Shopper Culture

Augmented Reality (AR) at Retail

One of the newer digital technologies generating buzz right now is Augmented Reality, or AR. What exactly is it? AR is the technique of overlaying graphics on a real-world image so the graphics enhance and recontextualize the scene. Most of the techniques today are generated using a computer's webcam. Users point out a "target" -- a black-and-white image that the AR application uses to determine the scene geometry. Users can view it coming to life on a computer screen by holding it in front of the camera or shooting it with a mobile device. How can this virtual technology be successful for retail? There are successful AR companies bringing their technology to retail consumers in several different locations: at home, on the go (mobile), and at retail.

Let's face it -- online stores are limited when trying to show how their products fit on consumers. One way this has worked with eRetail is Ray Ban's Virtual Mirror. This use of AR allows consumers to virtually try on and sample eyewear while sitting at their desks. French company FittingBox created a technology FIT3D that uses a person's eyes, nose, and ears as natural AR-tracking markers to figure out exactly where the sunglasses "appear" on someone's face. Imagine what this fitting technology can do for retailers or even hair care products. 

Speaking of clothing retailers, another great example is how Zagura's Social Shopper app combines AR with motion capture. While it has some limitations (the user is required to print markers for it to work accurately) that might hinder its widespread use, it's nevertheless a very interesting and useful concept. The company hopes to license the technology to online retailers.

When Design is Ubiquitous

Getalogo.com will make you a logo for $249. Adobe Elements is $79. Pixlr.com is free. What happens when design tools and designers are so inexpensive and abundant that good design becomes common?

You end up with a shelf of $2 energy drinks that looks like this:

Good design used to be purview of the few, and was therefore a competitive advantage. In some categories, that's still true (e.g., Method detergent). But once good design is ubiquitous, what happens to design-oriented companies? Will Oxo and Alessi and Method and Target need to develop new points of difference?

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• The Checkout: A collaboration between The Integer Group® and M/A/R/C® Research on shopper marketing trends. Each month we field a national omnibus survey in which we ask consumers about their shopping attitudes, behaviors as well as their economic outlook.
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• Content Highlights: From time to time we aggregate the best of recent posts to show a snapshot of recent topics we've written about.

 

Sustainability meets Lost-n-Found, that's Glove Love

UK based non-profit, Green Thing, capitalizes on a few consumer insights with their current fund raising effort Glove Love.  Glove Love, if you haven't heard or read, is an effort by which people donate lonely single gloves (whose partner gloves have been lost) to Green Thing. Green Thing then "lovingly washes" each glove and pairs it with a new mate. These newly paired gloves are then sold for £5 GBP ($7.90 USD). Simple, fun, interesting.

First off, as a sustainability-based non-profit trying to "inspire people to lead a greener life", they definitely take a new approach to the "reuse" portion of recycle, reduce, reuse. And, they do so in a novel way, which creates an engaging story for audiences. This story is supported on the web with social media (facebook and twitter) as well as some great videos on youtube.

(yes, that was Emma Thompson doing the voice over)

Secondly, this appeals to another consumer desire, the desire for truly unique products with their own story. To facilitate this, Glove Love actually asks people to name the gloves they donate as well as describe where exactly the lonely single was saved. That way, each pair has a story of their own. Each pair is truly one-of-a-kind.

While Green Thing certainly will not make millions off this idea, it’s a great program to gain awareness for their cause. By providing one-of-a-kind items with individual stories, they offer shoppers great WOM content to share with their circles of influence.

How many times might each Glove Love owner tell the story of their mismatched gloves? 5, 10, 20 times? If only big brands thought about story-telling this way. How do they, beyond their brand history or product benefits, create stories that their users would want to share with their friends? What might those stories be?

Socializing CRM

It's difficult to have a one-way conversation. Yet, for many years, that's what marketers have been doing with customer relationship marketing (CRM). When consumers filled out a form, swiped cards, or bought online, another nugget of data was used to deliver relevant content to entice a future purchase with that brand. Recent shifts in audience behavior have arisen that are making this form of customer relationship management increasingly ineffective and obsolete. 

The digital world is evolving beyond content publishing and user discovery into a genuine peer-to-peer looking glass to view real-world, two-way conversations. While social media didn't invent this notion, it did organize and amplify it in a way that established opportunity for collaborative knowledge and two-way, socialized customer relationships. Click here to see how Virgin Airlines and Starbucks are using socialized customer relationship marketing. 

The Changing World of Shopping Behavior

The Integer Group's Craig Elston and M/A/R/C Research's Randy Wahl will be presenting The Changing World of Shopping Behavior at the In-Store Marketing Expo, today, October 8, at Navy Pier in Chicago. They will be discussing research findings of how shopping habits have changed over the last several years, and what those changes mean for manufacturers and retailers. Click here to download the presentation, and visit The Checkout under the Our Thinking section for more on The Integer Group and M/A/R/C Research studies. 

Grocery Store Makes You Walk The Aisle

Stew Leonard's took a page from the Ikea playbook and designed each store as one long, snaking aisle.

Beyond that, it's hard to describe how it's organized. Yes, the fish counter is contained, and the cleaning products are all at the end. But A.1 and sea salt are shelved next to steaks. Ketchup and mustard are stacked between hot dogs and paper plates. And flowers face orange juice.

The occasion-based merchandising (as opposed to category-based) is part of what makes it work. Another factor is the sense of discovery you have wandering the aisle; there's something interesting around each bend.

The store even provides entertainment and refreshments along the way: animatronic farm animals kids can play with, flat screens showing live feeds of their own dairy cows, and generous sampling stations.

As at Ikea, there's one shortcut about half-way through that takes you to the registers.

Is it working? Called the "Disneyland of Dairy Stores", they have a loyal following, a strong brand, a massive private label offering, and sales of over $300MM in their four New England stores.

The entire concept might be hard to replicate at scale, but what could other retailers borrow from them? The snaking layout? The games along the way? The occasion-based merchandising?

Retail Realities Sometimes Fail

While the Fail Blog isn't what many may call credible research, it does point out some very interesting and often sad truths about human behavior. Its a glimpse into the everyday reality of how things fall through the cracks, or sometimes worse.

It was funny to see retail make it onto this extensive list of the world's Fails. The reality highlighted here makes me think of that old saying about "the best laid plans of mice and men".  While our jobs are to create strategic in-store approaches and creative shopper solutions for some of the world's best brands, the reality of the retail industry is sometimes sobering...that reality is a little thing called compliance.

As an industry, the challenge we constantly face is how to balance the infinite creative opportunities to reach shoppers with the executional realities of the in-store environment.  We believe we can't let it stifle us, drag us down into "playing it safe" all the time,  but we also must maintain a certain integrity about the work we produce and how to ensure it gets executed. Its a great challenge everyday... how do you tackle it?

Private Label Gets Personal

The rise of private-label brands has presented difficult territory for branded consumer goods companies and their retail distribution partners for quite some time. What was once a relatively stable alliance has experienced a rather profound shift in Western Europe and, for the foreseeable future, it’s every brand for itself. 

Branded consumer goods and private label have traditionally coexisted by way of segmenting the consumer population on perceptions of value. Those consumers who correlate value exclusively with price have been the rightful territory of private-label brands, whereas those consumers who use additional factors such as “performance” and “experience” have tended to lean toward branded goods.

Enter the discounters, soft carrying some branded goods (LIDL) and hard being strictly private-label (ALDI). The meteoric rise of the channel undoubtedly impacted traditional grocery formats with the mass exodus of the aforementioned price purists. 

This was likely a contributing factor in mainstream private-label brands crossing over into the space traditionally occupied by branded products.  Consider that Tesco, the world’s third largest grocery retailer, currently uses a four-tier private-label strategy (Tesco's Discount, Tesco’s Value, Tesco’s Premium, and Tesco’s Finest), creating an environment in which consumers actually pay more for private-label products than some branded products cost.

Spark 7, Turning Shoppers Into Buyers

At Spark 7, 'Turning Shoppers into Buyers', Craig Elston from the Integer Group U.S.A. will present leading thinking from the US market on this new and exciting area. 

Shopper marketing is a new discipline in the Irish marketplace and needs to be viewed through the eyes of both the medium (retail environments) and the audience (the shopper). There is a science to shopper marketing, which is designed to help us to deliver optimal messages in optimal formats to those in the optimal shopping frame of mind. To help us sell. 

The event will be held in Dublin, Ireland on October 21, please stop by and say hello if you are in attendance.

Click here for more information or to register for your place at Spark 7.