Tag: retail

How Macy’s Is Making Personalized Shopping Convenient Across Platforms

Posted on by Richard Yao

With the rise of ecommerce, brick-and-mortar retailers are facing increasing challenges from the digital stores. But national chain store Macy’s is staying ahead of the market with two power moves that make shopping more personalized and convenient for its customers across platforms.

The first step it took was embracing beacon technology. Macy’s announced that it is expanding the use of Shopkick-powered iBeacons to all of its stores nationwide over the next 2 months, just in time for the upcoming holiday shopping season. When completed, it will be the largest beacon installation in retail history, and provide Macy’s customers with highly personalized, interactive retail experiences.

Furthermore, the retail mainstay announced plans to offer same-day delivery service later this fall, effectively eliminating one key advantage of its digital retail competitors. Online shoppers in eight selected markets would soon have a consistent and convenient cross-platform shopping experience, whether on the web stores or mobile apps of Macy’s and its upscale subsidiary Bloomingdale’s.

As we pointed out in our recent POV on multi-platform shopping, successful retailers integrate points of sale to create a consistent customer experience, which is exactly what Macy’s is trying to achieve here. By embracing the beacon technology and on-demand economy, the 156-year-old retailer shows its strength in adapting to the changing market.

Amazon Expands Same-Day Delivery to Six More Cities

Posted on by Lab Team

After initially launching in L.A., Phoenix, San Francisco, and Seattle, Amazon is now expanding its same-day delivery program to six more cities, New York City included. For an additional charge of $5.99, Amazon Prime customers can opt to have their new purchases delivered to them before the end of day, provided the orders are made before noon. If it succeeds in the long-term, the digital retail giant is set to eliminate one of the few advantages physical retail stores still have over Amazon.

Amazon Introduces Dedicated Web-store For 3D Printed Products

Posted on by Lab Team

As the need for customizable goods continue to rise, 3D printing is ascending from a niche novelty to one of the hottest trends in tech right now. Now digital retail giant Amazon is hopping in on the hype and introducing a new web store portal specifically dedicated to 3D printed goods. By partnering with a few suppliers including Mixee, Scupteo and 3DLT, Amazon is set to make 3D printed items easily accessible and commercially viable. The market trend in online retail has seen a growing endorsement of direct production and selling, especially suitable for one-offs and small orders, which truly puts each individual customer’s need front and center. And that’s an edge that mass-produced retailers will never have.

HBC Stores To Deploy In-Store Beacon Technology

Posted on by Lab Team

Beacon technology is getting another seal of approval from the retail industry. Department store chains Lord & Taylor and Hudson’s Bay (both are owned by HBC) are rolling out in-store beacon marketing platforms, powered by Swirl, in over 130 retail storefronts across North America to deliver branded content and personalized offers to consumers’ smartphones while they shop. An ambitious application of beacon marketing in the retail industry, this marks the first time retail players test the technology. Pending customers’ feedback, the micro-location tech is ready to take the retail business by storm. Similar efforts would be expected in other retail stores soon, if offering a better, more integrated shopping experience is of their concern.

By The Numbers: Big Retail Data

Posted on by Lab Team

Arguably the most established commercial application of big data is the way retailers have been tracking and building their consumer database. Whether through building consumer profiles, analyzing purchase records, or even tracking in-store movements, data can reveal unexpected insights:

  • With systems in place to analyze unstructured data, retailers can now experience an uplift of 18 to 22% by doing simple behavioral profiling based on clickstreams.

This statistic, reported on retailcustomerexperience.com by Tushar Montaño and Monica Pal, highlights a big reason why retailers are jumping on the big data train.

Scouring through the consumer data for competitive advantage has become somewhat a standard practice among big retailers. Retailers like Zappos and Amazon are now also using personal data to develop customer relationships that could lead to brand loyalty. And if a simple, clickstream-based behavioral profiling could bring an increase of around 20% in purchases, imagine what the newer technology, such as measuring window conversion rates to measure storefront displays and connecting outdoor ad exposure to store visit through the WiFi-based platform, could lead to.

  • In 2010, just 1.7% of small businesses were using business software; by last year, 9.2% had adopted such tools.

Reported in New York Times by Ray Boggs, the small-business market analyst at IDC cited easier-to-use products and lower prices as prime drivers of the growth.

The sharp increase of small business embracing intelligence databases nicely dovetails with the trend within big retail chains to track customer purchases with memberships and teaming up with credit card companies. While small business might not always have the recourses to handle the same amount of data those bigger retailers have, nevertheless they could leverage the limited but crucial data they could manage into building a rewarding, intimate relationship with their customers.

The followings are some of the key findings from Inmar 2014 Coupon Trends Report:

  • Manufacturer digital offers in market are up 250%
  • The number of digitally connected loyalty shoppers is up 40%
  • Growth in digital coupon redemptions is up 141%, with over 66mm redeemed

While retailers have gotten fairly accustomed to managing the information they put out on traditional media sources, most of they are still trying to make sense of the new digital and mobile media. It is important to note that these fast growing new media offers the retailers far better channels for data acquisition, whose potential has yet to be fully explored. But with mobile-influenced offline retail sales expected to reach $700 billion by 2016, according to Deloitte, figuring out how to fully engage the online and mobile customers becomes increasingly crucial.

Kate Spade Brings Window Shopping Into The Future

Posted on by Lab Team

We all know window shopping is usually the first step to purchase so why not enable checkouts from the sidewalk? Kate Spade & eBay have installed interactive kiosks that allow you to purchase items, with different products featured in the window display. The products are also delivered in an hour so it has the same quick turnaround as in-store. While it’s buzzworthy during store hours, it should provide utility after closing.

Mondelez Brings Personalized Recommendations In-Store

Posted on by Lab Team

Amazon recommendations are a huge driver of purchase so why not bring that into the physical retail? That’s what Mondelez is planning for 2015, using Kinect technology to identify shoppers based on facial features and then displaying personalized messages in-store. While this technology exists today, brands need to be very wary of how they leverage that data given the privacy implications.  

iBeacons Solve The Microlocation Problem

Posted on by Lab Team

Location-based services have been in existence for quite some time, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for some serious improvements. If you want to share your location today, you can use GPS and wifi which work to a point, but certainly have their drawbacks. Just think about that time you stood paralyzed on the corner trying to decipher that blue dot on Apple maps before turning left or right. Well, a new feature rolling out in iOS 7 appears to solve that problem, and a few others.

Named iBeacon, Apple’s new feature will make use of Bluetooth Low Energy to send data to phones over short distances, approximately 10-50 ft in range. Using low cost energy emitters from companies like Estimote, companies will be able to deliver contextual data to phones within apps integrating iBeacon’s SDK. The result has many use cases, but the most groundbreaking being indoor mapping, which has been a tough nut to crack for retailers worldwide. Because of its improved location data, retailers will be able to identify where a shopper is, down to the aisle to guide them through the store. Beyond navigation, retailers will also be able to deliver hypertargeted offers and messaging. For instance, if a retailers sees that a shopper has been near the deli aisle too long, why not give them an offer for condiments. Take the big data and run with it. Other use cases range from mobile payments to more precise social check-ins.

Recent buzz around iBeacon has also pointed out its potential to supplant NFC and QR codes which have been used to forge a physical/digital connection albeit with less market penetration and greater cost. That said, tech like NFC will still have it’s unique capabilities as it provides connectivity at the product level, something that cannot be said from BLE.

Despite all of the tremendous benefits of iBeacons, privacy concerns cannot be overlooked which may explain why Apple has been conspicuously quiet about this feature in the iOS 7 announcements.  The data accessible through this rollout would give developers a tremendous amount of data, like precisely how long you spent in the bathroom at JC Penney.  As always, it is less about the data and more about how you use it, so let’s hope that marketers and app developers are smart about how they communicate this information with their users.