Off the Shelf: The Retail & CPG Blog

Guest Post by Ashish Jaiswal, Retail & Consumer Products, Infosys

A friend of mine has been a loyal customer of Nordstrom's for a number of years. She would make a trip down to the store in the mall every few weeks to look at the new arrivals and to checkout items she had seen her friends wear at the last party.  She enjoyed shopping Nordstrom's wide selection of designer apparel and shoe brands and their outstanding customer service (one particular associate in the store knew her by name and remembered many of her past purchases, and at times he provided good product recommendations)......

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 "Google Indoor Maps" has opened a whole new opportunity to retailers whereby they can enable their customers in getting easy and quick access to the products that they're looking for. In brief, "Google Indoor Maps" allows a person walking inside a store to navigate his travel within this indoor location just like what she(/he) would have done while driving a car using a GPS

Integrating these maps with Retailer's own mobile application (app) and tagging a store's aisles by "Product Categories" on these Google Indoor Maps for a large format store, going down to category of products available by Brands may be just the beginning of the thought as to how Retailers allow their patrons to directly reach out for the product that they are looking for rather than wandering through store departments or searching for a store associate which for some shoppers may be time consuming or even frustrating.

One of the best supporting feature on Google floor maps, is the ability to guide the user by individual floor's plans, whereby a large multi-level retail stores can also be covered easily and therefore we feel that some of the immediate exploits can be in the large scale Store or say Super Store

Let us try to understand how one such Retailer app may make the life a Retailer's clientele much simpler and the shopping experience much better. Assume the scenario that our loyal Customer "Louise" is entering such a Large Super Store for her weekly purchases which runs across several departments of the store like fresh produce, dry grocery, apparel, cleaning supplies, bath-ware, electronics, sports goods and the list goes on. Soon after she has parked at the store, Louise logs-in to the Retailer's own native Mobile app on her smart phone. The Retailer's app upon invocation on her smart phone, detects her geographical location and the store that she is visiting today via Location Based Services (LBS) wherein this specific store's latest tagged maps can be pulled and displayed on Louise's phone's screen

To make the whole shopping trip faster, Louise has keyed in the shopping-list beforehand in the app and a route map is prepared for her upon her check-in into the store via this app. This route map is based on the latest movement of shelves/racks in the store.  Such a guided walk cuts down the Louise's walk through the aisles a short, easy and a confortable one

Louise was looking for a shirt for her son, but the size small does not appear on the shelf today... does the store have it? No problem... the check would be a quick one by Louise quickly getting to know this via her mobile app. Moreover, if it is not available in store right now, the app prompts her with an easy and quick site to store order which she can pick up during her trip next week 

Another use for this app+google maps eco-system can be to integrate with the floor maps and publish current vacancies/next available time slots/expected wait times in Large Store's sub stores like ophthalmologist shops, saloons etc.

This Large Super Store's sub stores are very frequently publishing a status of a vacant customer spots/seat available or unavailability of the same on the floor map which when viewed by Louise, will give her an idea whether she needs to do the shopping first or go to the sub store for a quick visit to the hair salon

While these are just some of the initial thoughts, when pursued actively this specific technology can be utilized in umpteen ways to boost the store sales and to guarantee customer satisfaction. Overall, sky is the limit when one starts documenting the concept of such a solution/product. Customer purchase/return history and loyalty points can be utilized to highlight offers/deals when customer is approaching a specific aisle or when she has been looking for a specific product for some time

This article has been contributed by Ashutosh Kaushal - Senior Consultant (Sterling Commerce - Infosys Ltd). You can reach Ashutosh at Ashutosh_Kaushal@infosys.com.

Posted by Sanjeev Kulkarni at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Most retailers traditionally leverage sales data from POS terminals to analyze buying behavior. In some cases, loyalty card data is also used to determine appropriate assortment decisions. These data sources and their corresponding analysis have proven reasonably helpful, though they don't convey the whole picture. With the recent explosion in social and consumer related data on the web, there is a wealth of information that Retailers should be exploiting and incorporating into their merchandising decisions, primarily around assortment and space.

Social/Consumer genome related data provides rich insights into needs, wants and buying behavior of individuals. This data when combined with demographic and geographic data can provide a good map of consumer wants and needs for a given market for a set of product categories.

A major input into merchandising decisions / assortment plans is to determine consumer buying behavior to identify what products sell and what potential products could sell to increase sales. Based on this analysis, assortment decisions of inclusion/exclusion or allotment of space are provided. The means to identify this buying behavior was typically the use of POS data or data from Nielsen/IRI that provided good basis for WHAT was being purchased. When married with Demographic data, there was a good proxy for WHY the products were being purchased. Even when rigorous correlation and clustering analysis is carried out, the determination of buying behavior and the reasons for the same were proxies at best.

Now with the availability of consumer genome or social genome information, the analysis of WHY purchases are being made and what is being purchased with identification of latent and express needs becomes even more accurate as there is clear expression of wants and needs. This will significantly enhance the quality of assortment and merchandising decisions as the degree of error/approximation is reduced.

There are however some pitfalls to the use of this data. We cannot solely rely on this data as web usage and consumer/social genome information may not fully represent buying needs and wants for the entire market population. This data usage has to be married to traditional sales analysis to augment the decision making process.

There are no tools / application products in the market place that provide truly integrated capabilities. The holy grail for optimized merchandising would be to integrate social/consumer genome data effectively into the traditional clustering analysis and thereby into the assortment planning process. This might be a challenge for some of the retailers who struggle with traditional approaches. Asking them to adopt more advanced analytical approaches to incorporate social/consumer genome data would be a challenge.

The key would be to devise suitable technology/process platform augmented with robust analytics shared services that can leverage necessary data to enable optimized merchandising decisions.

This article has been contributed by Amitabh Mudaliar (Group Engagement Manager - RCL Infosys). You can reach Amitabh at Amitabh_M@infosys.com.

Posted by Sanjeev Kulkarni at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Consumers and End Users today are looking at opportunities which will ensure quicker and easier access to their needs and want to pursue avenues which will help enable their requirements are met in simplest possible way. To make this happen we observe so many emerging trends and transformations starting from Internet, eCommerce, Mobility, etc... Just wanted to pen down my experience on mobility in everyday life during my recent domestic travel.

I was travelling on regular business trip and was in the queue checking in to board the flight. The boarding was happening zone by zone. First the Executive and First class passengers were being boarded, and followed by passengers from Zone-1 through Zone-4. When I was almost close to heading the gate and ready to hand in by boarding pass for check-in, the passenger ahead of me handed over his mobile and got it scanned and went through the gates for boarding the flight. Few of the passengers behind me who probably are not aware of mobile check-in were surprised and were discussing on what are they doing with a mobile phone and scanning?? 

Mobile check-in has become very common these days. Passenger need not have to go through the hassle of getting their airline confirmation information and print out a paper boarding pass and get through the check-in process. Rather the complete process is made much simple. When the booking is done on-line, passengers have the option to choose "Electronic check-in" and submit their mobile details so that eBoarding details are sent to the mobile device. Once a passenger have mobile boarding pass in their device they need not wait in the airline ticketing counter or self-checkin aisle to print out the paper boarding pass. Instead they can directly go to the TSA agents show the eBoarding pass and get through the security check area, and then directly go to the airline agent near the boarding gates, have the eBoarding pass scanned and directly walk into the flight. Life is made much simpler and easier and new opportunities are designed which will help end users save time and money.

On the face of it the mobility usage for a simple airline check-in process helps in:

1.       Reducing usage of paper (Go green) for airline confirmation and boarding pass.

2.       Saves time for passengers standing in airline counters / self check-in to get their boarding pass.

3.       Reduces manual work for airline saving labor cost.

This is one of the several other aspects where mobility is transforming the life style of a common man. Apart from airline ticketing, we have several other emerging trends in mobility like Accessing internet, Social networking, mCommerce, Use of QR codes, etc... There are new and ground breaking technology that emerges everyday to simplify the life of a common man, now it is up to each individuals to make sure they are up to speed on the changes and tap them based on specific requirements.

Also we have technologies like NFC (Near Field Communications) which has started to become common and prevalent wherein smartphones and devices having the capability can communicate between each other wireless without any physical connectivity.

Given the latest surveys and statistics we know that at least 4 out of every 5 users have mobile phones and with so many new trends and apps being introduced almost every day, it is up to the end user to leverage the benefits and advantages and make his life simpler and economical. Have fun with your Mobile devices / smartphones!

This article has been authored by Harshavardan Balachandran (Program Manager - Infosys Ltd). Reach Harsha at Harshavardan_b@infosys.com

Posted by Sanjeev Kulkarni at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Despite the fact that online shopping does not provide "instant gratification" except for downloads such as books, movies, documents, software etc.; online shopping has only boomed in other areas such as apparel and grocery due to a seamless multi-channel integration by many large retailers. But the fact still remains that most shoppers browsing online would like "Instant Gratification" and hence would only browse and compare prices on the web. But, when it comes to purchasing an item they may drive down to their favorite store. This urge of the customer to immediately buy an item may be taken care of with a value added service such as "Same day delivery".

With most online retailers having just a few centralized warehouse locations, it may not be very easy to deliver an item from a warehouse in Texas to a customer in California the very same day the order is received. While large retailers like Amazon have plans to set up warehouses across different parts of US to provide such a service it may not be a feasible option for many other retailers.  While Amazon has been largely successful in providing significant value to "Prime" customers with the Next day delivery option, "Same day delivery" will be a huge leap forward; while many other competitors such as BestBuy still struggle to get their online commerce strategies in the right place. There are also opinions from experts who believe that such a move by Amazon to set up distribution centers right inside some of the largest metropolitan areas instead of far-off low cost interior locations, has the potential to kill local retail businesses. And if you want your stuff "NOW" you would order on Amazon.com.

Having said that, let us explore what are the options for other large retailers who have both physical and online stores. While many large retailers have a Multi-Channel Integration plan with a "Pick up in store" option, how many are able to implement it the right way? We have seen many customers complaining on the web, that these retailers may not carry inventory even if their website shows inventory of goods. Therefore a seamless integration of your store and online inventory is a must. Many retailers still do not take an online payment for a "Store Pick Up" order due to disconnect between their online and physical store's order management, payments and customer service systems. Also, if "Store Pick Up" can be implemented perfectly right, you would be certainly able to provide "Same day delivery". If the system can look up inventory within 5 or 10 stores nearest to the location of the shipping address, and if the order can be sourced from the optimal store, "Same day delivery" can be achieved. The in-store processes may have to be re-modeled such that, when a "Same day delivery" order is received, in-store associates pick and move the order to a "Carrier pick up" area and the preferred 3PL would pick the orders for a day and deliver them the same day. It would also be important to provide a seamless Mobile and Tablet integration for such a program. Also, the right e-mail communication for order status updates and for program marketing is also an important area for the retailer not to ignore.

While I personally feel such a delivery option can completely alter the way we shop in future, it would be great to analyze perspectives of all the readers of this blog.  

Posted by Sanjeev Kulkarni at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Hey Guys..!! It's a weekend ahead..! Planning for some shopping..??

And you might be looking for some good stores with nicest displays, are you?

Have you ever wondered how easy it is for retailers to create a store on your expectations?

Well, let me tell you the very fact about it, there is a hell lot of planning which goes on before giving you something which you find as "SIMPLE".

It's not that easy for retailers to conceptualize their store for maximum footfalls and conversions, rather it's like an iceberg where you hardly see 20% of its size on surface, and 80% still lies below the visibility layer.

Have you ever wondered, what lies in the remaining 80% part that you can't see..??

As far as I can understand it there are various key 'Mantras' that retailers follow to ensure the best store layouts and displays:

1. Human psychographics: human psychographic factors give an important touch to the store because the subconscious mind of the human being many a times plays more important role than the conscious mind. There are certain factors which greatly influence the footfalls and sales of the stores such as: people see at their right hand side first and move toward that most of the times, this factor may be used to boost up the store sales for a particular category and if a right attraction factor is arranged in such a way, it could enhance the overall sales of the store to a greater extent.

2. Category flow: sensible and easily understandable by the customers. Display should tell story about the product usage so it becomes easier for the customers to relate and understand. It should be enabling customers to move throughout the store without him knowing the same.

3.  Adjacency plan: within the category, the products should be kept maintaining a flow of understanding, based on a particular criterion. This makes it easy for the customers to choose products faster without the products being left out of sight.

4. Appropriate use of fixtures and textures with great ergonomic planning is what make the shopping experience even more pleasant.

5. Use of the focal walls: should be given to a product that appeals to the customers the most and is able to make them stay longer in the store.

6. Use of color combinations and proper lighting improves the touch and feel of the store, attracts customers, and meanwhile increase their curiosity about the products. Especially Spotlighting in case of window display has a great significance. Using the concepts from color wheel definitely holds eyes towards the merchandise for longer.

7. Signage: play very important role for enhancing customer understanding in different terms like directions, product usage, promotion and many more.

8. Activation zone: the space where the promotional campaigns actually work. Mostly these are easiest approachable places in the store and receive a lot of customer attention.

9. Neither empty shelves nor the over flooded shelves are going to help; customers don't like both of the situations knowingly or unknowingly.

10.  Washrooms/trial rooms etc. needs to be maintained as per the need of the retail format. And should be clean & clear, appropriately ventilated and separated from the store yet properly accessible.

11.  Hot Spot Planning: Hot spots in a store are the most significant places for promotions as maximum traffic engagement is found at these places, might these be at the entrance, in the center, or on the end caps of the aisles depending upon the area and structure of the store-floor.

12.  Window Displays: The story that's hidden in the windows of the store is something which pulls crowd from the visibility zone and facilitate high footfalls.

13.  The consistency factor: Finally a consistent combination of all the factors in the store is what creates an overall impact.

Have you ever given a thought, how different it is from what you thought earlier..!!

It takes more than a few days, weeks or months to generate this entire plan which helps you buy at the stores. There is probably even more than what I have mentioned above. If you know a few of the other things, please hit the comment button and let everybody else know about it.

Posted by Vinay Rawat at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

 I was observing my kids play with their Nintendo 3DS and one of the features in it is the augmented reality games which enable them to play a game in their own surroundings. For example, they could play a Mario puzzle game with their desk as the place on which the puzzle is formed. They could track down helicopters which are shown flying around their room. It was a combination of the in built camera and some cleverly built software. It looked to me like 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' had come to life.

But the interesting part was the way we could use this for applying it to shopping experiences. The biggest challenge with online shopping is that you cant touch and feel what you are buying but also you cant visualize the merchandise and how it will fit into your home. Enter augmented reality - if you could download the picture of a wall hanging and then place it in your settings (the same way a Mario comes to life on my sons desk) - things come to life. You actually can see how it looks. Another area could be matching the color of the wall to your furniture or finding flooring for your rooms. With almost all devices now having an inbuilt camera, this should be an easy part of building smart software to do this.

Do you think this technology will be adopted by the retailers ? Will the consumers go for it if it is packaged as an easy to use technology ?

Posted by Kapil Khanduja at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Retail is exploding in Asian markets and those markets have become the driving forces fueling global growth in retail sales and space. In dozens of product categories, the Asian consumer is already the global king. China is the world's biggest market for many household products, including TVs, refrigerators, and air conditioners. This year, for the first time ever, China will probably top the United States and Japan as the world's largest automobile market by number of vehicles sold. For manufacturers such as GM and Volkswagen, which made big bets in China early, booming sales there help offset home market losses. India's consumer market lags behind China's by five to ten years, but similar stories of booming growth are unfolding there. Already, India is the world's fastest-growing mobile-phone market, adding more than ten million new subscribers a month. Its top consumer companies, including Hindustan Unilever, Nestlé India, Godrej Consumer Products, and Colgate Palmolive, have posted cumulative annual growth rates of 14 to 19 percent over the past five years while sales at the country's leading retailer, Pantaloon Retail, soared by 68 percent. Throughout Asia, products and market segments are growing explosively, in sudden waves of 70 to 100 percent expansion that could run for years. Global businesses that can't ride those waves may drown in them.

Continue reading "Is the East the new West for Retailers?" »

Posted by Tanveer Singh Khanuja at 6:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

'Do you want to open a free credit card with us today and get 10% off on today's purchase and 10% or more on the future purchases?'

Haven't you been asked that question at the point of sale (POS) of any retail store? The question keeps you wondering if you should say a 'Yes' or 'No'. A 'No' finishes the billing process faster with no losses, or at times, no impact to your credit history. A 'Yes' makes you sign up providing some mandatory information like your SSN, first and last name, and billing address. While checking out, you mostly see the text 'You Saved' highlighted and the amount and feel happy about your shopping. The retail store uses the provided information to extract your credit reports and check your credit history.

Have we ever pondered: How good is a free Credit Card? I was forced to think about this after missing a few mails which included my Retail Store Credit Card statement. I also read somewhere how defaulting to pay credit card bills affects credit history. Here is how it works.

Credit History is an indicator of a consumer's ability to repay debts based on the demonstrated responsibility in repaying past debts. A consumer's credit history consists of information such as: number and types of credit accounts, how long each account has been open, amounts owed, amount of available credit used, whether bills are paid on time, and number of recent credit inquiries.  It also contains information regarding whether the consumer has any bankruptcies, liens, judgments or collections. This information is all contained on a consumer's credit report. Credit history is thus a critical factor used in credit rating and is used and referred by many lending institutions.

Your credit score is a number generated by a mathematical algorithm, a formula, based on information in the consumer's credit report, compared to information on tens of millions of other people. The resulting number is a highly accurate prediction of how likely the customers are to pay their bills.

The best-known and most widely used credit score model in the United States, the FICO (Fair Isaac Corporation) score is calculated statistically, with information from a consumer's credit files. The FICO score rates one's creditworthiness and rates credits on a scale from 300 to 850. Credit scores are used extensively, and if you've gotten a mortgage, a car loan, a credit card or auto insurance, the rate you received was directly related to your credit score. The higher the number, the better you look to lenders. In other words, people with the highest scores get loans at the lowest interest rates.

Fair Isaac reports that the American public's credit scores break out along these lines:

How FICO calculates scores

There are 5 key factors FICO uses to calculate credit score:

Below table maps the credit score range to its worthiness per FICO.

Posted by Dhanya V. at 7:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This Thanksgiving Day and day following often referred to as Black Friday witnessed blockbuster results for online retailers.  Thanksgiving sales ended up 39.3% over the holiday last year. Mobile traffic on Black Friday was 14.3 percent of all retail traffic compared to 5.6 percent in 2010. This season will definitely be an interesting time for marketers.  The National Retail Federation (NRF) projects that 36% of holiday shopping will be done online (leveraging the Web for researching, comparison shopping before making a purchase). 

Continue reading "This holiday season, what will make shoppers click?" »

Posted by Tanveer Singh Khanuja at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Continue reading "Are Brick and Mortar companies facing extinction?" »

Posted by Tanveer Singh Khanuja at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have discussed about some important strategies that a retailer's social media plan should entail, in one of my blogs earlier. It is extremely essential that we also provide the right features in our social solution.  In this blog I have discussed some very interesting features that a social solution must include. This list is a result of an extensive research of various social features currently available in the market and being put to effective use by various online businesses. We had also presented these ideas through a PoV last year. 

We have all known of the facebook and twitter share/like button and this has been extensively talked about thus far. We also know about features such as the "Shop" tab on facebook, But there are some very interesting features that can make your social shopping solution savvy and fun..... 

Continue reading "Essential and Savvy features for your Social Solution" »

Posted by Sanjeev Kulkarni at 9:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since the birth of virtual reality, developers have strived towards developing virtual environments, and with manufacturers developing more powerful computers at more affordable prices this dream doesn’t seem so far away.

Continue reading "Seeing is believing: A retailers guide to augmented reality" »

Posted by Jonathan Nobbs at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My experience is that site visitors exhibit a range of e-commerce browsing behaviours depending on the site, its product range and their point in the purchasing cycle.  I believe my premise applies to all retail e-commerce websites from music to banking and grocery to TVs. 
 
My starting point is the nature of the product.  Typically regular users of grocery and retail banking websites are task oriented; these users make regular visits and typically repeat transactions. Users are annoyed by web-experiences that divert them from their task and the nature of the task is very functional in nature.  Features that streamline purchasing enhance the user experience; these include shopping lists, favourites and one-click checkout.  Products such as clothing, consumer electronics and, to some extent white goods, are less frequent purchases and typically involve comparison shopping, such shopping often involves more than one website.  On an initial visit users may browse through a product set to get ideas about which product to buy, on later visits they may have decided on a product and now  return in order to buy; these websites therefore need to support multiple buying behaviours. 
 
We can identify four browsing behaviours that a site should support:

• Recreational: The visitor is looking for new ideas and opportunities.
  
• Functional: A product type is in mind (for example a camera or a sofa) and the visitor is deciding which product to buy.
  
• Pre-qualified: The visitor has a particular brand or model in mind and is looking for the best deal and delivery options across multiple vendors.
  
• Surgical: The visitor is here to buy a specific product (probably having been to the site before).  They may have been browsing a paper catalogue.
  

• Recreational: Employ sophisticated browsing, search and product promotional mechanisms.  Guided navigation, advanced search and very creative and interactive user interfaces are key.  I like the interactivity on furniture sites for example (take a look at www.boconcept.com).
  
• Functional:  Use commonly recognized terms in the navigation scheme.  Surface content to as high a level as possible using product carousels and list best sellers to anonymous visitors.  Provide buying guides and product information for the more complex products.  RS Components has a massive product range and does a very good job of categorization and surfacing content in a browse/search interface (www.rs-online.com).
  
• Pre-qualified:  Enable users to browse by brand and product name perhaps using guided navigation techniques.  If possible build a comparison capability (e.g. across multiple vendors), as a minimum make it easy for the visitor to return to buy.  Visitors can browse by brand name at John Lewis and Bloomingdales for example (www.johnlewis.com / www.bloomingdales.com).
  
• Surgical:  Help the user to return to the same product easily; Lands End enables users to enter part numbers on the home page as a way of supporting the paper catalogue (www.landsend.com). You can also enter a part number into the search engine at Heals furniture store (www.heals.co.uk) and get to the specific product, although it is not clear from the web site that this is possible (someone in store told me about this feature).

Posted by Phil Freegard at 7:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)