Mobile commerce: Check-out your groceries from the convenience of your shopping cart
May 18, 2011 § 1 Comment
Tired of waiting in the long retail lines every time you need a carton of milk? Some U.S. retail stores are including a check-out system on their shopping carts that allow customers to check out their items as they shop. So far, it looks like it’s a win-win solution for both customers and retailers. Customers are happy because they don’t need to wait in lines to pay, and the retail stores are happy because it turns out this new way to shop actually nets an average increase of products purchased by 10%. In other words, retailers are making shopping and check-out so easy that you although you might only need that carton of milk, why not pick up an extra bag of chips, fruit, and flour while you’re there?
Certainly an interesting concept that just highlights the continuing trend towards a more seamless intersection between bricks and mortar and mobile and online commerce.
Full article at The Wall Street Journal.
Yes but, where can I buy that?
March 14, 2010 § 3 Comments
I was recently looking for a Massimo Dutti location as my favorite wool coat is starting to show the tell-tale signs of the years I have enjoyed it. In the time since I bought the coat, I have relocated back to Canada, and for the life of me have no clue as to whether there’s even a Massimo Dutti retail store here. Upon diving into their website, I was dismayed to find that although there is a very comprehensive country list upfront that you must choose your location from, when you actually get into the site, their actual stores are nowhere to be found. (It would also appear that your country selection doesn’t have any impact on the content you see whatsoever, which also begs to question – why force the extra step that adds no value to me in the first place? But I digress.)
The lack of, at the absolute least, a low-fidelity global list of store locations feels like a significant miss. It seems so obvious to say, but for every piece of communication, it’s important to consider what the overall purpose is. What you want people to think and potentially do in reading or accessing that website, email, brochure, newsletter, etc. I’m sure for most retailers, they’d love for people to fall in love with something, and go find it at the store to buy. In the case of Massimo Dutti – with the exception of certain cities where they have more prominence – potential customers would just leave and forget. A lost sale.
In the end, I stumbled onto an obscure unrelated wiki that happened to mention a Toronto shopping mall with a listing of all their stores. Luckily, Massimo Dutti was one of the stores listed. Unluckily, upon traveling there, it would seem that the store was closed more than a year ago. So, it would seem that the trail has turned cold until Massimo Dutti writes back to my inquiry on a store location. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how promising that will be as it’s already been over a week since my original contact – which is a whole other discussion.
