Sephora Flash

Sephora has recently opened a new store concept in Paris named Sephora Flash. The purpose of the store is to try the new technologies in store to improve the shopping experience. You will see a video (in French) below showing you how the shopping experience goes.

The key concept in the shopping experience is the NFC cards allowing the shopper to get information on the product and compose their "digital basket". The idea is simple, based on showrooming: The store, whith counts only for 100 square meters, holds as much products as their larger store of 1 500 m2. How, simply because they have very few stock in the shop. They count on home delivery and the day after delivery in store.

Now, to me, the concept has been base on the problematic of the size of the store. The goal is probably to propose the larger product range as possible (the one the standard concept needs) in smaller places.

Moreover, the retailer has an opportunity to test its new technologies in order to understand better how to use them in terms of customer relationship management. This is the reason why they have a robot to give advices on top of the standard employees they usually have.

Now The only thing that seems to be lacking is obviously beacons. Because why would people use small NFC cards while they could use their phones to have extra content, even maybe more personalized?

Also, it is interesting to have a look at what Sephora does with this store, as obiously the luxury goods and cosmetics product categories are most of the time in advance in terms of usage of new technology and new trends. Even if you are a FMCG retailer you shall have a look at this cutting edge concept.

Philips Develop A In Store Geolocalisation Technology For Carrefour

Philips has released recently a test of a new technology to geolocate customers in store. In Carrefour Euralille, a new system based on the lights of the store allow customers to locate themselves on their smart phone. You will see below a video showing how the system works. Now I clearly understand the reason why a company like Philips try to push this cutting edge technology in the retail world. I also understand why Carrefour is experimenting new technologies to improve shopping experience and thus the CRM.

But I am quite doubting about the real usage of the technology. Obviously, I believe in Ibeacons and I think the technology has more potential in terms of large usage. But also, I would like to question the use of those technologies in terms of store efficiency. A technology should not be developped because we need technology, but technology should rather complete a need. And so far, I don't see clearly how and why customers would use such a localisation system in store, even if it is very accurate. Nevertheless, I appreciate the fact that an industry leader like Carrefour is able to test and innovate in order to improve customer and shopping experience.

Gamestops' Ibeacon Usage: Using Ibeacon To Enhance Salesforce Interractions With Shoppers

It was a while I favorited this tweet of Laurence Faguer: 

#NRF15 : GameStop : "The store is where the magic happens" http://t.co/OKrbAKtzNv #smartphone #magasin #beacon pic.twitter.com/nuWxJQ0Afl

— Laurence Faguer (@lfaguer) January 29, 2015

Ibeacon's initiatives are blossoming as it brings high expectations in term of customer relationship management and shopping experience. But so far, it looks more like experimentations than actually a game changing technology. Laurence tells us about how Gamestop is testing its beacons in 36 of its stores. Obviously, a great part of the test consist in providing specific deals and content about the video games on the shopper's mobile devices.


 But the beacons actually provide details about the customers' habits and preferences in order to customize their advices.

I really like this example because so far Ibeacons have been aimed to generate traffic by proposing discounts once the customer is nearby a store. But I am not convinced yet by what I have seen it is the most efficient way to use the technology, as it will become aggressive and have privacy issues.

But beacons linked to a good SFA software could give a boost to the interractions in store between the sales people and the shopper, and provide an enhance customer experience.

Some Thoughts On Incentiving Shoppers To Enter Stores

Foot traffic is something key in retailing. If customers don't come to your stores, no sales. This is clear generating store visits is key to maintain your sales. This is the reason why new mobile technologies enable new marketing tools to trigger foot traffic: Ibeacons, or applications like Foursquare...

But so far, despite quite some efforts, some of them that I have discussed previously on this blog, none of those techniques have emerged clearly. French retail magazine LSA wrote an article not so long ago on this topic. It discusses about the French start up Step In  which has created an application giving some rewards to customers entering a store.

Here are key data of Step In:

• 30 retail partners including Orange, Celio or Kase
• 80 000 downloads
• 50 000 active accounts

Step In use the beacon technology to send signals to the application holders. Step In hence incentive the visit of one store. If the shopper does not enter the store, he may give some insights on why he has not entered the store (price, choice, the boutique concept...).

To me, one of the most deceiving fact about the whole concept of incentiving the visit to stores is Foursquare. I thought the company had all the tools to master this technique and to show new usage in those terms. The main issue is that a customer is not going to enter if he does not have any clear ideas of what he wants. 

Secondly, the issue is about the return on investment. Obviously, a store visit has a real value for retailers. And a retailer able to convert the store visit into sales should try to get as much traffic as he can. But I wonder if in overall the whole concept bring enough value to customers for the retailer to invest in the service and in the customer reward. Because for such a concept to work, I believe that the shopper reward must be clear and really appealing.

Lastly, if by any chance the concept is successful, I believe there is a high risk of seeing some users abusing of the service in stepping in stores just for the reward, without buying anything.

What you think about it?

The Beacon Marketing Playbook by Swirl: How to Use Beacons Efficiently

Swirl is a company specialized in mobile marketing. It has recently hit the headlines as Twitter invested in the company, in an effort to develop its mobile marketing activities.

They have published a White book you may download here, where it gives some tips on how to use Ibeacons. Ibeacons is for sure one of the most hyped word in retailing right now and the potential is great. Now I like the advices and the detail they give on how Ibeacons work.

How to use Ibeacons? What for?

This is one of the key to an Ibeacon implementation success. Ibeacons could be very intrusive, and the added value must be clear to shoppers. Moreover, depending on your business modell, your store concept, you may use more one or another technique. To me, there are two main visions of Ibeacons

Increase sales figures via couponing

• Increase overall purchase rate 
• Increase average basket size
• Increase department-specific traffic
• Increase category purchase rates
• Cross-sell products/services 
• Drive repeat store traffic 
• Increase sell-through of specific products

Enhance the customer experience

• Increase mobile engagement
• Increase brand loyalty
• Enhance shopping experience & customer satisfaction
• Introduce new products/categories behaviors. 

Experiment

There is no need to launch a beacon initiative throughout a whole store. There are very little examples of mass success, and it is important to test on a small scale to benefit from the experience. 

Always Think About The Customers

Beacons can be very intrusive. This is the weakness and the reason why geolocalization mobile marketing techniques have never emerged in the past. Therefore, you need to be cautious about how your shoppers perceive your usage of the technology.

1. Be transparent
2. Be relevant
3. Create value for shoppers

Educate Customers About Beacons And Your Shopping Experience
Beacons are not meant to be designed for geeks. There success will be effective if the most of people can use it. Therefore, it is important to explain how your beacons work, and the added value it creates. Don't hesitate to give examples in your store, and explain to the salesforce how to educate customers about it.

Ibeacons in Retail: Monoprix Experimenting The Topic

Ibeacons is a hyped word in the retail business right now. A lot of expectation is set in this new kind of technology allowing to provide customized marketing content to shoppers. So far, very few experimentations have been undertaken, but they start to spring up. French retailer Monoprix has recently released a new application using Ibeacons to provide customized discounts along the shoppers' paths.

22 stores will test the beacons in the Paris area. The goal is to test the technology and to better perceive the behavior of shoppers when they receive such communication. The application has been designed by Catalina which is a company specialized in the promotional coupon business. Experimentation will be processed until the month of june, to see if a broader launch will be decided.

To me, Ibeacons could be used in two specific occasions in the retail world:

• To provide customized and premium content, in order to enhance customer experience. It could for example provide you extra information about one product or its usage. It is more a pull technique.
• To boost sales by sending geolocalized promotions, based on the customer profile. It is in this case a push tool.

But the problem is obviously to see how privacy is dealt with both ideas. Hence, geolocalization promotion systems have already been tried in the past using for example text messages. But it has so far not been much effective. Nevertheless, it is very interesting to see how these Ibeacons will be used and what kind of results retailers will have from those experimentations.

Linking Customer Experience To Loyalty Reward Programs

More and more people are questionning the usage of loyalty reward programs. If there was a lot of hype around this type of customer relationship management strategy back in the early 2000s, the marketing landscape has evolved a lot, via the rise of new technologies empowering customers' experience.

Loyalty reward programs indeed are not anylonguer a way to stand out of the competition as most of companies now own one. It is also costly to maintain. But I believe that with the rise of two trends, loyalty reward programs may have a bright future in front of them:

• Ibeacon/mobile technologies
• Big data

What really matters for the loyalty reward program to be efficient is that it allows the customer to have a customized and top of the line customer experience. And loyalty reward programs may give you the opportunity to know your customers based on its purchases and when and how it got in contact with your brand, but if it is linked with Ibeacon technology, it may even give you some insights on the way it shops. 

Shopping is a key element of the customer decision making process, and hence of its whole experience. By having clear insights on its shopping path and experience, you may provide a unique experience to your customers. So far, I don't think anyone has yet tested this kind of process and Ibeacon is still at an early stage of usage. But there is a lot of potential in terms of CRM strategy.

Using Ibeacon To Organize Gaming Session in Retail

Ibeacon is at an early age of adoption by retailers. We are yet to see the full potential, as most of the usage at the time are more tests than actual concrete implementation in store. Ibeacon to me is a wonderful technology, but as wonderful technologies are, it is difficult to perceive the interest prior we find out the right usage.

Ibeacon could be used in retailing to organize for specific events games within stores. For example, you could via an application earn points by finding the right beacon, and by answering right to questions online.

Here is a video showing the potential of gaming in store thanks to Ibeacon. I think that there is a high potential to this technology to create an event in stores.

Are Loyalty Reward Programs Leading To Customers Loyalty?

The concept of loyalty reward program has emerged in the 90s, with the idea to create specific advantages to loyal customers in order to keep them away from competition. The concept is simple: In a mature market, it is more expensive to get a new customer than to retain one.

Loyalty reward programs also has a great advantage as it allows companies to own massive customer data base where they can plug in an efficient CRM program. Nevertheless, basic loyalty reward programs have been questionned lately, as it is easier for customers to switch companies and services:

• The access to information for customers is easier than ever
• The amount of promotions and discounts available at a very same time has sprung up, lowering the advantages of being loyal.
• Customers are able to shop online, on mobile, in stores, which makes it also easier to trigger the sale, and to wait for shopping in the favorite store more difficult
• Moreover, if loyalty reward programs were a real tool to stand out of the competition, nowadays most of the companies own one, which also lower the feeling of loyalty.

Here is an interesting article which discuss about how to give a boost to your loyalty program. What matter the most nowadays is customer and shopping experience, which creates a real added value and differenciation.

Now, I believe that loyalty reward programs may give an extra lift now. Indeed, there are two important trends that may help the loyalty reward programs to keep its importance:

• Big data: More than ever we are able to leverage the full potential of all the customers data one company own. Thanks to big data, the ability to segment customers and/or providing him a unique experience is possible.
• Ibeacon and mobile phone technologies: By having information thanks to mobile technologies, especially Ibeacon may allow businesses to have clear view of people's shopping experience, and their journey in one store. 

By mixing big data and Ibeacon, one company may develop a complete customer relationship management program, that will lead to effective loyalty.

Why I dislike When People Talks About How The US Are In Advanced Compare To Europe

I was recently participating to a conference about retailing and new technologies. In the assistance, there was a lot of marketing managers, CEO of advertising companies, and expert about new technologies and retail. During the introducing talk, the host talked about how the US were in advanced on some retail technologies.

My post is not about this specific event. It is about the fact that in France, but also in Europe, people tends to believe that the United States are way in advanced on most business topics. They have more developped technologies, better case studies, and it sounds as they outcast the European competition.

But I really don't believe in it. Obviously, the United States is one of the best country in the world for business. It embraces innovation as no other country do, which allow them to go fast and to test new technologies fast. But on the other hand, a lot of things need to be taught by Europeans.

Indeed, let's speak about retailing. Obviously, you may find more case studies about companies testing Ibeacons and multichannel retailing in the US than in France. But in terms of retailing, we are one of the finest country in the world. We have strong concept that we have launched abroad, like Carrefour, Decathlon, La Fnac, or Picard, among others. Actually, French retailers experience more success abroad that American's ones. Cdiscount is obviously one of the hardest local competition Amazon has to fight against. Galleries Lafayettes has been recently awarded the Internatonal Retail Award 2015. 

We have a real and strong know how we should be proud of.

In terms of innovation, indeed, we may have less case studies, we may go slower, but France is a wonderful land of innovation. The Drive thru concept was born in France and experience a massive success. Let's not forget that Sam Walton had the idea of its Supercenter by visiting Carrefour. 

 This is actually what this blog is about and the reason why I write in English: showing to the world how good France and French concepts can be. 

I believe the good mindset should be to see how we can innovate, how we can go beyond what people do right now, rather than focusing on what the others do. And maybe people would talk less about a fake difference there would be in quality between Europe and the US.

Will Ibeacon really revolutionize Retail?

Ibeacon is obvisouly one of the hottest hype in the retail world. Indeed, the technology represents a lot of advantages for brick&mortar retailers, which still suffers from the Ecommerce competition:

• Better shopping experience, by proposing updated and customized informations/promotions along the shopper's way
• Better understanding on how the shoppers go in store, in order to propose more efficient concepts and merchandizing techniques.

The retailers are hence very interested by this technology, even though this one is pretty new and not yet really exploitable. 

But I believe Ibeacon represents also a threat for customers, which may not be to keen on allowing retailers to follow them while shopping.

Indeed, how could a retailer guarantee that its Ibeacon will not be too intrusive? Do a customer really want to have commercial info all the time while shopping? 

Also another question I have: Can Ibeacon, based on customer's infos, could better serve someone instore, than actually a sales representative? 

What is interesting with I beacon, is that it is to me one of the first push mobile marketing tool, which most of mobile marketing tools so far have been "pull" (an application that the person download and active whenever he wants).

For sure, Ibeacon is going to become one of the main topic of this blog.