The virtual store wall in a South Korea Metro Station by Tesco/Homeplus was last year big hit. Now the concept has evolved, and World’s first virtual shopping store – using the walls of Seonreung subway station in downtown Seoul – displays over 500 product, ranging from food to tissue papers.
Customers can choose the delivery time and date – for orders placed before 1 p.m delivery can be effected the same day – and delivery cost is the same as more traditional online stores.
“A major perk of this concept is that consumers don’t have to be anywhere near the virtual store to place an order. So, if you want to order replacements of a bottle of water that you have in your hand, you don’t have to stop by the subway station’s store. You just have to scan the bottle’s barcode with the Homeplus app., and then the products are delivered later to home or office.”- Quoted Sitch News
We are sure consumers in Far East markets – like Korea and Japan – welcome this kind of technology and are at their ease with mobile barcode scanning and m-payments, but what about all the other markets? Would for istance consumers in France or Spain quickly adopt this kind of purchasing behaviour? What is your opinion about this?
A couple of days ago Appolicious published an interesting article about the increasing number of mobile Apps for fast food restaurants and their being mostly not useful. Many are the apps listed, from Taco Bell to McDonald’s.
All these chains offers accurate information on the internet but extremely bare bones restaurant locator apps. In McDonalds’ defense, at least their app offers information on getting a career with McD’s, along with some nutritional information. Burger King’s lack of an app caught everybody by surprise because they have been so good with marketing their products through games via the Xbox 360 for years that you expected something that appealing on the apps side too.
Useful functionalities and entertainment are a must for nowadays apps, especially in a field – the one of Ho.Re.Ca – where interaction and service have always been a key factor to achieve a high customer satisfaction. Add that customers now are spoiled with information: they love to get informed about the brand and the goods they are going to purchase, about the environment where they are sitting, about the other customers comments and opinions about the “experience” they are going to go through.
We discussed this subject with our partners, a team of skilled UX designers, in order to create a useful, entertaining and carefully designed iPhone/iPad app for DESITA’s Retail and Ho.Re.Ca customers, delivering not only a great user experience but also the sustainability and responsibility messages which are ECOFFEE’s own. Brainstorming led to the first draft of what is set to become the ECOFFEE mobile experience, the perfect blend among social marketing, in-store advertising and a great user experience to create a stronger bond among the brand, the consumer and the brand’ sustainability and responsibility strategies. Please inquire us directly for further information silvia@ecoffee.it
Yesterday I was reading a post concerning Levi Strauss & Co as the Top Jeans Brand, scoring a 7.4. The brand Prana was listed as the next highest, with a score of 6.3—followed by H&M (6.1), Banana Republic (6.1), and Old Navy (6.1).
I did not know what GoodGuide is – shame on me – so I checked out their very interesting website, which is said to be the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental and social impacts of consumer products. And I think it really is, rating over 95000 products, mainly available on the US market only: from food, toys, personal care to apparel, electronics and appliances. What is really striking is the scientific approach they have on their ratings, which are compiled from three sub-scores addressing Health, Environment and Society.
Each of these sub-scores are based on an analysis of a set of indicators that GoodGuide has determined are the best-available measures of performance in these areas. Their methodology differs from the product belonging to different categories, each and every one having its own scoring methodology. Amazing. Let’s talk about apparel for example.
Quoting the Good Guide site: “Until (apparel) companies do a better job of providing transparency into their supply chain, our ability to accurately score brands based on their relative performance will be subject to significant uncertainties Environment scores are assigned to apparel brands by combining GoodGuide’s standard company indicators of environmental performance (weighted at 50%) with brand-level environmental indicators that address issues that are specific to the apparel sector (weighted at 50%).(….) Social scores are assigned to apparel brands by combining GoodGuide’s standard company indicators of social performance (50%) with brand-level social indicators that address issues that are specific to the apparel sector (weighted at 50%).(…) Health scores are not assigned to apparel brands because this product category does not generally pose health risks to consumers.”
The Good Guide website is also very good at using the Web 2.0 tools to “spread the word” and improve the accuracy of the product information thanks to a “support product info” page which enables visitors to add further details.
It would be also very interesting to test the effect of this kind of structured and scientific information directly at the point-of-sale, to see how the consumer react when discovering that his/her favourite brand of pasta is not that “good”. Because thanks to GoodGuide mobile App this is possible: consumers can scan the product, check the GoodGuide database and then purchase, or decide to choose another brand.
With this detailed level of “scientific” information, producers and retailers have nothing to hide and their achieving a high/low score can have a boomerang effect on brand reputation which must not be ignored and will not be ignored by consumers. Sustainability pays, and it will pay even more in the future.
normancescut.com 