DMNews has a news article on how Direct Response Television (DRTV) marketing is seeing a growth by multichannel marketers who are using this medium in newer ways. The article reports from a new study from the Electronic Retailing Association, called The Evolving Role of Direct Response Television in Multichannel Marketing Execution.

The report shows that the DRTV industry is being reshaped by the increasing number of brand marketers in the DRTV space, the growing use of DRTV to develop and nurture customer relationships rather than merely sell individual products and the increasing use of DRTV to drive Web and retail traffic.

“This study helps to reinforce that direct response is really coming to prominence and more and more marketers — larger marketers, brand marketers, marketers looking to drive retail and looking to drive their Web traffic and sales — are going to be adopting and considering direct response,” said Peter Koeppel, president and founder of Koeppel Direct, a direct response media-buying agency in Dallas.

“It also helps to reinforce what we’ve been trying to sell to marketers — Fortune 1000 marketers — who haven’t maybe entered the space yet: that DRTV does really have value,” Koeppel added. “In today’s more fragmented media environment you have to understand different media channels and how they are going to impact on your sales and work together to build sales or build brand or drive retail.”

Well, in India, we have been seeing a growth in DRTV marketing but that has been limited to what I will call traditional range of products (fitness devices (all types of ab-shaping machines, sauna belts), electronics etc) associated with DRTV. You can read the state of Teleshopping (another name for DRTV) in India in a case study published by Icfai Center for Management Research. The case study titled "THE TELESHOPPING BUSINESS IN INDIA" does a good job explaining the DRTV Indian Scenario, it's growth in India and the challenges it faces today.

North American consumers are on their way to spend more than $525 billion in 2007 using self-checkout lanes, ticketing kiosks and other self-service machines. According to a study by IHL Consulting Group, demand for self-checkout systems and other kiosks should push the dollar value of transactions to nearly $1.3 trillion by 2011.

"We expect that expenditures made at self-service kiosks will rise by about 20 percent this year and another 18 percent in 2008," Buzek said, "adding that demand for self-checkout systems and other kiosks should push the dollar value of transactions to nearly $1.3 trillion by 2011. Consumers enjoy self-service and increasingly seek out retailers that offer the technology. Retailers and other businesses are finding that self-service kiosks can significantly increase customer loyalty, as well as customer satisfaction."

In the market study, 2007 North American Self-Service Kiosks, IHL examines the increasing use of four types of self-service kiosks where payment is accepted: self-checkout systems, ticketing kiosks, check-in kiosks, food ordering, and postal kiosks.

Check out the Net Usage Index for Retail by Akamai.

The Net Usage Index for Retail enables users to monitor the world's online retail habits 24 x 7, providing real-time insight into the trend of consumers increasing their share of spending on the Web. The Index features:

• Aggregate, real-time visitors per minute for a representative set of more than 270 global retail/e-commerce sites
• E-commerce traffic levels by continent over a 24-hour period
• Historical data on e-commerce growth and spikes by geography

[Via The ShiSh List]  

RISNews is reporting on the new IT initiatives top 5 retailers in US have started or are involved in to keep a leg up over their competitors.

The Home Depot (#2) and Kroger (#3) have both leveraged multiple technologies to enhance store operations and processes.  The Home Depot’s most recent IT initiative is a deployment of an IT lifecycle management system from Matrix42. The Empirum suite is being used across all 2,164 Home Depot retail stores globally and centralizes the management of all enterprise networked devices. The Home Depot is using Empirum to increase productivity and reduce administrative support costs. A recent customer-facing IT initiative trial'ed by The Home Depot was a digital signage campaign throughout its Canadian stores. Partnering with RAM Forest Products and MediaTile, Home Depot Canada stores created the “Create the Deck of Your Dreams” campaign which resulted in an increase in sales of deck accessories by more than 50 percent. The campaign incorporated multimedia video advertisement which gave consumers a step-by-step education on deck building.

Supermarket retailer Kroger (which just last month won RIS New’s Supermarket Achievement Award for the Shopper Experience) also is deploying both back-end and customer facing technology to maintain a competitive edge. With a best-in-class shopper experience in mind, Kroger has been among the first supermarket chains to install self-checkout and DVD rental kiosks. On its back-end, in January of this year Kroger began an implementation of a new IBM infrastructure. The infrastructure will enable Kroger to more easily, and more speedily, create new services for its customers. “With this initiative, we will be able to introduce innovative services quickly and seamlessly to improve our customers shopping experience,” says Chris Hjelm, senior vice president and CIO at Kroger.

Number five on the Top 100 list is Target. As with The Home Depot and Kroger, Target is leveraging technology to improve its back-end operations. In particular, Target recently partnered with Swisslog to create and implement a new picking and storage system for its warehouse operations. The system will be designed to minimize warehouse logistic costs while optimizing distribution processes.

A few other retailers on the Top 100 list leveraging technology include: CVS (#9), Federated Department Stores (#13), Publix (#15) and Staples (#18). In January CVS deployed a new merchandise and data management system from Soft Solutions. Federated, which officially changed it’s name to Macy’s this past spring, trialed a futuristic SocialRetailing system from IconNicholson in the Nanette Lepore department of its Manhattan Bloomingdale’s store. Publix expanded its data warehouse with Teradata and implemented BlueCube workforce management from RedPrairie. Office supplies retailer, Staples is overhauling its POS hardware and deploying nearly 8,000 new POS terminals from Fujitsu to its US, Canada and Europe stores.

This weekend I with my wife went to the newly opened More. store in my neighborhood (in Pune). More. is a new chain of stores by Aditya Birla Retail Limited. We completed our shopping in 15 minutes and had to stand in the checkout line for close to 50 minutes. More. so when the line had only 10 people in all. Clearly "More." here meant, "More. time". We were not the only one who got frustrated here, everybody else was too. People started getting jittery and then one lady went to the counter and gave the guys there a mouthful. But alas, nothing moved. Checkout counter guys continued in their own sluggish way.

The store is poorly laid out in a space of I guess 2500 - 3000 sq ft. It was quite congested, two people can hardly squeeze in between the aisles. The AC was not working (or is it in line with no ac, no frills KB's Fair Value Stores??). To make matters worse it had only two checkout counters. The store designers have overlooked the new found Indian taste of shopping in Retail store chains and did not anticipate the number of customers.

More. is "no more." for me.