delivered. Check one chore off the list!

·Bob decides to go to the local electronics store. He’s shopping for a Tablet to go with his new digital camera. When he comes to the aisle the screen on his cart instantly changes with a list of Tablet suggestions personalized based on his previous purchases. The loyalty card in his wallet is embedded with an RFID tag, so he’s greeted by a sales associate ready to answer questions. The sales associate uses the screen on his chart to pull up the chain’s custom social networking site so Bob can check out consumer reviews.

·Sarah decides its time to do a little holiday shopping for herself. With Zac in tow, she heads out to her local department store. In the dressing room she uses the virtual shopping assistant to see what her outfit would look like with different color matches. She goes with Fuchsia on Black.

Sunday night, Bob gets a text from his boss

·Bob still can’t believe his boss is making him travel last minute! He’s racing to catch the flight and instead of stopping at a kiosk to print his boarding pass, he simply shows the QR code on his phone at security. This leaves him enough time to go to the self-service kiosk at the gate and download a movie for the flight to his laptop in under a minute.

·Sarah, missing Bob, thumbs through an Esquire Magazine for gift ideas for Bob. She comes across a Ralph Lauren Ad for a Cashmere Sweater and special offer. She scans the QR code on the page with her cell phone to get more details before she decides to make the purchase.

•Zac, missing daddy, grabs a photo from The Target Shutterfly site and posts it to Daddy’s Facebook page


These are just a few of the touch points that marketers can use to drive incremental sales with Bob, Sarah, and Zac. Technology makes their shopping experience more intuitive, personalized, convenient, which drives a stronger value proposition overall for shoppers.

As demonstrated by this family, technology has dramatically accelerated the sophistication and variety of shopper touch points. This will become more pervasive over the next 5-10 years. Availability and adoption will increase and scale will drive implementation costs down. Shoppers will have access to products and services anytime and anywhere.

Axe, Eat Your Heart Out

Because nothing will get the girls knocking down the door to jump your bones like the scent of freshly flame-broiled beef.

Burger King has released its own fragrance: Flame. For when you want that just-got-off-the-night-shift fast food employee smell. Irresistible.

Of course, this works as a formidable PR stunt. But will anyone buy it in its undoubtedly short lived life?