Retailers see a lucrative future in apps for tablet devices that resemble magazines.

NYTimes - Retailers Offer Apps With a Catalog Feel

Retailers like Net-a-Porter think they have found a way to give online shopping more of the feel of an outing at the mall or an hour with a catalog — by creating apps that resemble magazines for tablet computers. Just as magazine publishers are producing iPad apps that mimic print in a way they never could on ordinary Web sites, retailers are making iPad catalogs, with big, stylized photographs that users can flip through on the couch or in bed. And also like magazine publishers, they are adding rich features like video, sound and 3-D views.

Lot of news coming out of National Retail Federation (NRF) 97th Annual Convention & Expo which is taking place in New York. While there are many interesting topics to share with you all, I wanted to point out at Immersive Retailing technology that IBM showcased. According to this press release:

At NRF, IBM is demonstrating future innovations which could help retailers create unique consumer experiences. Through the use of 3-D technology, virtual worlds and some imagination, IBM is showing how retailing is moving beyond the walls of the store into the hands of consumers. For example, new "Immersive Retailing" technologies which immerse consumers into an experience are one example of how retailers could augment their strategies to attract and interact with customers in ways which build loyalty.

One of the "Immersive Retailing" demonstrations IBM shared with customers is the IBM Multi-Sensory Experience. Through the use of 3-D glasses, participants are treated to a fashion show from Europe complete with music and smells. For example, as a model walks down the runway her perfume will be noticeably in the air. Also, when she holds out the very expensive leather purse viewers will get a 3-D view of it you all will be able to smell the fine leather.

IBM treated customers to another "Immersive Retailing" demonstration called the IBM Cave. Meant to complement a multi-channel retailing experience, this demonstration brings the user into a virtual reality experience using a 3-D virtual world and stereoscopic goggles. These goggles react with the head movement of the user and create 360 degree view of a virtual reality room. IBM uses the technology as part of a scenario which has a consumer redesigning a room in his house into an entertainment room.

I am yet to see the demo or any video of these technologies but it sure looks to be immersive :). IBM has also released a white paper entitled “How immersive technology can revitalize the shopping experience”. According to the paper:

Immersive technology solutions—which stimulate people’s visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile senses to connect with shoppers on an emotional level to create unforgettable shopping experiences—can open up a whole new world of energizing shopping experiences. Combined with flexible, responsive business models, they have the potential to transform the way customers interact with your brand.

You can download the White paper from Experience Economist blog.

StorefrontBackTalk is reporting that very soon a company called StoreXperience will be the first to bring 2-D barcodes to the U.S.

Herve Pluche, president of a company called StoreXperience, said his company will be the first to bring 2-D to the U.S. and that it will debut this April at five locations in Manhattan. Asked if that rollout was definite, Pluche said that no agreement had been signed but "we do have a handshake."
He wouldn't say who the retailer was who had agreed to the five locations, but did say that it was a chain focused in either consumer electronics or cosmetics. Pluche said that he had met with 10 retailers and that all were very interested, although he wouldn't identify them.

The same article describes the usage of 2D barcodes which says:

At its most basic, a 2-D barcode uses two elements of a typical smartphone—the digital camera and a Web browser—to create a rich 2-way data exchange. The consumer might see a poster for a particular product—or a model wearing interesting clothes—and want more information. That shopper would aim her smartphone at the 2-D barcode. A small applet on the phone would interpret the barcode, launch a browser and go to a very deep link within that site.
The consumer gets instant details about what the model is wearing or what the product's specs are, along with a link to purchase the items immediately. Beyond the potential sale, the retailer or manufacturer would learn an awful lot about that consumer transaction. The very lengthy URL hidden in that 2-D barcode identifies the exact location of that consumer. Depending on the software being used, there is an excellent chance the consumer can be identified and associated with his/her purchase history. All of this from a tiny picture hidden unobtrusively in a corner of the poster.

I googled on 2D barcodes and found out that the technology has been in wide use in the East for quite some time. The 2D barcode called QR code looks something like as shown above. This code will appear on the poster or any other advertisement and contains addresses and URLs in them.

In this post I want to write about Collaborative Logistics. I had proposed a Mashup idea on this topic for which I submitted to Microsoft-BT Mashup competition early last year and I got 1st prize for the same. To borrow the definition of Collaborative Logistics from this article, Collaborative Logistics is achieved when two or more companies form partnerships, or work with existing supply chain partners (customers, suppliers and carriers) to optimize transportation operations by sharing truck capacity to cut the high costs of less-than-truckload shipments and empty back hauls. In my mashup idea, we are talking of SMB's who want to lower the operation costs. The Mashup I have proposed takes into consideration these SMB's need of lowering costs and optimizing inventory. The idea is to share unused capacity in Trucks. Trucks which are not full can communicate the available space to the Mashup Service which will then broadcast the same to Mashup service subscribers using SMS service. Similarly a Truck Owner can broadcast his unused space to subscribers through the Mashup service. The uniqueness of the idea was it targeting the Long Tail of SMB’s.

There is an excellent white paper on Collaborative Logistics by Kevin Lynch who was the CEO of Nistevo which was later acquired by Sterling Commerce. The article while introducing Collaborative Logistics explains how Shippers and Carriers benefit from the collaborative arrangement:

The key to understanding Collaborative Logistics lies in recognizing how costs are distributed in a logistics network. Both shippers and carriers focus a lot of attention on controlling costs to improve profitability. Following a traditional approach, each organization has the ability to increase the efficiencies and reduce the "individual costs" of only those business processes that the organization independently controls. However, they have no visibility over "hidden costs."

Here’s the big question: How is it possible to reduce costs that are hidden? And, here’s the sole answer: Collaborative Logistics. This new business process makes hidden costs visible, so companies can work together to reduce them.

An example of a hidden cost that all members of a logistics transaction pay, but none individually control, is asset repositioning.
• Shipper A requires goods be delivered at a certain place and time.
• Shipper B requires goods be picked up at a certain place and time.
• The carrier must decide how to optimally apply their asset to this situation.
• Shipper A and Shipper B do not understand how their interaction affects asset repositioning costs.
In other words, no single player controls asset repositioning costs. They are a hidden cost paid by all. By maintaining an isolated approach, members of a logistics transaction are limited in their ability to reduce overall costs.

In my mashup which used Web services from Microsoft (MapPoint, Virtual Earth) and BT (Web21C SDK), I have considered two scenarios, Subscriber mode and Publisher mode. So let's take an example of Subscriber mode:

- Contoso Hardware Shop is based in Washington, DC, USA. It needs to send a shipment of heavy duty Spanners to it’s customer in Philadelphia, PA.
- Contoso logs on to Collaborative Logistics Mashup Website using BT Web21C Authentication Service.
- Contoso provides start and end locations of it’s shipment. The start location is filled automatically based on Contoso’s past usage of the service.
- The Collaborative Logistics Mashup service provides a list of truck’s on a Map (using Microsoft MapPoint API or Virtual Earth SDK) which are in the vicinity (near Washington, DC) with their unused capacity. To provide the location of trucks on Map, it uses BT Web21C Location Service.
- Upon selecting a truck on the Map, an SMS (Using Web21C SMS Service) is sent to the Truck with Contoso’s Contact details for them to collaborate and take the process forward.

Reverse is also possible.

- Litware Truckers, Inc is a Transportation company based out of Philadelphia. It has a fleet of 17 trucks.
-Litware operates its trucks in the north eastern USA. Many times Litware’s trucks travel with unused capacity. These can be used by small businesses which needs to ship small packages and can’t afford full trucks.
-Litware has registered with Collaborative Logistics Mashup website. Truck Drivers can send SMS to Collaborative Logistics Mashup service which is received using Inbound SMS service. The SMS will contain the unused capacity in the truck.
-The Collaborative Logistics Mashup then sends an SMS (using SmsMessage Service) containing Litware truck details including Truck Location (using BT Web21C Location Service) to all registered subscribers. Subscribers have the capability to set their Presence (using BT Web21C Presence service) status to “No SMS” if they don’t wish to get SMS from Mashup service.
-Depending on the location and needs of subscribers, they can contact (call or chat) the Litware Truck for using unused capacity.

Recommended Reading:

Collaborative Logistics: Increasing Supply Chain Management Efficiency

Collaborative Logistics: Why collaborate?

7 immutable laws of collaborative logistics

Real-lfe retailers are setting up virtual stores on 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life. Retailers like Amercian Apparel, Sears, Circuit City are already there. With around 11 million residents as of date and about 40000 users online at any given time, Second Life provides Retailers a platfrom to engage with their customers in a unique way.

According to a recent report by Gartner titled, "Predicts 2008: How Shoppers and Technology Will Change Retail", 20% of the world's largest retailers will launch a presence in virtual worlds or online games by 2010. This they will do to study, learn and anticipate the impact of virtual worlds on the retailers' overall businesses.

Commerce is not much of a factor so far but something that will evolve over time and provide multi-channeling options for retailers.

Companies like Brookstone have opened 3D stores (outside Second Life) and are selling real mechandise customers can buy.

The virtual store replicates the look and layout of a real store. Customers can move through the aisles and browse and zoom on products using a mouse and keyboard. Detailed information is available by stopping in front of an item.

See these videos to experience navigating through the Virtual stores.

Related Articles:

Awaiting Real Sales From Virtual Shoppers

Second Life for retail chains

Second Life Lessons

Last week, eStara, the leading provider of proactive conversion solutions for enhancing online sales and support initiatives, announced the findings of a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting to determine the costs, benefits, risks and ROI affiliated with implementing eStara Click to Call technology in a retail environment. The results of the report for the retail portion of the study found:

- A three-year risk-adjusted Click to Call retailer ROI of 143 percent

- Click to Call increased online revenues by more than $2.5 million over three year period

- Retailers experienced payback in a period of between seven and 14 months

- Average conversion rate of Click to Call users was significantly higher than non-users

- Prospects using Click to Call as the primary means of communication were better informed, and asked more detailed questions in comparison to toll-free callers

- Companies that deployed Click to Call reduced their operational costs significantly through a reduction in the average volume of non- transactional calls and improvement in duration of customer calls

Click to call is a very innovative way for a Retailer to connect to its customers.

Google UK in partnership with Retail Reserarch companies, trade organisations and media titles, has created Retail Industry Google Gadgets. Among others, the partners include, Retail Bulletin, Retail Week, Comscore, Hitwise and the IAB. The Gadgets are free to use on your iGoogle Homepage and adds on as a tab to iGoogle. The iGoogle Page looks as shown below once you have added the Gadgets.



From Google UK:

Google’s partnership with prominent research companies, trade organisations and media titles brings fresh insights to help the Retail marketing community connect with British shoppers.

Google UK Retail Industry gadgets are mini-applications offering a wealth of free information to Retail professionals. Together with our partners, we propose a range of news resources, industry data indicators and inspiring rich media content. Google UK Retail Industry gadgets help you connect with your consumers and provide inspiring new ideas!

Facebook Retail, OK, that's a somewhat misleading (and populist) title for this post. Facebook is not entering Retail Space nor does it intend to (as far as I know). But Facebook provides a great platform for Retailers. Many like Wal-Mart and Target are already there engaging with the users and few have started putting up their shops on Facebook. For e.g. Zazzle is one such company which has launched an on-demand retail application on Facebook Platform.

The Zazzle Merch Store application lets Facebook users and commercial brands worldwide sell products with their own unique designs from their profiles and Facebook Pages. Each user can design their own products on Zazzle by simply uploading images, text, or designs, making them instantly available for sale in their Merch Store. Designs can be placed upon a wide variety of products including t-shirts, posters, cards, and fashion apparel. For example, users can design and sell any of the edun LIVE customizable fashion blank t-shirts that are socially conscious and ethically sourced available at Zazzle. In addition, through Zazzle's "Name Your Royalty" feature, users can name the price of their products and how much money they make through Zazzle's on-demand retail platform. There are no set-up fees and no inventory to stock. Users can also display Merch Stores they like, and even make money by listing merchandise from their favorite Zazzle artists and brands such as edun LIVE directly on their profiles.

According to HitWise Research, In August 2007, over 1,900 retailers received traffic from Facebook in UK.

Last month, over 1,900 retailers received traffic from Facebook. Our data shows the site is an increasingly important source of traffic for online retailers like Amazon, ASOS, Ebay and Play.

Facebook attracts an older (a third of its users are aged over 35) and more affluent audience than the other major social networks. Wherever consumers congregate they inevitably talk about brands, and Facebook is no exception. Companies can't have their own page on Facebook, but communities can be, and often are, created around brands.

With 52 Million users and an ever increasing user base of 200,000 users per day, every retailer should be preparing their Facebook strategy. Also, Facebook recently launched Facebook Ads, an ad system that enables people to provide trusted referrals to their friends and helps businesses to spread information through the social graph and communicate with their customers in completely new ways.

Facebook Ads includes three parts: a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with its audience; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads(TM); and an interface to gather insights into people's activity on Facebook that marketers care about. On other websites, Facebook Beacon provides a way for users to choose to share their activities with their friends on Facebook. Landmark partners are implementing the fullest set of offerings from Facebook Ads.

"We have consistently explored new ways to reach our target audience with a compelling brand experience," said Carol Kruse, vice president, global interactive marketing, The Coca-Cola Company. "With Facebook Ads, our brands can become a part of the way users communicate and interact on Facebook."

The Coca-Cola Company will feature its Sprite brand on a new Facebook Page and will invite users to add an application to their account called "Sprite Sips." People will be able to create, configure and interact with an animated Sprite Sips character. For consumers in the United States, the experience can be enhanced by entering a PIN code found under the cap of every 20 oz. bottle of Sprite to unlock special features and accessories. The Sprite Sips character provides a means for interacting with friends on Facebook. In addition, Sprite will create a new Facebook Page for Sprite Sips and will run a series of Social Ads that leverage Facebook's natural viral communications to spread the application across its user base.

I would assume we should soon see Retailers diverting some dollars from Google/Yahoo/Microsoft ads to Facebook Ads. Social Networking sites like Facebook provides a great platform for businesses to get closer to their customers, so to say, in a more social manner.

The Retail Boom in India is giving push to many different businesses, one of them being the Design Solutions Firms like Co-Design, Idiom among others. Yesterday, Economic Times carried an article on how these firms are engaged in designing Retail Spaces using emerging techniques like Interaction design.

The Rivet in Bangalore's Leela Palace Hotel is not your usual Levi's brand store. Step in and you are sure to be taken in by the 34-feet-long Heritage Wall - a visual and virtual walk through a hundred years of Levi's heritage and corresponding world history. With touch-sensor links depicting individual decades from the 1850s to the 2000s, the installation is a virtual scrapbook on Levi's past.
The Rivet is the iconic denim jeans maker's first heritage store in South-east Asia. And the man who created this installation is Rajesh Dahiya, founder of Co-Design.
Dahiya specialises in interaction design, an emerging tool that's catching the fancy of retailers these days. Simply put, it's about exploring new ways of enhancing the experience of interacting with other individuals, with products and with the environment by blending traditional design techniques, an understanding of human behaviour and modern technology.
"The user-centric nature of interaction design makes this new field important for retail development. An interaction designer has a strong understanding of the customer, the client's needs and the latest technology," says Dahiya.
Among the scores of retail designers who are sprouting across the country, Dahiya's work symbolises the change that's sweeping the Indian retail landscape. Retail design has come to mean more than wall graphics, in-store displays and signages. With availability of technology tools, designers are now helping marketers and retailers create unique experiences that connect with customers on a deeper, emotional level. Ergo, plenty of small design firms are gearing up to deal with this growing opportunity.

Just finished reading the Shop.org Summit 2007 keynote by Donna Hoffman from the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing at the University of California, Riverside. The keynote titled, “The Evolution of Customer Experience: 10 Trends You Can’t Afford to Miss,” addresses the upcoming Web 3.0 and what it means to retailers.

“If Web 2.0 was about the consumer having control, then Web 3.0 is about augmenting that control with artificial intelligence,” she said.

In her talk, she stressed the top online consumer habits and what they mean for retailers today and in the future. Hoffman suggested social networking sites, virtual worlds and other types of interactive consumer-generated media as locations to look for consumer behavior.

Hoffman further spoke,

“Social shopping sites have the potential to make online shopping much more engaging,” she said. “Consumers are spending much more time on these sites.”

Move over, search engine optimization; and get ready, social networking optimization, says Hoffman. Retailers will have to prepare for how their sites link to widgets, like eBay has done. The online retail giant lets customers shop from their MySpace pages.

I have talked about Social Networking Sites and retailers earlier also, and to that post, Nick Burcher left a link to his blog post titled, 5 Great examples of retailers using Facebook where he discusses how Retailers are using Social Networking sites like Facebook. Social Networking sites provide a great and inexpensive vehicle to create communities of loyal visitors, that is if done well.

Advertising Age is reporting how Marketers are using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace as a customer-relationship-management tool. So far, it was limited to ads on these sites but now companies are creating campaigns and sub-communities within these sites.

Facebook claims the goal of its groups is for marketers to have these kinds of continuing relationships. Marketers can use a sponsored group to communicate with consumers via discussion threads and "wall" posts. Marketers pay to promote their group through sponsored stories on news feeds, which let others know about the group. For example, Champion formed a group earlier this year and is still participating in a message board. Ms. Williamson said she believes the Facebook groups are the closest a big network has come to helping brands create long-term interaction with consumers.

But hard as it might be for marketers to stomach, the most vibrant groups tend to sprout organically. Examples are the several devoted to Nikon cameras, where owners post photos they've taken, answer each other's questions about techniques and offer tips for getting the most out of the product.

That kind of affinity and attention is not something marketers can buy, warns Chad Stoller, executive director of emerging platforms at Organic. "Groups will form if there's interest; they will not form from an ad buy," he said. So how should a marketer react when groups form around their brands? "Often the first reaction is to spend against it," Mr. Stoller said. "The first reaction should be to listen to it and figure out how to make that group better."

This is what has happened in Columbus, Ohio. A new business called Industry Standard near OSU has done just that, it has combined clothing store with recording studio, skateboard shop, art galley and created a hangout with couches, turntables and video games. The store is using RFID to interact with the shoppers.

It's a pioneer for the in-store application of radio-frequency identification, or RFID, technology, that allows customers to communicate with store employees as they shop....

With RFID, a chip inserted in a product broadcasts a radio frequency to readers that can identify it. It's the same technology used to track cargo.

In Can's spin on the technology, RFID tags are applied to clothing and can be read by sensors in the store.

That means a store employee can wave a wand over a rack of clothes and take inventory in minutes instead of days. A cashier can ring up 20 T-shirts simultaneously or learn that a customer has a stolen hat stashed in his pocket, thanks to an RFID reader under the counter.

And a customer can step into a dressing room and see images and videos of outfit suggestions appear on a computer screen -- the RFID sensors know what she's trying on.

The costs of implementing RFID technology can add up for stores: about $5,000 for readers, $200 per dressing room and 25 cents per tag.

USA Today is reporting the launch of 24-hour "window shopping" touch screen by Ralph Lauren has at its Polo Ralph Lauren store in London, allowing customers to shop without ever actually entering the store. Consumers can touch a virtual model wearing a specific outfit, then be guided through electronic touch-sensory technology to a page that adds the product to a digital shopping cart. Shoppers are contacted by e-mail or phone the next day to securely enter their payment information and arrange for shipping.