Taberna Retail is delighted to congratulate our client, the Walt Disney Company, on the selection of "Project MATER" as a finalist in the business innovation category of the World Retail Awards.
MATER (Mastering All The Elements of Retailing) is a comprehensive, operational excellence program designed for domestic Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Merchandise locations. The purpose of the program is to increase efficiency of operational systems and processes and further elevate the Guest shopping experience in order to exceed their expectations and more closely align with the overall theme park experience.
MATER has generated positive business results and significant increases in Guest satisfaction at Emporium in Magic Kingdom® Park by implementing new retail performance standards for all on-stage Cast Members, improved queue management, wayfinding, and iPad-based access to key information systems.
Once again, I had the privilege of presenting at VMSD’s International Retail Design Conference last fall on (surprise, surprise) technology and store design, this time focusing on how technologies can be used to unify the shopping experience across the touchpoints where shoppers engage with a retail brand.
After my presentation, a conference attendee asked, “Last year, you talked a lot about QR codes. This year it was augmented reality. How do we know when to invest in which technology?”
While the connection between typing in the name of a product, scanning a QR code and using augmented reality was perfectly clear to me (they are all incrementally easier ways to connect a physical object with digital content), I realized that it wasn’t clear to someone who hadn’t been exposed to the way technology and interface had evolved over time. In fact, without that key piece of information, a retailer might think that it had to choose between these technologies rather than have a strategy that evolves through them.
This conversation made me realize that one of the things that’s changing the most is the way that store designers are viewing technology: It’s moving away from being an oddity and is quickly becoming a core tool in the arsenal.
But as the tool sets become more integrated, the skills to wield them effectively are changing. Everything from the business model (who makes money when) to the relationship with the retailer seems to be in flux, all at the same time. And as practical guidance from some of our experiences at bringing the digital and physical processes together, I’d like to offer this five-point checklist:
Without a shared vision between digital and physical designers, where the overall experience a shopper has is jointly and creatively developed, all of the amazing technologies become nothing more than flash-in-the-pan tricks, wasting a lot of time and money and, ultimately, accomplishing nothing.
So when I think about the question of how different technologies evolve, it’s an important one. But perhaps even more important is the question of how the industry itself is evolving. We already know 2012 is going to be different. We’re working with store designers on actual projects, which, as we all know, is the true test of how far partnerships can evolve.
Taberna Retail principal Jim Crawford presented at the 2012 In Store Asia Conference in New Delhi, India, on 17 February 2012.
One of the examples I used in my recent presentation at the NRF Big Show earlier this week was a funny yet powerful piece produced by Google Analytics showing how the annoyances of online retail would impact the process of buying bread in a store. Several people have asked for a link to the original, so here it is!
Having just returned from three days at the NRF Big Show in New York City, I wanted to offer up a few observations on the show and evolution of the industry that we see in it.
First, a pitch: I did a short presentation on the Expo floor along with store designer FRCH on "Innovation and Store Design." We've got the entire presentation (including slides and video) below for your enjoyment.
Now, on to the observations!
This year's highlights:
I'm sure I'll consider a few others to add over the next few weeks, but these are the top of mind the next day back. If you have suggestions or things you think I've missed, by all means leave a comment below. Or feel free to email me (jimcrawford@tabernaretail.com) and definitely follow us on Twitter for more thoughts and insight on retail and technology.
The death of Steve Jobs is a huge blow to the technology industry and is echoing personally through the vast majority of the people I know. While we’re all feeling the loss in terms of the impact Steve has had on all the devices many of us have used for the last 20 years of our lives (#sentfrommyiphone is a simple, powerful tribute appended to many posts and tweets about his death), those of us in retail have another reason to celebrate Steve’s impact on our industry, and those of us in retail design even more so.
Steve Jobs didn’t just bring us the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad… he brought us the Apple Store, the most lauded, most cited, most imitated and one might even argue most influential retail store concept of the past decade. At last month’s IRDC conference in San Francisco, I jokingly suggested that I’d love to see a conference presentation that didn’t reference the Apple Store as the paragon of design, service, product display, fill-in-the-blank. And as adamantly as I believe that the adoration of the Apple Store is, at times, a little bit over the top, you simply can’t deny the profound way in which it changed how we think about shopping for technology.
And for those of us who live passionately at the intersection of technology and design, for all the accusations of fanboy status and all the times we had to struggle to get our computers connected to corporate networks, Apple products truly epitomized the fusion of form and function. I have never seen another brand that has consistently created beautiful, functional products that are simple and powerful to use.
I’ve had an off and on professional relationship with Apple for 18 years, since the multimedia company I founded in 1993 earned our coveted Apple Developer status, and I’m proud to have been associated with the company and to have had the opportunities to engage with Apple in its retail presence as well. Embrace or eschew the Macintosh, it’s a great company that creates some great products.
And Apple is for all of us on the “tech” side of things a constant reminder of how to get it right when it comes to new products. The day the iPad was launched, I went out and bought a Nook at Barnes & Noble. My thinking was “well, if it doesn’t play Flash and have all the features I want from my laptop, why do I want anything besides an e-reader?” Fast forward a year an a half and I can’t imagine my life without my iPad.
Steve Job’s didn’t just create products, he created categories. From the iPod to the MacBook Air to the iPhone to the iPad, Apple defined both the benchmark and the market. And while imitation by Samsung may not have been the sincerest form of flattery, it was Steve Job’s innovation with the iPad that let to the news that may get lost today: India will begin selling tablets for $22 to schools, bringing Steve’s vision of tablet computing to those who never could have dreamed of affording it until now.
Thank you, Steve, for the profound impact you’ve made on my personal life, my professional domain, and my industry. You’ll be sorely missed even as we all continue trying to live up to your legacy of technology innovation and design excellence.
Augmented reality plus a mobile phone can mean a personal portal to store design.
The mobile phone industry is filled with buzzwords, many of them hurled confusingly at retailers in the hopes of convincing them that this widget or that whatchamacallit will revolutionize their business. “Checking in.” Local “deal of the day.” Mobile payments. SMS short codes. Over and over, we’ve been told about the “mobile revolution,” each time with a little more hyperbole and a little less actual proof.
But one mobile technology that does have the power to redefine, or at least dramatically enhance, the shopping experience of tomorrow is augmented reality (a.k.a. “AR”). Augmented reality simply means using the phone as a “window” to the environment around it and displaying digital information superimposed on that real-world view.
There are two primary types of augmented reality, each one offering retailers some fascinating opportunities:
Both of these types of AR are well established, with several platforms and service capabilities that retailers can use to develop and deploy augmented reality into their own mobile strategies. This real-world technology is well supported across all the major smartphone platforms and can be integrated into retailer branded applications, as well. Consumers react incredibly favorably to the “wow” factor of AR and, with established tools so easily at hand, the cost of creating AR applications is relatively low.
So why haven’t retailers been at the forefront of developing this exciting new capability?
There are a few retailers experimenting with augmented reality. Tommy Hilfiger’s “GoldRun” application lets shoppers track down digital objects in a virtual treasure hunt. Both the Android and iPhone platforms feature several “virtual dressing room” applications for assisting fashion shoppers with clothes buying. But on the whole, retail has been slow to embrace the potential for augmented reality for three reasons:
We’ll address the organizational and business model impacts of mobile retailing in subsequent columns, but for the time, let’s begin envisioning how augmented reality can reshape store design and retailing with a simple but powerful example:
Up until now, one of the basic principles of store design is that the look of the store is the same for everyone: A fixture can’t appear to be black and white to one shopper and rich wood and marble to another. Everyone who looks at a p-o-p display sees the same branding, the same promotions, the same offers and pricing.
Now imagine that every shopper in your store has a personal view of the environment. When she holds up her phone, signage and displays can literally change. One shopper sees product information in Spanish, one shopper gets a special offer based on her loyalty program status, another is guided shelf by shelf through the store based on what’s on his shopping list. Fixtures are no longer static, but instead come to life with full-motion animation, all based on the unique personality and profile of each individual shopper. The physical world of materials and fixtures now blends seamlessly into the electronic world of information and personalization.
This is the power of augmented reality, but as a concept, not a specific technology or platform. By envisioning how the store looks through this new digital window, store designers can begin to create the personalized, informed experiences that shoppers crave.
Digital signage is hardly a new idea in retail design. In fact, many of us have had the experience of walking through a store and upon seeing a particularly clunky kiosk or blocky plasma TV bolted onto a fixture thought to ourselves, "2003 called and it wants its digital signage back."
The biggest problem isn't digital signage as a concept. It's the tools designers think of as digital signs. The core underlying technologies that power visual displays have shifted radically in the past decade, yet somehow our vision for applying those technologies to retail design remain stuck in the past. But a new concept has arrived that opens a number of doors for today's store designers if applied in innovate ways: digital projection.
Recent advances in this technology have pushed the capabilities of digital projectors in two paradoxical directions, as the "big" have gotten bigger and the "small" have gotten smaller.
First, let’s look at the big. Today's larger format projectors are capable of ultra-high resolution projection with enough light to show clearly in all but the brightest sunlight. When combined with the sophisticated 3-D rendering capabilities of today's computers, designers now have at their disposal "digital paint" that can be overlaid on both interior and exterior surfaces.
What makes this such an intriguing concept for designers is that unlike previous projection that showed on a screen (either a 4:3 or 16:9 widescreen), digital paint appears directly onto the environmental surface. It’s not constrained to a rectangle-box shape. This means that unique geometries, like curves and corners, can be digitally painted, blurring the line between what is "digital" and what is "physical" into a seamless design.
One recent high-profile example of digital paint was introduced into Walt Disney World's iconic fireworks display over Cinderella's castle. A Disney-based story is projected onto the front of the castle from a group of high-definition projectors. The digital projection literally blends into the physical environment, with characters climbing up towers and around windows and "fireworks" shooting across the front of the castle in concert with the real fireworks up in the sky.
Other designers have used digital paint on interiors, replacing wallpaper and signage with a projection directly onto a surface. Add enough projectors and you can even create a Star Trek holodeck-like experience, where every surface around the viewer is digitally enhanced and immersive.
But just as projectors have gotten powerful enough to catapult the shopper into a 24th Century virtually enhanced environment, they've also shrunk down to tiny proportions. This enables designers to integrate digital projection into previously impractical places, llike individual shelves, displays, and wall-niches.
This evolution in projectors has lead to a slimming down in all areas, including resolution, brightness, power consumption and, most importantly, price. Called "pico projectors," these tiny marvels are about the size of a cell phone, and range in price from $100 to $400. They generally use LEDs or lasers in lieu of the traditional LCD technology to create colors, which results in a dramatically less-bright image. But they can be used to bring the concept of the "digital fixture" to life, allowing individual shelves, gondolas, and surfaces to display digital content from a tiny device to a roughly 15-square-foot area.
Pico projectors can also be integrated into any type of fixture design and, similar to digital paint, are not limited to rectangular shapes. The low light output of pico projectors mean that light escaping the "edges" of irregular shapes isn't noticeable, and some types even have an infinite focal plane that can wrap around any shape, so instead of a “flat screen,” retail fixtures like mannequins, columns, and 3D shapes can become canvases for video content.
The potential applications for the creative designer abound, especially when combined with business analytics and decision-making behind the digital fixture solution. Retailers are no longer limited to static promotional signage in the store, as database-driven analytics allow individual clusters of shoppers to be targeted based on individual conditions. Imagine if shelves could display messaging based on whether or not the product was in stock, or tie-in with product promotions.
While designers have a long history of using texture, color, material and lighting in designing store environments, digital paint and fixtures change the game. As part of a creative palette, they offer unlimited ability to shape the visual experience, centered on three major shifts to the designer's toolkit:
For years, designers have faced a choice on surfaces both big and small: either “digital” and square or “physical” with texture and color. Digital paint brings these two strong capabilities together for the first time, shattering the tyranny of the “or” and allowing surfaces to come to life through the seamless integration of the digital and physical worlds.
She's much savvier than you might think.
One of the questions that frequently arises about the role of technology in the store is, “Who are we designing these experiences for?” And while this question is absolutely critical to designing great store experiences, it’s often answered flat-out wrong, leading to digital experiences launched with great fanfare and received by shoppers with, at best, a disinterested yawn.
Misunderstanding how technologically advanced shoppers have become over the past couple of years is one of the biggest mistakes a retailer can make. In part, there’s a generational tendency to think of anything we don’t individually embrace as less important than the skills we have mastered. Yet, while senior retail executives may pride themselves on decades of experience in merchandising or store operations and laugh at their inability to do more with a smartphone than check email, the younger generation that’s tweeting about a low price they found using a barcode-scanning app is more representative of the majority of shoppers.
In the past few years, shoppers have radically changed their relationship with technology, creating expectations for engagement, transparency and responsiveness that go far beyond what most retailers are providing. And many of the “next generation” experiences that retailers do create (“Sign up NOW to get SPECIAL DEALS texted to your phone!!!” or “Check out our FACEBOOK PAGE for the latest news!!!”) end up reinforcing the idea that the brand is out of touch rather than creating a stronger connection with the shopper.
So, how different is today’s shopper when it comes to how she embraces and uses technology? Here, we take a look at some of the data and statistics on how communication channels, expectations and shoppers’ habits have changed.
She multitasks
Today’s shopper doesn’t focus on one channel of influence at a time. In fact, a whopping 80 percent of consumers today will use a laptop or smartphone while watching TV. Disney has embraced this trend with “Second Screen” experiences, designed to run synchronized content on an iPad while watching a Disney movie on Blu-Ray disc. The idea that a shopper is either watching TV or surfing the Web is no longer true for the vast majority of consumers.
She’s connected
Today’s shopper is deluged with information. Dozens of emails and text messages per day, hundreds of channels of television and a nearly unlimited buffet of Web information all clamor for her attention. But she isn’t just listening to this flow of information; she’s creating it.
Each week, more than one billion tweets are sent out by Twitter users. And of these billion tweets, 20 percent are related to shopping, either requesting or providing information about product purchases. That’s a lot of traffic talking about what to buy. It also illustrates that, for the most part, today’s shopper isn’t asking retailers for this information, she’s asking her peers because …
She doesn’t trust you
Shoppers trust each other – not necessarily those selling products to them – and today’s technology gives them the power to engage directly with one another, even in the midst of the shopping experience. The number one driver for consumer electronics purchasers? Personal experience (58 percent), with word of mouth (51 percent) close behind. This means the ways retailers and brands touch shoppers – direct marketing (21 percent) and advertising (17 percent) – are far less impactful than the social tools shoppers are using to connect with one another.
Reviews and ratings by other shoppers are also more trusted than the information provided by product manufacturers. Seventy-five percent of consumers think companies don’t tell the truth about the products they advertise, while products with posted reviews have a 20 percent lower return rate than unreviewed products.
She expects more, cheaper and faster
The expectations for a perfect shopping experience are rising faster and faster. For example, shoppers in the U.K. are now willing to wait only two minutes in a checkout queue, down from five minutes just four years ago. Sixty-seven percent of them have walked away from a purchase because they weren’t willing to stand in line, and 51 percent won’t even go into a store if they see a long checkout queue.
Couple this with the fact that, every shopper today is a “value shopper,” concerned with (and knowledgeable about) how much things should cost, and the expectation for fast service, good prices and quality is higher than ever.
The Bottom Line
Today’s shopper is more demanding, informed and connected than ever before. And it’s not a bunch of early-adopter, gadget-freak young ’uns skewing the demographic statistics. Retailers and designers creating technology-enabled experiences need to remember that the bar is a lot higher to impress 30-year-old women shopping with smartphones than it is to impress a roundtable of jaded (and often older and less technologically sophisticated) retail executives.
In August, we’ll explore a technology that will impress even the most advanced mobile shopper: augmented reality, in which digital information is overlaid directly onto a view of the physical space. The shopper of tomorrow will expect these kinds of “magical” experiences, and retailers who don’t understand the demands of the shopper of today will be even further behind.
The Shelf Life of a Shopping App
In January, the 10 billionth app was downloaded from Apple’s App Store. This milestone was heralded throughout the mobile industry as proof that apps have become the dominant way consumers use their smartphones.
But behind that impressive statistic lurks a harsh reality – only 5 percent of those downloaded applications remained in use after 20 days.
However, shopping apps are proving to have staying power. In fact, 50 percent of shopping apps, to do things like keep track of lists, scan barcodes, deliver coupons, check prices, find products, etc., were still in use after 30 days.
With millions of shoppers using these apps, some of the basic rules of retailing will need to be rewritten. Take Black Friday, for instance, the most heavily advertised and promotion-centric day of retailing. In 2010, 64 percent of smartphone owners used a shopping app to compare prices. That makes the millions traditionally spent in advertising and discounts far less effective at influencing a shopper with instant access to all your competitors’ prices.
There's a right way to integrate social media and mobility with store design to engage your shoppers
Last fall, I participated in a roundtable discussion about the impact of social media on store design. While the participants were all brilliant and top of their fields, the conversation was actually rather dry, as each of us struggled with the realization that virtually every example we could think of was really about “mobile retail,” not “social media.”
It was this epiphany, rather than the social media content, that struck home: Today’s mobile phone enables shoppers to do anything in the store that they used to do at home, with or without the participation or permission of the retailer.
Social media is a concept that certainly has a lot of hype around it, even sparking an Academy Award nominated movie about the founding of Facebook. The Facebook URL and icon have become ubiquitous in ads and signage, and the English language has seen the introduction of words like “tweet,” “de-friend” and “status update” in the past couple years.
For the most part, retailers have been quick to jump on the tools offered by social media companies like Facebook and Twitter. In 2010, about 50 percent of retailers had pages on Facebook. But for most retailers, social media remains more of an elusive goal than a practical tool to generate profits. Real ROI is hard to quantify, complicating the already fuzzy impression of the impact of the Web on the store experience and sales. Missteps abound, amplified instantly through millions of Web users: Kenneth Cole’s tweet comparing the troubles in Egypt to his spring collection instantly spawned a firestorm of criticism on Twitter, including a parody account that attracted as many followers in one day as the real designer had in total.
Given the vagueness of the investment return and the potential pitfalls from doing it wrong, who could blame store designers from shying away from social media?
Lori Schafer and Bernie Brennan, authors of the book “Branded! How Retailers Engage Consumers with Social Media & Mobility,” certainly would. “The store simply hasn’t caught up with the rapid evolution of the digital and online worlds,” says Brennan. “There’s an enormous opportunity and now is the time to address that schism.”
The book offers a number of case studies of how retailers like Starbucks, JCPenney, Zappos and Best Buy are using social media and mobility to engage with their shoppers, both online and, increasingly, in-store. Brennan and Shafer offered up some specific insights into how store designers can begin to explore social media and bring it into their discipline.
Execution, both in technology and process, must be flawless
“Most of the experiences store designers have had with technology have been that it doesn’t work,” says Brennan. While there are numerous examples backing up this point of view, it can’t be used as an excuse on either side: Store designers need to learn how to use the technology, and IT departments need to learn how to support it in-store. Both Schafer and Brennan are quick to point out that social media excellence isn’t a substitute for being best-in-class in the other essentials of retailing, either. “Having great social media doesn’t help if your pricing model is off, for example,” says Schafer. “You can have a great multichannel experience but shoppers still won’t buy if they think your prices are too high.”
Store designers need a more powerful seat at the table
With social media requiring the active support and participation from virtually every department within the retail enterprise, coordinating the shopper experience has become even more important. The store designer needs the support to play an active role in creating this experience, both in and out of the store. “High-level executive buy-in to the role of the store designer is a must,” says Brennan. The rapid introduction of shopper-facing technology disrupts the traditional balance between “business” and “IT,” so active leadership from store design is essential to making social media work with the in-store environment.
Social media is rapidly moving out of showcases and into the mainstream retail environment
While Times Square flagship stores in New York have long used digital “tricks” to showcase the brand, most of the experiences playing out on 50-foot-high digital screens in front of these stores don’t translate into the hundreds or thousands of locations those chains operate across the country. “Social media is, by definition, about sharing and communicating,” says Schafer. “So it’s becoming more ubiquitous and more powerful as it spreads through chains.” One example is Metropark, a Los Angeles-based specialty apparel chain that has installed screens in hundreds of its stores that share tweets from customers in other locations. “This is bringing the social experience into the store experience,” adds Schafer.
It has to work simply for the shopper in the store
Though social media has a low learning curve compared to some technologies (the fastest growing user segment on Facebook isn’t young tech adopters, it’s 45- to 54-year-old women), bringing it into the store creates an expectation in the shopper’s mind that it will be a working part of the retail environment. And if they need it, help will be at hand. “We promote to the shopper that they can use their phone to read a QR code and get all sorts of great information when they’re in the store. But what happens when they can’t quite read it using their phone?” asks Brennan. “The sales associates don’t know how to support it, so the shopper is left even more frustrated.” Retailers deploying social media applications into the store must consider how to support shoppers when challenges do arise.
It’s still always about the design
In March, the store design industry converged in Düsseldorf at EuroShop to see the latest trends in everything from mannequins to wallcoverings. Though technology was a focus at the expo, most of the solutions showcased were in areas other than social media. But one vendor, vinyl flooring vendor Centiva, stood out with a QR code on the floor of its booth. The display was remarkable in how it brought the worlds of mobile technology, social media and design together: