Tag Archives: eCommerce

Growing Your Conversational Commerce Capability

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How to Optimize the Latest Major Digital Touchpoint

Growing Your Conversational Commerce Capability

GUEST POST from Howard Tiersky

Conversational commerce means interacting with your customer in an automated dialog via voice or text.

Usage of voice-based conversational interfaces such as Alexa and Siri have been exploding for years. Meanwhile, over 100,000 active bots were created on FaceBook’s messenger platform during its first year several years ago.

“Digital” began to truly scale with the web, then expanded even further via apps and social. Is conversational commerce (CC) the next major touchpoint? Conversational commerce is defined as interacting with your customer in an automated dialog via voice or text. Based on our experience consulting large brands on the implementation of their digital innovations, and given trends on consumer adoption and technology-readiness, it is fair to say that we are at the dawn of the first wave of the broad implementation of conversational commerce.

For several years, IBM has been painting a fanciful picture of its Watson technology’s ability to digest volumes of information, understand questions, and provide truly insightful answers. Meanwhile, consumers are becoming more and more comfortable with dialog-style interactions via Siri, Google voice search, and Alexa.

In fact:

  • The number of commands (“skills”) that Alexa can respond has increased past 100,000
  • 34 percent of all smartphone users say they turn to Siri and Google voice search at least weekly.

But conversational commerce does not necessarily have to involve voice recognition.

2017 represented the one-year anniversary of the launch of Facebook’s chatbots, which enable brands to engage in text-based automated interactions with their customers and audience. In 2017 its Messenger platform alone had already reached about 100,000 active bots, and a survey then found that nearly 80 percent of companies use or plan to use chatbots by 2020.

At the Shoptalk conference a few years ago, eBay President and CEO Devin Wenig announced the launch of eBay’s new chatbot called ShopBot, which advises customers on items they might like to buy via automated chat dialog.

This pattern makes sense, as we see that millennials — 38 percent of whom prefer texting as their number one form of interaction, according to a study from Think with Google — have elevated this type of communication to an art form.

Will Siri or SMS-like automated dialog with your brand become the next big consumer touchpoint? If so, what do you need to do to prepare?

The answer, as some of the stats above suggest, is that conversational commerce is poised to be a major and preferred interaction model for many future brand interactions.

The good news is that if your brand has built a reasonably flexible and integrated digital stack, it can often be quickly leveraged to enable high-value CC capabilities without requiring that you install “Deep Blue” in your data center.

Here are five key things to know about getting started with conversational commerce:

1. The Core of Conversational Commerce is Very Similar to Search.

If you already have a strong search platform that permits parametrization, you can use it to drive a key portion of your chat experience. When you tell eBay’s chatbot you are looking to buy a voice recorder; it asks you questions such as the size and memory capacity you need. These questions are simply the metadata parameters eBay has available for voice recorders. You can utilize the product metadata in your existing catalog to make your chatbot appear to ask smart questions, and even more importantly help the customer find what they need, but in reality, the results are very similar to what they would experience if they simply entered structured search queries.

Of course, not all queries involve the quest for a product. Some may be asking a question, such as about your return or cancellation policies, but this too is very similar to search. You can parse chat questions against your full-text index and return intelligent answers by, again, leveraging your search engine.

2. The Next Step of Conversational Commerce is About Enabling Transactions.

Once a customer has found what they are looking for, they may wish to buy, reserve, add to a wish list, or take some other action. Your chat flow needs to know when to pivot from searching to asking the customer to take action. In many cases, or in your initial releases, you may simply choose to branch to existing web screens to complete transactions, as eBay is doing with ShopBot. More sophisticated conversational commerce implementations allow the customer to take action via voice or text, such as Domino’s, which allows the customer to order a pizza by text.

3. In Text Conversations, You Generally Know Your Customer.

One of the advantages of most forms of conversational commerce, such as SMS or Facebook Messenger, is that your customer is identifiable. If the customer has a profile in your system, you can use this knowledge to make the conversational interaction simpler — and also smarter. Picking up again on our Domino’s example, when the customer texts them a pizza emoji, the bot matches their telephone number to its database and confirms that it will be placing the order with toppings based on their past preferences, and will deliver it to their home address on file. The customer will then have the opportunity to override any of these defaults if they are in the mood for Hawaiian pizza that day.

4. You Can Make the Language Parsing Easier by Giving Multiple-choice Options.

Many successful chatbots are more of a string of multiple-choice questions than a free-form dialog. This substantially reduces the challenge of “comprehending” the customer and furthermore reduces typing for users on mobile devices. Naturally, you will want to support customer-entered text strings, but a considerable number of interactions can be handled via a series of multiple-choice questions. In some ways, chat is similar to IVR systems at call centers, and can often use similar types of decision trees.

5. It Doesn’t Have to be Perfect.

There is still some novelty to automated interactions, so customers don’t expect them to be perfect. Furthermore, as with any digital platform, you have the opportunity to improve it over time iteratively. Siri has grown tremendously over the last few years in the range of queries it can handle.

A fantastic resource to help guide your prioritization of new capabilities are the chat logs themselves, which will give you a sense of the types of interactions that your customers are attempting that may not yet be supported by your platform. And in the meantime, as you become aware of such chat or voice requests, you can create short text responses to those categories of inquiries, letting the customer know what other touchpoints currently support that action. So if a customer, for example, uses a chatbot to check their account balance but then wants to transfer funds, and that is not yet supported via conversational commerce, you can supply the URL for the website or app and the toll-free number to call, so they know where to go next.

6. Develop a Core Conversational Engine, and Leverage it Across Many Different Touchpoints

It makes sense to invest in conversational commerce platforms and tie them to your existing catalog, customer data, business logic and transaction capabilities. In doing so, think of creating one central CC “engine” that will connect to a variety of conversational endpoints. To begin with, you may want to focus on enabling a chatbot on your website(s) and in your apps, and integrating with the Facebook chatbot API to allow customers to chat with your automated system via Messenger the same way they would chat with their friends. But in future iterations, it makes sense to support SMS, Skype, WeChat (if you do business in Asia), and possibly other similar platforms. Longer term, as Apple’s Siri, Google Voice, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa continue to open up their APIs, the same conversational engine you created for text can be leveraged with relatively small modifications to support voice interactions.

Conversational commerce is already here, and most major brands have either implemented or are in some stage of planning around an implementation. You can probably leverage existing systems and data sets to create a reasonable starting point for conversational interaction without requiring sophisticated AI or language parsing. Over time, you can learn from your customers’ queries how they want to interact with you and evolve your conversational capabilities accordingly.

This article originally appeared on the Howard Tiersky blog

Image Credits: Pixabay

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What is Digital Transformation anyway?

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Digital Transformation is the third wave of digital evolution.

What is Digital Transformation anyway?

GUEST POST from Howard Tiersky

The first wave was brochureware. Enterprises created websites that communicated their story. As simple as this idea is, it was revolutionary. The business value of providing instant sales and marketing material at the click of a mouse is hugely valuable.

The second wave was eCommerce. Enterprises connected customer-facing digital front-ends to their back-end systems, so that customers could engage in transactions directly via their browser or mobile device. This wave generated much more value than brochureware, because it reduced the cost of customer interaction, and removed friction from the user experience. Businesses who have mastered eCommerce have been able to trump former market leaders. In today’s world, if you can’t provide elegant digital options for the customer throughout their entire journey, you’re toast.

Now we find ourselves in the third wave: Digital Transformation. eCommerce added new pathways for pre-existing offerings, but companies going through digital transformation need to reinvent themselves for a digital age. Netflix made the transition from being a mail-order company to a streaming company. Though they still focus on their core value proposition of providing extended choices and increased convenience, their entire solution offering had to shift, along with their customer experience, pricing, contracts with suppliers, marketing, and more. Furthermore, given new methods of interacting with the consumer, it became practical for them to focus serious resources on content creation, as well. While the Netflix DVD-by-mail service was definitely eCommerce enabled (i.e. you could order DVDs via their web site), their digitally transformed value proposition is fundamentally impossible without digital.

Uber is doing the same thing for transportation. While plenty of taxi and limousine companies have apps that allow you to order their vehicles, Uber created a business model that was completely digitally focused. This meant that they didn’t need to own any vehicles or hire any drivers to become the largest ground transportation company in the world. It’s worth noting that Uber didn’t really go through a digital transformation, it was born digital. Digital Transformation is what pre-digital companies must undertake to compete in the newest wave of the digital age.

But even those companies that are “born digital” will need to focus on ongoing transformation. There are multiple examples of early digital successes, companies like Yahoo and MySpace, that failed to continue to transform.

Digital Transformation also requires a different mindset around where digital “lives” within the organization. You can visualize the way digital transformation works in the enterprises like this:

  • Wave 1 – Brochureware: Digital was part of marketing.
  • Wave 2 – eCommerce: Digital is a support service, creating digital pathways to pre-existing services like ordering, customer support, and billing.
  • Wave 3 – Digital Transformation: Digital reimagines the entire value proposition and business model of the company.

The goal of Digital in Wave 2 is to support the strategy and operations of the company by augmenting non-digital channels with more efficient and elegant digital alternatives. But in Wave 3, digital is driving the bus. The entire company — its value proposition and business model — is reimagined with digital at the center. This requires some substantial shifts in organizational structure, roles, and mindset; these shifts make companies hesitant to move towards true digital transformation. They engage in what is sometimes called Digital Decoration, that makes them seem progressive while protecting the “integrity” of their legacy business structures.

This is a losing strategy. There’s a long history of companies who decided to protect their existing models over supporting new ones. Kodak suffocated its early digital camera products; Blockbuster resisted focusing on digital delivery of entertainment. Western Union scoffed at the telephone.

In fact, here’s an example of an internal memo sent at Western Union:

“Why would any person want to use this ungainly and impractical device [a telephone] when he can send a messenger to the telegraph office and have a clear written message sent to any large city in the United States?”

Western Union opted out of the “digital transformation” of its era and I predict the same outcome for pre-digital companies who take a similar approach.

This article originally appeared on the Howard Tiersky blog
Image Credit: Pexels

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What Pundits Always Get Wrong About the Future

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What Pundits Always Get Wrong About the Future

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Peter Thiel likes to point out that we wanted flying cars, but got 140 characters instead. He’s only partly right. For decades futuristic visions showed everyday families zipping around in flying cars and it’s true that even today we’re still stuck on the ground. Yet that’s not because we’re unable to build one. In fact the first was invented in 1934.

The problem is not so much with engineering, but economics, safety and convenience. We could build a flying car if we wanted to, but to make one that can compete with regular cars is another matter entirely. Besides, in many ways, 140 characters are better than a flying car. Cars only let us travel around town, the Internet helps us span the globe.

That has created far more value than a flying car ever could. We often fail to predict the future accurately because we don’t account for our capacity to surprise ourselves, to see new possibilities and take new directions. We interact with each other, collaborate and change our priorities. The future that we predict is never as exciting as the one we eventually create.

1. The Future Will Not Look Like The Past

We tend to predict the future by extrapolating from the present. So if we invent a car and then an airplane, it only seems natural that we can combine the two. If family has a car, then having one that flies can seem like a logical next step. We don’t look at a car and dream up, say, a computer. So in 1934, we dreamed of flying cars, but not computers.

It’s not just optimists that fall prey to this fundamental error, but pessimists too. In Homo Deus, author and historian Yuval Noah Harari points to several studies that show that human jobs are being replaced by machines. He then paints a dystopian picture. “Humans might become militarily and economically useless,” he writes. Yeesh!

Yet the picture is not as dark as it may seem. Consider the retail apocalypse. Over the past few years, we’ve seen an unprecedented number of retail store closings. Those jobs are gone and they’re not coming back. You can imagine thousands of retail employees sitting at home, wondering how to pay their bills, just as Harari predicts.

Yet economist Michael Mandel argues that the data tell a very different story. First, he shows that the jobs gained from e-commerce far outstrip those lost from traditional retail. Second, he points out that the total e-commerce sector, including lower-wage fulfillment centers, has an average wage of $21.13 per hour, which is 27 percent higher than the $16.65 that the average worker in traditional retail earns.

So not only are more people working, they are taking home more money too. Not only is the retail apocalypse not a tragedy, it’s somewhat of a blessing.

2. The Next Big Thing Always Starts Out Looking Like Nothing At All

Every technology eventually hits theoretical limits. Buy a computer today and you’ll find that the technical specifications are much like they were five years ago. When a new generation of iPhones comes out these days, reviewers tout the camera rather than the processor speed. The truth is that Moore’s law is effectively over.

That seems tragic, because our ability to exponentially increase the number of transistors that we can squeeze onto a silicon wafer has driven technological advancement over the past few decades. Every 18 months or so, a new generation of chips has come out and opened up new possibilities that entrepreneurs have turned into exciting new businesses.

What will we do now?

Yet there’s no real need to worry. There is no 11th commandment that says, “Thou shalt compute with ones and zeros” and the end of Moore’s law will give way to newer, more powerful technologies, like quantum and neuromorphic computing. These are still in their nascent stage and may not have an impact for at least five to ten years, but will likely power the future for decades to come.

The truth is that the next big thing always starts out looking like nothing at all. Einstein never thought that his work would have a practical impact during his lifetime. When Alexander Fleming first discovered penicillin, nobody noticed. In much the same way, the future is not digital. So what? It will be even better!

3. It’s Ecosystems, Not Inventions, That Drive The Future

When the first automobiles came to market, they were called “horseless carriages” because that’s what everyone knew and was familiar with. So it seemed logical that people would use them much like they used horses, to take the occasional trip into town and to work in the fields. Yet it didn’t turn out that way, because driving a car is nothing like riding a horse.

So first people started taking “Sunday drives” to relax and see family and friends, something that would be too tiring to do regularly on a horse. Gas stations and paved roads changed how products were distributed and factories moved from cities in the north, close to customers, to small towns in the south, where land and labor were cheaper.

As the ability to travel increased, people started moving out of cities and into suburbs. When consumers could easily load a week’s worth of groceries into their cars, corner stores gave way to supermarkets and, eventually, shopping malls. The automobile changed a lot more than simply how we got from place to place. It changed our way of life in ways that were impossible to predict.

Look at other significant technologies, such as electricity and computers, and you find a similar story. It’s ecosystems, rather than inventions, that drive the future.

4. We Can Only Validate Patterns Going Forward

G. H. Hardy once wrote that, “a mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.” Futurists often work the same way, identifying patterns in the past and present, then extrapolating them into the future. Yet there is a substantive difference between patterns that we consider to be preordained and those that are to be discovered.

Think about Steve Jobs and Apple for a minute and you will probably recognize the pattern and assume I misspelled the name of his iconic company by forgetting to include the “e” at the end. But I could have just have easily been about to describe an “Applet” he designed for the iPhone or some connection between Jobs and Appleton WI, a small town outside Green Bay.

The point is that we can only validate patterns going forward, never backward. That, in essence, is what Steve Blank means when he says that business plans rarely survive first contact with customers and why his ideas about lean startups are changing the world. We need to be careful about the patterns we think we see. Some are meaningful. Others are not.

The problem with patterns is that future is something we create, not some preordained plan that we are beholden to. The things we create often become inflection points and change our course. That may frustrate the futurists, but it’s what makes life exciting for the rest of us.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog and previously appeared on Inc.com
— Image credit: Pixabay

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The Future of Retail

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E-commerce, Augmented Reality, and Personalized Experiences

The Future of Retail: E-commerce, Augmented Reality, and Personalized Experiences

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

The retail industry has seen significant transformations in recent years, and these changes are only going to accelerate in the future. As consumers increasingly turn to online shopping, retailers are finding new ways to engage their audience, provide enhanced experiences, and stay relevant in a digital age. Two case studies highlight the impact of e-commerce, augmented reality, and personalized experiences on the future of retail.

Case Study 1: Amazon Go

In 2018, e-commerce giant Amazon introduced Amazon Go, a cashier-less grocery store. This innovative concept allows customers to simply walk in, grab the items they need, and leave. Powered by a combination of computer vision, machine learning, and sensor technology, Amazon Go tracks customers’ selections and automatically charges their account, eliminating the need for cash registers or checkouts.

The introduction of Amazon Go showcases the potential of e-commerce to revolutionize the retail experience. By removing friction points in traditional shopping, such as waiting in line, Amazon Go provides customers with convenience and saves them precious time. Moreover, the technology-driven store gathers valuable data on customer behavior, enabling Amazon to further personalize its offerings and enhance the shopping experience.

Case Study 2: Warby Parker

Warby Parker, an online eyewear retailer, has successfully integrated augmented reality (AR) into its business model. Using AR technology, customers can virtually try on glasses using their smartphone or computer camera. This innovative approach eliminates the need for physical try-ons and allows customers to see how the glasses fit and look on their face in real-time.

The introduction of AR in the retail industry demonstrates the power of virtual experiences to bridge the gap between online and offline shopping. By leveraging AR, Warby Parker provides customers with a personalized and interactive shopping experience. This technology-driven approach not only enhances customer satisfaction and confidence in their purchase decisions but also reduces return rates, resulting in cost savings for the retailer.

Looking Ahead

The future of retail lies in the seamless integration of e-commerce, augmented reality, and personalized experiences. With the rise of technologies like artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and Internet of Things, the possibilities in retail are endless. Here are a few predictions for what lies ahead:

1. Personalized Product Recommendations: As retailers gather more data on customer preferences and behaviors, they will be able to offer personalized product recommendations, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

2. Enhanced In-Store Experiences: Physical stores will leverage AR and VR technologies to create immersive experiences, enabling customers to interact with products in new and exciting ways.

3. Voice Commerce: With the proliferation of voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, voice commerce will become more prevalent. Customers will be able to make purchases, ask for recommendations, and receive personalized offers using voice commands.

Conclusion

The future of retail is undoubtedly evolving towards e-commerce, augmented reality, and personalized experiences. Retailers who embrace these technologies stand to gain a competitive advantage by providing enhanced convenience, personalization, and engagement to their customers. By examining successful case studies like Amazon Go and Warby Parker, we can see the immense potential and exciting possibilities that lie ahead for the retail industry.

Bottom line: Futures research is not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futures research themselves.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Genius of Rewarding Customers for Eating Other People’s Pizza

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Genius of Rewarding Customers for Eating Other People's Pizza

Dominos is riding the creativity train yet again, with their latest creative marketing idea.

Following on the heels of Dominos Hotspots and Dominos Zero Click Ordering, they now have come up with a great idea for getting people to download their app onto their phones and to ultimately order their pizza.

When it comes to ordering pizza, the phone is on its way to being replaced by the app. But which app?

When ordering pizza by phone at least you could still use the same phone, but just dial a different number if you wanted to order a different pizza.

But if you want to order a different pizza using an app you have to download and install and configure a completely different app. NOT as easy switching to a different pizza place when ordering by phone. So, if an app helps to lock people into reordering pizza from you instead of trying the pizza from some other pie place, what do you have to do?

You HAVE to get people to not only download your app and install it, but you’ve got to get them to start using it.

A lot of places try to overcome this inertia by offering a discount on the first order made using the app, but this isn’t always a strong enough incentive.

Domino’s solution to this problem?

What if we rewarded people just for eating pizza, even if it’s not ours?

Sounds crazy, right?

Well, that’s exactly what they’ve done with their latest Points for Pies promotion. Now, if you download the Dominos Pizza app onto your phone AND join their rewards program AND take a picture of any pizza once a week for six weeks using the app you’ll earn enough points to get a free medium two-topping pizza. But, to add a sense of urgency, you must earn your 60 points before the 100 million points run out, which probably works out to about 2-3 million people participating before the points run out.

Supposedly the app uses artificial intelligence to detect pizza in the photo, but I have a sneaking suspicion it will give you points for taking a picture of just about anything. I don’t eat Dominos Pizza, so let me if you can take a picture of anything funny and still get your points. 😉

So, what do you think? Will this promotion drive app downloads, and more importantly, rewards program signups and app usage and pizza purchases?


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Who is the Innovator? Amazon or Kroger?

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Kroger ClickList

Now, first of all, Kroger is a Cincinnati-based company not a Seattle-based company, so it is only natural that I should hear more about the things Amazon is experimenting with than those of Kroger, owners of a portfolio of grocery brands, including: Ralphs, Fred Meyer, QFC, Kroger, fry’s, Food4Less, King Soopers, Harris Teeter, and more.

Amazon has been making a lot of noise with some of their experiments lately, including a convenience store concept where eventually you will be able to pick up what you want to buy and then automatically be charged for your acquisitions on the way out the door. It is called Amazon go and is currently being tested in an employees-only store. Here is what it looks like:

And then of course Amazon has been experimenting with the last mile experience in grocery retailing for a while now with Amazon Fresh grocery delivery business in a few U.S. states along with London, Berlin, and Tokyo. Now they are also experimenting with a grocery pickup service. You can pickup your groceries in as little as 15 minutes after ordering. It’s available exclusively for Prime members in a testing phase beginning in Seattle.

Now, the past couple of weeks I’ve been noticing at one of my local Fred Meyer’s and one of the neighborhood QFC’s some workers doing some construction projects and I wasn’t sure exactly what they were up to, but today it became clear that they’ve been busy prepping for to enable Kroger ClickList at those locations, which is basically the same thing as AmazonFresh Pickup, EXCEPT that Kroger started doing this TWO YEARS AGO and scaled it to 500 locations in less than 17 months. If you’re curious, here is what Kroger CLickList looks like:

And yes, Walmart, not to be outdone, also has a grocery pickup service as well (which they started a little over a year ago).

For what it’s worth, if these companies were to combine this service with improved ready-to-eat meal offerings like we used to regularly utilize from Waitrose and Tesco so that people can pickup their groceries and a dinner they can eat right when they get home and this will really catch on. Now for those of you who haven’t experienced ready meals in the UK, then check out the following links to get a tastier idea:

— Waitrose Ready Meals
— Tesco Ready Meals

Waitrose Lasagne

So, Amazon is getting a lot of buzz around their Amazon Go and AmazonFresh Pickup experiments, but they are just that at this point. Meanwhile, Kroger and Walmart have already scaled some of these experiments, so who is the innovator here?

Just another reminder that anyone can innovate, that it is customer insight not technology that drives innovation, and that every company is a technology company whether they like it or not.

Keep innovating!

Innovation Audit from Braden Kelley

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Amazon Changes Everything in a New Way

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Tide Dash Button

The arrival of the Internet began major disruption to decades old methods of consumer packaged goods (CPG) distribution. The tried and true method of manufactures selling to a collection of wholesalers, who then sold the product on a range of retailers began to be reexamined. We saw the arrival of online retailers like Amazon who sought to compete with brick and mortar retailers, trying to offer a wider selection while also offering potentially a more convenient (and possibly cheaper) shopping experience for a few (or possibly for many). We saw retailers experiment with selling on Amazon (adding an extra layer of intermediation) and grocery stores experiment with online ordering and local delivery.

But at the same, in 2010 we saw manufacturers like P&G start to experiment with selling direct to consumer over the Internet via sites like pgshop.com and then in 2013 P&G started selling their wares on Amazon. Below is a screenshot of a Pampers product listing on Amazon:

Pampers Amazon Screenshot

As you can imagine, when companies like P&G start selling direct to consumers and via Amazon, this makes traditional retailers nervous. And while maybe some day their nervousness will translate into major volume declines, we’re probably not quite there, yet. But for manufacturers, the possibility of selling direct to consumers or via Amazon changes everything. It changes everything because it requires companies selling consumer goods to build new marketing capabilities, and possibly even new manufacturing and distribution capabilities as well.

Frito Lay Amazon Box

Here we have an example of a Sweet and Salty Box being sold to consumers via Amazon by Frito Lay. Compare this with a P&G Pampers page on Amazon and you’ll see that Frito Lay is still learning how to market via the Amazon channel and hasn’t completely figured out how to optimize the experience they create for consumers or likely how to maximize their conversion. But, you may also notice that the Amazon channel offers Frito Lay the opportunity to sell something they probably couldn’t sell in a Krogers, or Whole Foods, or Tesco, or 7-11.

In both of these examples, Amazon is taking and selling the inventory much as a grocery store would, but the customer wants, needs and expectations in the Amazon channel are different, and the skills to effectively market in this channel are different too. These are the reasons that Amazon changes everything for CPG companies. As Amazon continues to grow in importance as a channel for nearly everything, and as other sites like Facebook make a stronger push into eCommerce, and as consumer preferences for where and how they want to buy things changes, it presents a great opportunity for the forward thinking among us to take existing products and create new offerings that resonate with consumers showing a preference for existing and emerging digital channels and to create entirely new solutions that may involve a new product or possibly move beyond a product. Companies in CPG must continue to ask themselves:

  1. What is possible online that isn’t possible in-store?
  2. What do online shoppers want that is different than in-store shoppers?
  3. If we were to move beyond the confines of the product (and how it is packaged and presented), what would resonate with this type of consumer?

You can see on the Pampers page on Amazon above they’ve done a number of different things without changing the product:

  • Offering a range of product quantities
  • Coupons
  • Amazon Dash buttons (push the button and it automatically orders for you)
  • Etc.

And Frito Lay took their existing products and re-packaged them in a different way to suit the capabilities and needs of the channel because selling one individual bag of Doritos doesn’t make economic sense (and so Amazon won’t let you do it unless it is part of a larger Prime Pantry box).

If you were in charge, and had the product range that P&G or Frito Lay have, what would you do to optimize your results in the Amazon channel, or even more broadly in a direct to consumer context?

Please add your comments below.

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Fingerprints of mCommerce Success on iPhone 5S?

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Fingerprints of mCommerce Success on iPhone 5SLast August I wrote about Apple’s pending acquisition of Authentec, a biometric authentication company (which has since closed). At the time Apple was in a real hurry to complete the acquisition and it made me wonder whether Authentec’s fingerprint authentication technology would make it into the home button of the iPhone 5 and eventually into the iPad and the iPad Mini. It didn’t.

But today, as part of the new iPhone 5S, Apple has finally integrated this biometric technology into their flagship mobile phone.

Why does this tiny little sensor represent such a potential sea change for the mobile industry?

Let’s look at all of the ways that this technology addition makes the iPhone more valuable than other phones.

1. Security and Personalization

By integrating the Authentec technology into the iPhone 5S home button, and eventually the iPad and the iPad Mini, Apple can not only create a handy way (no pun intended) to eliminate the need for remembering passwords, but also enable people to make their devices easily personalized for MULTIPLE users of the same device.

But if Apple takes advantage of all the purported abilities of the Authentec technology, the new iPhone 5S may also have the ability to recognize multiple fingers from a single individual, allowing for the home button to potentially achieve multiple functions – like the multiple button mouse.

In practical terms, this means for example that if your five-year-old gets a hold of your iPhone 5S, or you let them have it to keep them occupied in a restaurant, the iPhone 5S could potentially keep them from making phone calls, opening your work emails, etc. or just limit them just to accessing the Apps you grant them access to. But there is also no reason why apps like Netflix could also become personalized based on whose finger was used.

And maybe finally Apple will finally introduce some parental controls on the iPad. It’s maddening as a parent that my only choice on our iPad is to either give my daughter full access to Safari, or no access to Safari and that I have to go in and re-enable Safari when I want to use it. What decade is this? Hopefully iOS 7 will fix this.

2. iTunes and App Store Authentication

For Apple, there are also legal and financial benefits from adding fingerprint authentication, as it will help to prevent (or at least reduce) unauthorized iTunes purchases made by account hackers or children playing with their parent’s iPhone 5S (or upcoming iPad 5). Fingerprint authentication in iPhone 5S and iPad 5 may also encourage people to begin utilizing Apple’s Passport.

3. Universal mCommerce Authentication v1.0

It is embarrassing that the United States is so far behind the rest of the world when it comes to mCommerce. Mostly this has been because the financial services companies (Citibank, Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, American Express, Mastercard, Visa, Verisign, etc.) and mobile phone carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc.) have been fighting to control mCommerce in the United States to the detriment of United States citizens and consumers and mobile innovation. Shame on you!

The new iPhone 5S might help to reignite mobile innovation and mCommerce activity in the United Sates. And given that Apple makes most of their money selling hardware and are facing a market share challenge from Android and Windows 8 devices, it is in Apple’s best interest to open up a fingerprint sensor API in iOS 7 for third party app developers to utilize. This would maximize the potential differentiation and hardware sales, and the incremental device lock-in offered by this new capability.

But there are also increased revenue opportunities for Apple, as integrated fingerprint authentication is likely to lead to an increase in impulse iTunes and App Store purchases. Why will a fingerprint sensor likely lead to an increase in music and app purchases for Apple? Simple, it will make it easier and faster for people to buy things from iTunes or the App Store, and give consumers less time to change their mind after they get the urge to buy something.

One thing I didn’t see mentioned in Apple’s iPhone 5S announcement was the inclusion of any kind of Near Field Communication (NFC) capability in this latest flagship model. So v1.0 of Apple’s universal mCommerce authentication capabilities may only include authentication of eCommerce purchases made via mobile web sites or mobile apps. Without NFC I’m not sure exactly how authenticated purchases in the physical world would be made, short of a scanner reading a post-authentication-generated QR Code or something like that. Of course there is a way (or several) and mobile innovators surely will find them until NFC is incorporated into future iPhones and iPads.


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4. Universal mCommerce Authentication v2.0

Once NFC capabilities are added to the iPhone, then people like Square, but also traditional banks, and even Google could add iPhone 5S fingerprint authentication to apps for mCommerce for users to download and install on their phone. This represents a HUGE opportunity for Square and a challenge obviously for the established players. It will be interesting to see whether Apple will be the first to integrate fingerprint authentication together with NFC or whether Samsung or someone else will beat them to it, or even whether it might be able to be added via a 3rd party case or backing for the phone. What do you think?

Wrapup

The initial iPhone turned your finger into a more useful tool for the digital world. The new iPhone 5S turns your finger into a key, and how many locks it will help you open remains to be seen. Let’s hope that in the same way that the iPhone broke the stranglehold that the mobile carriers had on application innovation on the handset, the new iPhone 5S will create a new wave of mobile innovation in the mCommerce space.

Let’s hope that Apple’s new iPhone 5S gives new meaning to the phrase ‘Digital Innovation’.

Okay this time the pun is intended, and hopefully it will help some of you think of new possibilities for digit-driven computing.

Keep innovating!

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Showrooming vs. Retail Warehousing

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Showrooming vs. Retail WarehousingOld School vs. Old School

As the saying goes, ‘what’s old is new again’. Only this time robots and hand-held computers (aka smartphones) are involved.

I was having a conversation recently with a colleague about the retail industry and I made the point that all retail stores are warehouses, only some are prettier than others.

Walk into the average Macy’s or other department store and you’ll see piles of inventory out on display in the store, of every size (from small to XXXL) and variety (white, black, brown, etc.) with even more in the back. Retail WarehousingAll of this inventory has been tagged for individual sale and is there every day, just in case the person who wants that size, color, style, whatever, walks into the store ready to take it home today.

Contrast this with Argos in the UK or the now-defunct Best and Service Merchandise in the United States whose business model was to have only certain items out on display in the retail store, with the rest of the inventory in the back ready to be picked (much like an eCommerce environment) once the product(s) were ordered.

Showrooming and Retail Warehousing HybridApple Stores are a hybrid between the two. Accessories are out on the floor boxed for individual sale, while iMac and iBook computers, iPad tablets, and iPod mp3 players are all out of the box and display in droves for customers to try out and hopefully purchase. Then if they do, the box appears from the warehouse in the back.

But there is a new wave of entrepreneurs trying to bring back the catalog retailing business model into the modern age. Version 1 was standard eCommerce where the catalog was available online instead of in the store and no physical retail stores had to be maintained, leading to a financial advantage for online retailers like Amazon. But eCommerce has a weakness, and that is in product categories need to know how something fits or feels or otherwise fits their style or life.

ShowroomingThis has led to the rise of what physical retailers rail against, the concept of showrooming. If you’re not familiar with what showrooming is, it is the pattern of behavior where potential customers come into a physical retail store, explore the product, try it on if necessary, and then leave the store and buy the product online from a competitor like Amazon.

Some entrepreneurs are beginning to recognize the collision of some of the mobile technologies that underlie the showrooming trend together with automated robotic picking technologies and the recognition of inefficiencies in the traditional retail warehousing model.

Hointer Founder

One example is a Seattle area entrepreneur who left Amazon to launch a business called Hointer that while they are talking about how they are revolutionizing the premium jean shopping experience for men, their real strategy is to use their store as a rapid prototyping and testing environment to develop a technology platform supporting the browsing, trying, and checkout process that they hope to sell to a number of different retailers all around the world. Their modernization of the catalog showroom business model is predicated on reducing the square footage and personnel required to operate a store, thus increasing (hopefully) the dollars per square foot ratio that most retailers use as their success metric. One side benefit of the approach is that salespeople will be able to spend less time folding clothes and more time helping customers. Imagine that.

Will this robotic retailing concept catch on with more than utilitarian shoppers?

Image Credits: Daily UW, Hointer


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Amazon Makes Copy and Paste Fun

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Amazon Makes Copy and Paste Fun

When companies start from the premise that innovation is all about value, it is amazing just how many innovations – big and small – that they can achieve.

So how do you make something as dull as giving someone a gift card, especially an online gift card where you’re buying a string of numbers and letters for the recipient to copy and paste the code into their Amazon account, interesting?

Well, Amazon has teamed with Jib Jab to transform this pretty boring but useful process into a valuable and fun one for both you the buyer and the recipient of your Amazon gift card by allowing you to make a fun, customized video card to send along with the gift card, that makes you the star.

Yes, it is a small thing, but when you put the focus of all of your employees on creating value, improving value access, and doing good value translation in every element of your business, just think how much innovation you can create.

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