Tag Archives: eCommerce

Genius of Rewarding Customers for Eating Other People’s Pizza

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!

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Amazon Changes Everything in a New Way

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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:

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.

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:

What is possible online that isn’t possible in-store?
What do online shoppers want that is different than in-store shoppers?
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 5S Last 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 Warehousing Old 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 Warehousing All 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 Hybrid Apple 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.

This 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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Tag Archives: eCommerce

Genius of Rewarding Customers for Eating Other People’s Pizza

Who is the Innovator? Amazon or Kroger?

Amazon Changes Everything in a New Way

Fingerprints of mCommerce Success on iPhone 5S?

Showrooming vs. Retail Warehousing

Amazon Makes Copy and Paste Fun