Shopper Culture

Experience vs. Ease - Rockies misstep

The recent debacle of World Series ticket sales in Denver raises an interesting question.  While the Internet, in all its glory, is quite fabulous, are there some real world experiences that consumers don't want replaced?  Aside from the fact that online-only ticket sales opened up the ticket market to the entire world resulting in many many Denverites getting shut out of the game, it also robbed local diehards of a time honored tradition, waiting in line. 

Camping out in front of ballparks or music venues to get tickets to the big game or big show is a shopping experience. While many enjoy the ease of e-tail, there are many that cherish the real world experience of shopping.  They go to malls on Black Friday, hit after Christmas sales at Macy's, etc. Despite the crowds and mayhem, they go.  Similar types enjoy the badge of honor that a fan gets to wear when they say "I slept on the sidewalk for 3 days waiting to get tickets". 

Badges aside, ticket window sales also ensure that locals get an exclusive opportunity to go to the game for face-value. It is after all the local fans that have been filling seats and buying hot dogs and beer all season to support the team both financially and emotionally.

Its not exactly clear what the Rockies management was thinking... as it turns out online sales certainly didn't end up being easier for the team. More importantly, they robbed their fanbase of a brand experience.  As we think about how we create brand experiences, it is important to balance new and innovative ideas with experiences consumers have grown to expect and love.

Sony vending and airport convenience

This is neat.  As seen at Dallas Fort Worth airport.

It is one of a series of vending machines that Sony has been testing (since 2006) that brings the different parts of it's organisation together in retail. Operating under the name "Sony Access" the vending machines showcase and sell multiple formats of Sony recordable media, batteries, headphones, Walkman MP3 players and CD players, Sony digital cameras, Sony Pictures DVDs and UMD videos, Sony Music CDs, Vaio PC accessories and PlayStation games and PSP players.

The vending machines are placed well. This machine pictured was in a high traffic area in the airport and very visable and there is no cannibalization from other Sony channels (at least not in Dallas airport).

While I was sitting there many people walking by stopped to have a look.  It is an interesting concept, attractive concept and clearly great at raising awareness of, and generating interest in, the brand and its offerings - but I didn't see anyone buy anything.

This got me wondering. Given the high end nature of some of the products available, would shoppers want to see and touch the product before they buy?  Will consumers see vending of such products in a similar light as the Internet where holding the product before purchase is less important?  Does this just bring another level of convenience to a captive audience with time to kill?  Or appeal only to a specific, confident segment (likely to be in an airport)? Does the brand just accept the trade off between brand awareness and actual sales?

And on the theme of convenience, just around the corner was a neat consumer service. Here you can rent a laptop by the hour.  Just in case you have forgotten yours!  It is part of a charging station for phones, PDAs and laptops. So I guess you could charge your machine, rent another, work on that important document, then port it over to your machine.  You can also print out what you create.  Only thing is, surely if you have your own laptop you can use it while it is charging - or is that just a mac thing?  Again, it wasn't doing brisk business and all the available laptops were in the machine.

Just need to find out how the Sony Access concept is performing.

Talking Trash

There are a lot of constants in QSR.  The stainless steel counters with registers.  The overhead menus.  The uncomfortable chairs. 

And of course, the bulky rectangular trash cans with the single swinging door that requires a certain finesse to get your cup and wrapper to fall just so.  At their worst you could call them residents of the Design Hall of Shame; at their best they are occasionally annoying.

These cans almost always say THANK YOU.  But when I was in a Miami Airport Burger King recently this one stuck out.  In the least likely of places there was a bit of trashy poetry.  A knowing gesture by some insider (Crispin Porter Bogusky perhaps?) to the tiny tray-and-trash struggle many of us have endured to get our wrapper where it belongs.

What other forgotten corners of the retail environment are a little rough around the edges, in need of a bit of humor or at least acknowledgment of the friction they cause?   At a minimum this trash talk left me walking out the door with a small but significant smile on my face.

Banks as stores

Walking along East 49th Street in New York these days you come across a fairly new retail concept from ING Direct Bank. A hybrid bank branch, coffee shop, meeting place.

According to the guys in this store, the bank now has 5 such outlets that combine a coffee shop within the bank environment.

While that concept is nothing new (Abbey in the UK has had Costa Coffee shops in it’s branches for sometime) it struck us as interesting for two reasons:

1) Because it is from a direct banking brand, which by previous definitions meant not having a retail presence.

2) For the staff and the environment.  The staff call themselves bankaristas, and they were what you would expect from a high end coffee shop.  Not necessarily what you would expect from a bank.  They can sell you a latte and a loan, a shot of espresso and a savings account. They were bright, energetic, clearly having fun and very engaging. 

From a link at the American Library Association (ALA), we found a post and overview of a similar store near their headquarters in Chicago.  In the Chicago store you can find:

- Full coffee/espresso drink menu, a decent variety of pastries, prepackaged sandwiches, and juices, all at low prices
- Staff equally trained in pulling espresso and helping you with your on-line banking
- A seminar room that’s free for public use (by reservation) when not occupied by the occasional ING presentation
- Free wireless
- 10 terminals
- Free newspapers and financial magazines for use on site
- 6 flat-screen TVs (all on CNN, all muted)
- Branded merchandise (duffel bags, computer bags, portfolios, travel mugs, etc.) and a few financial tools (books, mechanical savings bank for kids) for sale
- Strong return visit incentive: buy four coffee drinks and the fifth is free

One of the points the ALA makes is that the store could be mistaken for a library (and we're big fans of library's here at Integer)

The guys in NY we spoke to let on that their store is doing very well in attracting new deposits and bank business was brisk.  You could see why.  It was inviting, welcoming and useful from a shopper point of view.  If I lived in NY and were I to be shopping around for a savings account I’d have opened one there and then. I will also be telling everyone about it simply because it is cool.

In addition to the space as a coffee shop, meeting place, bank, they were also retailing ING branded merchandise (much of it linked to their F1 sponsorship).  This was discretely merchandised and a nice additional use of the retail space. 

They’re also using promotions to good effect  As well as the five for four given in the Chicago store, when you make a deposit into your savings account you receive a free brew of your choice.  Great use of incentives to keep you coming back regularly and maintaining good financial habits. And the place was buzzing. 

We thought it was a nice disruption in the category that provides real value to customers and shoppers alike in the urban environment.

What will the next such innovation in the category be? 

Will we see more embracing of cross-over retail environments from this category? 

Who will be first to really capitalize on the retail footprint of a bank network and converge the offering with something of equal or greater value to shoppers? Or apply other retail principles?

And do you see this going on anywhere else in the world?

 

P&G going back to its roots...Kind of

A recent NY Times articled feature P&G's latest branded entertainment efforts with Crescent Heights and Tide. Living solely online, the show will consist of 3 minute episodes about a recent college graduate, Ashley, who moves to Los Angeles from Wisconsin to start a career in public relations, and her emerging circle of friends and romantic interests. While product will be integrated to a degree, the larger connection as P&G sees it is with people and their clothes.

"We want to speak to people about more than just laundry,” said Kevin Crociata, Tide’s associate marketing director. “We provide benefits to the fabrics she wears on daily basis. They have much more meaning."

Tide media (TV spots, print ads, etc...) will be tagged with a drive to the online property. While many branded online TV efforts have failed of late, ie Bud TV, it will be interesting to see if P&G can reconnect with its Soap Opera roots in a new way with new consumers.

Impulse Shopping

We marketers love the impulse buyer, but the feeling isn't always mutual. In most categories, retailers and manufacturers create point-of-purchase advertising that encourages the shopper to buy something that wasn't on their mind or on their list when they entered the store. Many Americans are happy with this, but many others are not, but oblige anyway. So if you are in a category that relies on impulse purchase it would be important to understand the distinction between shoppers for whom such purchases are guilty pleasures and those who just feel guilty.

Certain types of retailers will see more impulse buyers than others. Things like clothing, toys and sports stores are more likely to see things bought on impulse as a guilty pleasure. So the cues that are given to shoppers need to help make them feel OK about buying on impulse.

In most categories, especially low-cost items such as a bar of chocolate, is often easily justified at the checkout. Those who often buy on impulse against their better judgment may resent retail advertising and store communication that encourages them to buy.

According to some Gfk Roper research from June 2006, sales are a good way to assuage those shoppers who feel guilty about buying on impulse. Everyone loves a bargain. But advertising (or most likely product placement to maximise unplanned purchases) that persuades people to buy things they don't need or can't afford also evokes some of the most negative feelings people have about advertising. So the need to address consumers' mixed feelings is critical.

Observing shoppers

Interesting piece that is being reported about an artists' cooperative whose leader has been sentenced to probation because they built an apartment in a shopping mall as part of a project. (Courtesy of AP)

- The 7 artists made a 750 square apartment in the parking garage and lived in it at three weeks at a time
- They used a non descript utility door to hide it from the outside world.
- It was fully furnished inside but had no running water - they used the facilities in the mall

It was built...

"...out of a compassion to understand the mall more and life as a shopper."

The project was inspired by the advertising for the mall as it was being built during the Christmas season of 2003 and 2004. Radio ads for the Providence Place Mall...

"....featured an enthusiastic female voice talking about how great it would be if you (we) could live at the mall."

According to Peter Townsend's blog 'Apartment at the Mall'

"The central theme of the ads was that the mall not only provided a rich shopping experience, but also had all the things that one would need to survive and lead a healthy life. This, along with a wide variety of theoretical musings about my relationship to the mall - as a citizen and public artists - provided the final catalyst for making the apartment."

The artists plan to offer up some observations and share some experiences in the future about their time at the mall. Which should be interesting as the artist states:

"The mall made me think very carefully about what we buy."

Should be interesting.

NBC embracing digital on multiple fronts

In recent months it has become clear that large traditional media companies are embracing digital in new and creative ways.

NBC, for example, has popped up a couple times in the press, or we've observed through regular viewing, as taking advantage of new ways to engage young audiences.

This Mediapost story covers how NBC is using Mediaport Kiosks, an ATM style machine
that allows users to download music, to feature content around their news and late night line ups. Mediaport allows customers to create custom compilations which can be burned to CDs or downloaded to various digital devices.

 

“The partnership is an ideal way for us to reach digital-savvy 18- to-28-year-olds," said Frank Radice, an executive with the NBC Agency. "Media kiosks have a promising future and present an exciting new channel for us to reach and influence these target groups."

Further demonstrating their commitment to things digital, during the premieres of their Monday line up (Chuck, Heroes and Journeyman), they encouraged viewers to go online and chat live with the shows producers, directors, etc… Co-media usage, which used to be feared in TVLand as it implied a less engaged audience, is now being capitalized on to provide a richer brand experience to viewers.

Add in their use of Twitter to promote their new series Chuck , and it is clear that rather than viewing the digital world as a threat to their viewing audience, they are using these new channels to better distribute their brands and engage audiences.
 

Was your Wal-Mart clean today?

Months ago I was at a Wal-Mart outside of Des Moines and noticed that upon checkout, the credit card payment screen asked me "Was your store clean today?" Not sure what to make of it, but since that transaction I haven't seen the retailer use the checkout terminal for self-reported consumer opinions.