The endless aisle. The outdoor gear and apparel retailer Moosejaw Mountaineer has 11 retail stores in the U.S., with 80% of sales (70% of in-store) coming from online and mobile commerce . Store associates use iPod touch and mini-iPads to check competitive prices and extend a price match. If a store does not carry what a shopper is looking for, store associates order the item online if it is in the warehouse and ship it to the customer for free.
TD Bank is innovating with Goggle+ pages to create social media videos and content that are hyper-local.
Says TD CMO Vinoo Vija: “Our ultimate goal is for more consumers to walk into our stores by giving them content that makes the store much more accessible.” Vija, who has not created local Facebook pages, expects search rankings to rise.
(via TD Bank Invests in Google Content | Digital - Advertising Age)
.. diffusion of mobile retailing is moving rapidly beyond the early adopter phase. A recent study conducted by the Centre for the Study of Commercial Activities (2012) on the mobile shopping behavior of 18 to 25 year old university students found that 91 percent of respondents owned a smartphone. One-in-three said they had downloaded a shopping-specific app, and the majority of respondents said they actively searched new apps weekly
Via Elizabeth Evans, Ryerson University on Building a Smarter Planet
See how magic hangers display ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ as well as clothes. (1:30 in video)
— Jill Puleri, IBM Global Retail Leader, How to attract the next big shopper: the millennial
While one-quarter of the visits to e-commerce sites occur on mobile devices, only around 15 percent of purchases do, according to data from I.B.M. According to Google, 85 percent of online shoppers start searching on one device — most often a mobile phone — and make a purchase on another.
At eBay, one-third of the purchases involve mobile devices at some point, even if the final purchase is made on a computer. Once shoppers log in on a device, they do not need to log in again. Their information, like shipping and credit card details and saved items, syncs across all their devices. If an eBay shopper is interested in a certain handbag, and saves that search on a computer, eBay will send alerts to her cellphone when a new handbag arrives or an auction is about to end.
Deck the Halls: Gifts Go ‘Home’ for the Holidays. In its latest holiday forecast, IBM predicts shoppers will be decking the halls this holiday season, leading to a jump of nearly 7 percent in home furnishings sales during November and December. (via CNBC)
Woodland talked about how he and a colleague began thinking about codes for supermarket products in the late 1940s after hearing grocery store operators complain about high labor costs associated with manual price changes.
His inspiration? Morse code.
“Morse code had been used in flashes of light and in flashes of sound,”Woodland said. “I got the bright idea of putting it on paper so that it could be scanned by a computer.”
How a social supply chain works, explained by business leaders from an innovative food retailer: at every point of the food ecosystem people collaborate by supplying data — growers, processors, retailers, and customers too. (IBM, Fairway Market Build Smarter Food Network )
“Last year we saw consumers waiting until after Thanksgiving dinner to start shopping. Now they’re shopping all day long. Your iPhone is now your newest utensil at the dinner table; sad, but true.”
Some leading retailers in UK are offering wi-fi. Others are considering it. Of course, wi-fi may make it easier for customers to compare prices and order from competition, but the wi-fi connection allows the retailer to offer promotions and personalized information in exchange for registration. Check out the comments at the end of the article for a lively discussion on pros and cons, from readers.
