Category Archives: retail

Two social media tools for retailers: local buzzing with enterprise control.

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We often talk about social media, buzz marketing and online reputation. Big corporations can find it quite difficult to control and “direct” all the related online communication, especially when this is done at local level – agents, retailers, franchises. But now there are platforms that can help corporations achieve great results with just a couple of clicks.

Yesterday I stumbled upon an interesting Tweet by Mashable, regarding a new startup, Hearsay, whose product – Hearsay Social- is a social media management platform, that gives companies with a national presence and local agents or franchises the ability to manage all of their social media in one place. Hearsay calls organizations that fit this mold “corporate/local.” Hersay Social is a web-based software that a corporation and its local branches can use to coordinate their social media efforts. The dashboard gives local agents or franchises the ability to manage their own local Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. It also also gives corporations the ability to monitor local engagement. Not only can they access detailed analytics for all of their agents, they can also catch when they step out of line. Hearsay clients list includes State Farms whose case study is availaible online.  Here’s an interesting video about the product features.

Another software that can help companies achieve the same result: Expion. Expion provides Social Media Management Software that enables large Enterprises to publish and aggregate social media conversations that can scale to hundreds of local based Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and YouTube channels, etc. This software allows maximum employee social reach within a company’s defined social guardrails, allows for employees across all your locations or departments to deliver coordinated and consistent brand appropriate messaging. At the same time Expion’s unified database aggregates and tracks all employee and customer social interactions. This centralized intelligence will profile customers, identify advocates and critics, track behaviors and create best employee practices, while measuring effectiveness of messaging for continued optimization. Expion is already used by Coldwell Banker Advantage, Applebees’s Restaurants and Mark’s among the many

Green Marketing 3.0 not that successful case history: Pepsi Raw

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In a previous post we talked about Green Marketing 3.0. Here is a very intersting story about a not that successful case.

In 2007, Pepsi launched a great cola called Pepsi Raw in the UK: a fantastic packaging and a great taste,containing no artificial preservatives, colours, flavourings or sweeteners. By replacing corn syrup with cane sugar, Pepsi managed to reduce the calorie content of a 300ml bottle from around 120 calories to around 90 calories. It all came with a great on-line and off-line marketing campaign and in 2009 Pepsi Raw included a Twitter tag on cans and asked consumers to log-on to the microblogging website to share their thoughts on the soda in 140 characters or less. The last Twitter feed dates January 2010 and at that date Pepsi Raw had only 1293 followers. It was not a great success, especially the rollout to grocery, and the product had to be withdrawn from the UK market.

Sad story, but this teaches that marketing to the retail sector can be tricky for big corporations too- we only hope that Pepsi will not give up in their attempt to offer to consumers a healthier and greener cola.

Green Marketing 3.0: what is it about?

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Marketing, as you all know, is what enables product to be seen and purchased by consumers. For those who are in the retail business, marketing is a science to master in order to reach success and profit – I add: for more than a year!

Something I always read to those retailers that are entering the world of “green”, is a very interesting article about Green Marketing written by Jeff Dubin a couple of months ago. For those who are interested in reading the full version, you can find it at Jacquie Ottman’s Greenmarketing.com blog. Here a few key sentences by Jacquie: “To really succeed on a wide scale in America, green products either need to establish their superiority on conventional, non-green product features such as effectiveness or price, or make green more relevant to people’s everyday lives….

If green marketers can build the case for how their products are healthier for baby and Mommy and Daddy and Grandma and.., then the greenness of a product becomes a primary benefit rather than a secondary one and the higher hanging fruit now becomes more attainable. That’s Green Marketing 3.0.”

I do agree with that, and you?

Here's a new breed of consumers: the CITYSUMERS

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Retailers be aware of this growing segment of consumers which will become each and every day more and more important: the CITYSUMERS. According to Trendwatching.com, Citysumers are "The hundreds of millions (and growing!) of experienced and sophisticated urbanites*, from San Francisco to Shanghai to São Paulo, who are ever more demanding and more open-minded, but also more proud, more connected, more spontaneous and more try-out-prone, eagerly snapping up a whole host of new urban goods, services, experiences, campaigns and conversations".

The Trendwatching February brief describes this trend with all its social and cultural implications, together with an interesting showcase of companies whose products have been designed specifically to satisfy CITISUMERS' tastes and needs. Very interesting. (Photo courtesy of Workerman)

Does sustainability pays? Yes

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Whenever I talk with a client about sustainability, a question arises “Does sustainability pay?”. The answer is with no doubt YES! There are researches available online showing that when customers are offered a choice, they do prefer eco-friendly products and “punish” not so sustainable brands asking a much lower price. Obviously, what companies willing to invest in sustainability must understand is that a sustainable strategy goes hand in hand with a communication strategy – otherwise consumers will not perceive the added value during the purchasing process.

A recent survey conducted by the Uk consumer organisation “Which?” showed that between 74% and 96% of the people surveyed were unaware of the big names behind 10 popular ethical brands. And, once they found out, of those whose opinion changed, more had a negative reaction than a positive one. “Consumers are being misled,” said one respondent while another commented: “I feel conned.” One reason behind this negative reaction is that interviewed were worried about large companies being more concerned with profits than ethics.

What manufacturers must really understand is that consumers are willing to buy sustainable products but at the same time are going to punish any non-ethical behaviour by asking for a very reduced price. The future of retail and of sustainability lies in the ability of producers to understand this and to act accordingly.

7-Eleven embraces sustainability

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As we at ECOFFEE are always saying, sustainability in the retail business is not a trend but it is a must if you want to be sucessful in the future. And when we read that giants such as Wal-Mart, Whole Foods Market, Castorama and Tesco, are actually changing their policies and store design to follow a more sustainable business we wonder when this will happen in Italy.

Today, our attention was caught by a very interesting article on the NYTimes about 7-Eleven convenience stores in Japan where fluorescent light bulbs have been replaced by the soft glow of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, that consume half the energy and last much longer.

The 7-Eleven Japan program also includes photovoltaic panels on the store roof, and light-reflecting floor and sensors that automatically adjust the lighting.

The article also points out that this is going to be a very expensive program, being a green 7-Eleven store as much as 30 percent more expensive to build than a more traditional one. But Japanese customers are now more eco-conscious and shopping in a greener store can be more appealing to them. (Photo courtesy of Voice)

What do consumers are searching for is the old, fashionable..quality!

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Two days agoNRF 100th Annual Convention, at the NRF 100th Annual Convention in NYC, Claudio Del Vecchio has been asked whether he agreed with statements by Micheal Porter that consumers have become more savvy, demanding, and difficult to satisfy. Del Vecchio disagreed, stating firmly that customers are not more difficult to satisfy. In his role as Chairman and CEO of Brooks Brothers, Del Vecchio observed that consumers are simply much more aware.  They are no longer looking for a fast buy. They take their time, look for quality and see their purchases as investments. Consumers are just more focused on what the real value is.

The next step to better understanding their consumers, Del Vecchio explained, is integration between customer data and social media. He even went so far as to say that social media is becoming more important than having information about your customer.  When your business is being discussed on social networks, Del Vecchio said, it’s the friend of a friend that is going to grow your business. The key though, is giving your customers the tools they need to be able to sell your brand to their friends. He advised retailers to become better publishers so that their customers have what they need to become  your sales force. (Courtesy of NRF blog)

The retail business in year 2015? Just ask Nielsen!

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Every now and then, I go back to the old the reports published by company leader in the market analysis and forecast, to see whether they did a good job – and it was worth buying thCPG Nielsen Reporte report – or it was just a "storytelling" exercise. When I read the Nielsen's report about the state of CPG (consumer packaged goods) industry in 2015 I just said: "Ok, I think there's something missing.." They wrote about mass supercenters and e-commerce experiencing the most dollar share gains through 2015. Drugstores, mass merchandisers and convenience stores will witness an increase in dollar sales, but will also experience share losses. Consumers will do their shopping via smartphones and digital and social marketing will be leading a company success and so on. But one thing was really missing, and this was sustainability. Wal-Mart is one of the leader in the retail business and they are taking big steps towards sustainability, do Nielsen think that they are wrong and by 2015 this issue will not be of much importance? Comments are welcomed! (Photo source: Flickr, Mazda6 (Tor)

Chinese consumers are going green: this is going to be a great revolution

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As stated in this interesting article posted on U.S.A Today, Chinese farmers are now more sensitive to sustainibility issues, especially after fake or toxic batches of food supplies have worried Chinese consumers in recent months. It seems that even Chinese government is getting involved in fighting against food poisoning, improving supervision and making penalties thougher. Quoting the article, "Almost 70% of China's consumers feel insecure about food safety, according to a survey released recently by Insight China Magazine and the Tsinghua University Media Survey Lab."

Counting a population of more than 1.3 billion inhabitants, China is undoubtedly going to become the biggest market in the world for organic food. Food Retailers, get ready for that! (Picture courtesy of Calum McLeod, USA TODAY)

Gelati stores do not suffer from economic crisis

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'Ice cream stores do not suffer from crisis, rather they are growing and reCourtesy of savethedate.itpresent a major job opportunity, especially for young generations'. This was stated at Sigep by Ferdinando Buonocore, the president of the Comitato Nazionale per la difesa e la diffusione del gelato artigianalethe (Italian National Committee for the defense of the artisanal ice cream industry). 'In the world – he added – there are 60 000 gelati store, of which only 32 000 in Italy'.
On March 9th there will be the third Ice Cream Day at the European Parliament in Strasbourg (ANSA)