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March 3, 2008

Developing an Effective Channel Strategy in the World of Channel Proliferations
by: Idris Mootee

Dell is seriously thinking about expanding their stores and giving up their strategic competitive advantage of direct e-commerce only distribution. There were so many debates on how the role of intermediaries has changed due to the Internet and social networks. Today many companies still have not resolved these issues while spending millions on world class solutions such as ATG. I came across this note which was a speech given to a b-school marketing club 2-3 years ago. I was talking about channel strategy and I thought I should share with you here:

Continue reading "Developing an Effective Channel Strategy in the World of Channel Proliferations" »

Posted by Futurelab at 6:00 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

March 2, 2008

Online Gamers Leave American Cars for Imports

by: Scott Goodson

gamers.png

The majority of gamers own American-made cars (24% Ford, 18% Chevrolet). However, 79% are planning to buy an import for their next car (41% Toyota, 41% Honda, 25% Nissan and others).

Continue reading "Online Gamers Leave American Cars for Imports" »

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February 22, 2008

Why the Absolut Campaign Switch Worked

by: Roger Dooley

Last year, Absolut abandoned its classic "bottle" ad campaign. That long-running series of ads featured the shape of an Absolut bottle cleverly concealed in an illustration, and was largely responsible for establishing Absolut vodka as one of the most popular and well-recognized brands in the spirits field. I was surprised by the change, but even wildly successful ad programs eventually have to break with the past.

Continue reading "Why the Absolut Campaign Switch Worked" »

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February 17, 2008

Who clicks on ads? (Revisited with data)
by: danah boyd

Two months ago, I ruffled some feathers with a post called Who clicks on ads? And what might this mean? Lacking any good public research, I pointed to a blog post by an AOL Global Advertising Strategy guy talking about research they did on AOL ad clickers. The report was by no means generalizable to all ad clickers, but it made a significant point: ad clickers are not representative of the population at large. Still, there were folks that were annoyed that I wasn't pointing to pubic data, especially when I continued on to make my own hypotheses about who these heavy clickers are.

Continue reading "Who clicks on ads? (Revisited with data)" »

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February 10, 2008

Comfort Shopping: Sad Customers Buy More
by: Roger Dooley

Most merchants would include "happy customers" as a key part of their mission. Oddly, new research shows that sad customers are likely to spend more money when shopping. Merely watching a sad video clip caused subjects to pay nearly four times as much for a water bottle than subjects who watched an emotionally neutral clip.

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Posted by Futurelab at 10:35 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

January 29, 2008

Bridging The Gap Between Online and Offline Shopping
by: Ilya Vedrashko

A couple of years ago, I posted a small blurb on Fast Company's blog about how customer expectations of offline retail are being shaped by their online shopping experiences. Last month, Business Week published an article pretty much to the same effect: 

Continue reading "Bridging The Gap Between Online and Offline Shopping" »

Posted by Futurelab at 2:31 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

January 11, 2008

Technology and the World of Consumption
by: danah boyd

I had just finished giving a talk about youth culture to a room full of professionals who worked in the retail industry when a woman raised her hand to tell me a story. It was homecoming season and her daughter Mary was going to go to homecoming for the first time. What fascinated this mother was that her daughter's approach to shopping was completely different than her own.

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Posted by Futurelab at 2:47 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

January 6, 2008

Does Your Retail Have a Soul?
by: David Polinchock

I know, you're thinking that it's a dumb question relating to a whole bunch of mumbo jumbo, new age stuff, but let me explain. On the Friday after Christmas, Sarah DaVanzo & I spent the day walking through all of the shops along Madison Avenue, starting at about 59th Street. We visited all of the high-end, luxury stores for about 20 blocks and what we found were stores without a soul. Stores that had no energy, no life to them and were, in many cases didn't have many people in them either.

Continue reading "Does Your Retail Have a Soul?" »

Posted by Futurelab at 9:49 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

December 28, 2007

Audio Branding: ‘Tis the Season
by: Roger Dooley

Marketing campaigns often focus primarily on the sense of vision, whether they are purely visual elements like print ads and billboards, or even when they have associated sound, like television commercials or retail environments. I’ve written about olfactory marketing - appealing to the sense of smell - but what about sound?

Continue reading "Audio Branding: ‘Tis the Season" »

Posted by Futurelab at 9:07 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

December 23, 2007

All I Want for X-MAS is a Better X-perience
by: David Armano

Bruce Tempkin of Forrester and the Customer Experience Matters blog has gift-wrapped a nice little stocking stuffer in the form of "Customer Experience Resolutions".  They are:

Continue reading "All I Want for X-MAS is a Better X-perience" »

Posted by Futurelab at 10:29 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

December 16, 2007

Rendering Authenticity
by: John Caddell

I've been struggling through the new book “Authenticity” by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, and I've been wondering why I've struggled. It's not a badly-written book, and I remember reading and liking some articles adapted from their earlier book, “The Experience Economy.” I'm also interested in the idea of authenticity (link to prior post). But nonetheless, I've read the book in fits and starts. It's been a chore.

Continue reading "Rendering Authenticity" »

Posted by Futurelab at 4:29 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

December 12, 2007

Green May Be Ho-Hum for the Holidays, But It's Here to Stay

by: David Wigder

So far, this holiday season has seen a rather muted push on green by retailers, both in terms of the products they sell and the messages they communicate to consumers. Marshal Cohen, Chief Industry Analyst at NPD Group, recently suggested that such lack of enthusiasm by retailers reflects waning interest in green.  Cohen stated: “It’s basically a card that a lot of people played while it was hot and trendy…and it got overplayed.” 

Continue reading "Green May Be Ho-Hum for the Holidays, But It's Here to Stay" »

Posted by Futurelab at 9:04 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

November 30, 2007

How to Increase Customer Pain

by: Roger Dooley

palm_centro.jpg

Big companies often find great ways to aggravate their customers, and cell phone giant Sprint proves the point. John Wall of the Ronin Marketing blog posted a rant about Sprint’s advertising for their Centro Palm smartphone, Screw Your Customers.

Continue reading "How to Increase Customer Pain" »

Posted by Futurelab at 11:25 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

November 26, 2007

Cyber Monday Impulse Buying
by: Roger Dooley

Cyber Monday is one of those recent inventions that seems a bit suspect. Is the Monday after Thanksgiving really the biggest ecommerce sales day? It looks like Cyber Monday will have to work hard to beat Black Friday, when reports indicate that shoppers spent over $500 million online. Just in time for the online sales blitz, Web marketing expert Gord Hotchkiss has written a thoughtful post on Web impulse buying.

Continue reading "Cyber Monday Impulse Buying" »

Posted by Futurelab at 8:42 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

November 24, 2007

Black Friday Neuromarketing
by: Roger Dooley

Across the U.S., retailers launched massive ad campaigns for the day after Thanksgiving, a.k.a Black Friday. The biggest shopping day of the year offers retailers a major challenge: how to get people into THEIR store, because once there the customers may spend a good part of their holiday gift budget. While most of the stores use the unsubtle approach of marking a small number of items down to ruinously low prices, there’s certainly some psychology at work too.

Continue reading "Black Friday Neuromarketing" »

Posted by Futurelab at 7:08 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

November 21, 2007

Some Research about Travel and the 50-plus

by: Dick Stroud

Research (from Alliance & Leicester) has looked at the goals and ambitions of the UK’s 50 plus and shows that travel is at the top of their agenda. Over half (54%) want to travel more regularly and to long-haul destinations and a further (22%) want a “once in a lifetime holiday” in the next decade.

Continue reading " Some Research about Travel and the 50-plus" »

Posted by Futurelab at 8:44 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

November 19, 2007

When Retail Goes Virtual

by: C. Sven Johnson

I caught a whiff of this piece on the Guardian earlier this month, and having finally read it, all I can say is, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster someone else is starting to talk about the impact virtual worlds will almost certainly have on real world commerce. Victor Keegan has fired a nice warning flare in his article, “Virtual China looks for real benefits” (Link). From the piece:

Continue reading "When Retail Goes Virtual" »

Posted by Futurelab at 12:08 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

November 16, 2007

A Little Less Conversation ... (slideshow)

by: Alain Thys

A few weeks ago I spoke in the Netherlands at a Marktplein 2.0: A Little Less Action, A Little More Conversation, a conference, which essentially wanted to encourage (direct) marketers to engage in conversations with the consumer, rather than just shout at him.   Confronted with the hyperbolic language of the conference brochure indicating the "'newness" fo the conversation phenomenon, I couldn't resist the jab of inverting the title of the conference for my keynote.  In stead of talking about conversations with customers, I think it's time marketers got out of their office and actually had them.

Continue reading "A Little Less Conversation ... (slideshow)" »

Posted by Futurelab at 4:14 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

Gluttonous Texting

by: danah boyd

For peculiar historical business reasons, Americans and Canadians pay to receive text messages. This creates a stilted social dynamic whereby a friend forces you to pay $.10 (or use up a precious token msg in your plan) simply by deciding to send you something. You have no choice. There's no blocking, no opt-out. Direct to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

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Posted by Futurelab at 4:02 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

November 12, 2007

Offline Retailers and Online Expectations

by: Ilya Vedrashko

Bill Gerba at Retail Media News blogged recently about a Datamonitor report that said "the next step in the battle to retain customers' is to streamline the buying experience, bringing it more in line with internet shopping in terms of ease and speed of transaction."

Continue reading "Offline Retailers and Online Expectations " »

Posted by Futurelab at 2:39 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

November 5, 2007

Penalty Pain: How to Make Your Customers Hate You

by: Roger Dooley

penalty_pain.jpg Neuromarketing readers are by now familiar with the idea of “buying pain” or “pain of paying” - when we buy something, the pain center in our brain can be activated. Work by Carnegie Mellon’s George Loewenstein and others shows that this effect is greatest when the price is perceived to be high or unfair.

Continue reading "Penalty Pain: How to Make Your Customers Hate You" »

Posted by Futurelab at 7:48 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

November 3, 2007

Neuromarketing and Diversity
by: Roger Dooley

Advertising Age revisits neuromarketing, this time in the form of a blog post by Jonathon Feit, Neuromarketing and Diversity Go Hand-in-Hand. Writing about the 2007 American Magazine Conference in Boca Raton (nice work, if you can get it…), Feit posits:

Continue reading "Neuromarketing and Diversity" »

Posted by Futurelab at 10:18 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

November 2, 2007

Screenshots: Kinset 3D Shopping Browser
by: Ilya Vedrashko

Kinset is a new company that builds virtual 3D storefronts for online and multi-channel retailers. The storefronts can be viewed with a special browser that comes in a rather small download. One of the potential applications for the service is a virtual environment that can be used to test real-world store layouts, and this video shows how these storefronts are generated and populated with merchandise.

Continue reading " Screenshots: Kinset 3D Shopping Browser" »

Posted by Futurelab at 11:03 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

November 1, 2007

Sensory Marketing to Jolt Espresso Sales

by: Roger Dooley

One of the keys to the phenomenal success of Starbucks has been that its stores offer a consistent and appealing sensory experience. The music, colors, and lighting are all important, but clearly the wonderful coffee aroma is what dominates one’s senses on entering a Starbucks outlet.

Continue reading "Sensory Marketing to Jolt Espresso Sales" »

Posted by Futurelab at 10:53 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

October 28, 2007

Smiles Really DO Boost Sales

by: Roger Dooley

What’s the first thing a manager teaches a new retail or food service employee? Maybe “Don’t steal the cash!” is first, but right after that is, “Smile at the customer!” It turns out that this is probably even better advice than one might think. Continuing our exploration of subliminal stimuli and their effects on behavior, I wanted to share an intriguing study that shows that exposure to brief images of smiling or frowning faces - too quickly for the subject to consciously process - actually affected the amount test subjects were willing to pay for a drink!

Continue reading "Smiles Really DO Boost Sales" »

Posted by Futurelab at 12:10 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)  • Email this article to a friend

October 21, 2007

The Margin Challenge of Being Green

by: Alain Thys

When listening to the case of TNT Post's sustainability efforts at Marktplein 2.0, I could only conclude that no good deed goes unpunished. And as it's a situation which many companies going "green" may be facing soon, it's one to start thinking about today.

Continue reading "The Margin Challenge of Being Green" »

Posted by Futurelab at 8:22 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

October 20, 2007

Radiohead Update, Set Your Own Price Experiment Sells 1.2 Million Albums at $8 Each

by: Karl Long

So in the first week Radiohead’s album, In Rainbows, which they allowed customer to set their own prices 1 sells 1.2 million downloads and gets an average of $8 each. Next time I’ll just ask them to up the bitrate a little bit.

Continue reading "Radiohead Update, Set Your Own Price Experiment Sells 1.2 Million Albums at $8 Each " »

Posted by Futurelab at 1:41 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

Ignore Your Brain and Get Rich

by: Roger Dooley

The subtitle of Your Money & Your Brain by Jason Zweig (Simon & Schuster, 340pp) is How The New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Make You Rich. No doubt the publishers needed to spice up the cover a bit, because the book might have been better subtitled, “How to stop your brain from screwing up a slow and steady investment strategy.”

Continue reading "Ignore Your Brain and Get Rich" »

Posted by Futurelab at 1:35 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

October 11, 2007

Cooler and the Quixotic Quest for Carbon-Neutral Consumption

by: Joel Makower

The notion of carbon-neutral shopping looms large for many in the environmental world. If only we could shop without guilt, knowing unquestionably that the global warming impacts of our purchases were being rendered harmless, we'd all feel that we were being part of the solution to climate change.

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Posted by Futurelab at 8:31 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

October 8, 2007

French Supermarket Casino Labels Eco-Friendliness of its Products

by: Alain Thys

casinologoNow here's a green programme that's pragmatic, inspiring and at the same time simple enough that it could make consumers care.  In 2008, the French supermarket Casino intends to label its products according to their eco-friendliness.  The move follows an earlier announcement by Britain's Tesco who will start tracking the CO2 footprint of its products.

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Posted by Futurelab at 11:08 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

October 2, 2007

Poor Service Results in Major Retail Loss

by: David Polinchock

Anyone who read this blog will say "no kidding" when they read this, but glad to see someone is actually putting some research together. Maybe now people will listen!

A study by M/A/R/C(R) Research and National In-Store revealed that more than 16 percent of consumers would stop shopping at a retail store if they received bad customer service, particularly in the areas of consumer electronics and home improvement.

Continue reading "Poor Service Results in Major Retail Loss" »

Posted by Futurelab at 3:34 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

September 25, 2007

HeadOn Spots Effective in Driving Sales

 by: Ilya Vedrashko

headonAdAge: "The HeadOn, apply directly to the forehead spots (YouTube) are arguably among the worst commercials ever from a creative standpoint. They're annoying, repetitive, obnoxious -- and effective."

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Posted by Futurelab at 10:11 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

September 5, 2007

The Almost Forgotten Experience of Getting Lost in Physical Space

by: Sebastian Campion

urbandisorientation_gamethumbConflux Festival #3

Most of us have experienced getting lost and with that in mind, it is usually something we try to avoid. Actually, getting lost is also getting harder because our obsession with mapping things and ourselves (Google Maps, GPS and other locative technologies and services) has radically reduced the risk.

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Posted by Futurelab at 10:25 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

August 26, 2007

This is Your Brain on Money

by: Roger Dooley

The human mind may be well suited to surviving in dangerous forests and plains, but it doesn’t do as well with modern financial decisions. A lengthy and interesting article in Money by Jason Zweig (read it online at CNNMoney.com - Your money and your brain.) highlights some of the areas where our brain’s decision-making processes yield results that are often less than optimal from an economic standpoint.

Continue reading "This is Your Brain on Money" »

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August 20, 2007

Idea Store - Created and Managed by Tower Hamlets Council - Home

by: David Polinchock

You know, I wish I could remember where I first read about this, but what a cool idea. Totally changing the idea of what a library is and does. I love the idea of the library as an "idea store" too. Not a repository of information that is sometimes hard to navigate, but a place for you to get ideas.

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Posted by Futurelab at 9:57 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

Serious Games Delivering Retail Career Key Messages

by: Eliane Alhadeff (via: Business & Games)

Skillsmart Retail is a genuinely enjoyable game. Although its target audience ranges between 14 to 19 year olds, I've seen some senior retailers and marketers having a great playful time as they go through the various quizzes and game levels.

Continue reading "Serious Games Delivering Retail Career Key Messages" »

Posted by Futurelab at 9:57 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

August 18, 2007

Pheromones Encourage Shopping

by: Ilya Vedrashko

Found this news article back from January 2004 while browsing Live-Scent.com forums:

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Posted by Futurelab at 12:46 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

August 15, 2007

Future: Technology Recognizes Shopping Intent