Tag Archives: iPad

Shopping the Day After Christmas: Doing More Than Deals

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It is the day after Christmas and my initial plans involved spending the day in beat up pants and slippers, indulging in a cigar and diving into my new Steven Pinker book.  Not a bad day.  But the operative word in all of this is “involved” – the past tense.  It turns out that while I will be able to do a bit of this, shopping is also on the agenda.  And I am far from alone. Between gift exchanges, product returns and shoppers (members of my immediate family included) eager to redeem gift cards, the day after Christmas has become a very busy day for retailers.

Last year, the day after Christmas obviously fell on a Sunday.  While blue laws are largely a thing of the past, there are still parts of the country where stores don’t open or have limited hours on Sunday.  Add to that the fact that Sunday is traditionally a day for family time for a large portion of the population, and the limitations to draw people into a store become clear. But retailers are under no such constraints this year. At the same time, many people still have the day after Christmas off from work. This adds up to making a prime shopping day.

In a survey released recently by American Express, 57% of Americans said they planned on shopping on December 26. That’s a 14% jump over last year.  Of those surveyed, more than 1 in 5 said  they’ll be cashing in gift cards, while 36% will be buying gifts for themselves. This is hardly surprising when you consider that the gift card has become a pivotal element in most of our last-minute shopping agendas (I myself picked up several when I ran into the wall of shopping fatigue).  And while I am predisposed to think of gift cards as a clear indication of a lack of imagination, this is my own bias and one that hardly applies to the rest of the world.  So, armed with cards, people are ready to break free from the confines of their homes and buy those things they really want in lieu of that reindeer sweater they received.

Granted, part of the post-Christmas shopping is a byproduct of the economy. Millions of Americans decided to delay some of their Christmas spending this year because of a lack of money or uncertainty about the economy in the new year. Some have postponed gift exchanges while others just wanted to wait to take advantage of the huge discounts widely available in the days and weeks after Christmas. Everyone, after all, loves a good deal.  But the deal is only part the attraction.

The day after Christmas has become a day for many people to break out of the confines of a house swimming in scattered toys, torn wrapping paper and a seemingly endless river of leftover ham. For example, it is a major day for theaters, as people swarm the local Cineplex. There is a significant spike in restaurant sales as people look for a healthier alternative to mashed potatoes and less dehydrating experience than the afore mentioned ham. So, yes, people are looking for those things they didn’t find under the tree, but they are also looking for entertainment, release from normative family obligations and a bit of indulgence.

And this is where the brick and mortar shopping experience becomes just that, an experience. No doubt, big box stores will see a spike in sales as people look for those deals, but the same will hold true for retailers that offer a bit more. Locations with a café or shopping-focused entertainment (e.g. personalized augmented reality applications for that new Christmas iPad) will keep people in the store longer and sell more products. Manufacturers that partner with retailers to place merchandise in areas of the store where they will be “found” by people looking to outdo the rest of the mobs with their shopping prowess will sell more of their goods – shoppers see themselves as skilled hunters and foragers, so to speak, improving their moods by making them feel superior. Retailers that make people feel good about the shopping experience help combat the fears people have about the economy after such an extended period of uncertainty.

The point is simple.  We know shopping will be big today. As such, it makes sense to think about how best to capitalize on that behavior.  Sales are a driver, perhaps THE driver, but the fiscal benefits are not enough.  There is more to shopping than getting your stuff. If you have a strategy that speaks to the deeper cultural patterns and psychological need as of shoppers, the better you’ll do and the more you’ll make.

 

Defining Types of Context in Mobile Design

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We spend a great deal of time talking about context, but rarely use models to define elements of it.  This particularly true when talking about mobile devices and accounts for the hit-and-miss quality of  most apps available on the market.  It is one thing to design a usable app that conforms to human factors and cognitive requirements, but it is quite another to design a stage in an environment, or an environment itself, when there are innumerable semi-autonomous devices mediating an swirl of information.  Consequently, it makes sense for us to think about how we structure context so that we can determine what exactly we can affect.

1. Physical Context

From the computational side of things, physical context refers to the notion of imbuing devices with a sense of “place.”  In other words, devices can distinguish the environments in which they “live” at any given moment and react to them. But this is much more difficult than it at first appears. Mapping out longitude and latitude is one thing, but reacting to features (political, natural, social, etc.) is much more problematic. Getting beyond demarcation of identifiable borders and structures, means coming to grips with place (as opposed to space).  That in turns having to be “aware” on some level.

Think of a mall.  Within that mall are hundreds of stores, each with hundreds of devices and/or nodes of information. The device now has to decode what information is most relevant to itself, what information is most relevant to the user and how it will deliver that information.  Returning to the mall example, we have to think about a host of things in order to make any app relevant.  What competing retailer apps get precedence over others? When you receive an offer from one store, will the device “tell” other retailers in order to generate real-time counter offers?  When someone else is hold your device for you (say, while trying on clothing but needing to set the iPad aside), how will the device know what incoming content is private and what is public?  How will the device communicate with a location or with other devices as it moves throughout the mall?

 

2. Device Context

Just as various kinds of sensory apparatus (GPS-receivers, proximity sensors, etc.) are the means by which mobile devices will become geographically aware, another class of sensors makes it possible for devices to become aware of each other. There is a fundamental difference between the ability to transmit data between devices and the ability (and desire) of devices to discover each other. And this presents a series of problems that are different in nature than those of physical context. Because this deals with choices of communication.

We are on the verge of existing in a world with zero-infrastructure networks that can spring up anywhere, anytime. That means that devices are in a potentially constant state of discovery.  Returning to the mall for a moment, imagine that your are with a friend whose device is communicating with yours.  In there mall are a couple of thousand devices, all of which are discovering each other.  What happens now?  Assuming we’ve dealt with the problem of my mobile phone communicating with my friend’s phone while blocking out the other 2000 devices, we still have several thousand potentially “identities” that may have useful information for us.  How do we select how to manage that without devoting a ridiculous amount of time to setting up the hundreds of variables that shape what we do and don’t want at any given time? And all this is couched in a neat little world defined within a single, bounded  geographical unit.  So understanding device context is as important as understanding physical context.

3. Information Context

This is the realm of information architecture, plain and simple.  But with the advent of pervasive mobile, this topic is becoming even more complex.  Specifically, data no longer resides, literally or figuratively, “in” our computers.  Our devices are extensions of the cloud and exist as something akin to perceptual prostheses.  They exist to manipulate data in the same way a joy stick allows us to handle the arms of robot in a factory.  And this is important because it reflects a shift in how we think about and use information because all information (and the aps that carry that information) are transitory and by and large public.

This changes the nature of what the device has to actually be. Storage issues are essentially removed from the equation.  Content can leap from place to place and device to device in an instant. All content will be customizable and reflect the human-application interaction rather than shaping it. This leads to the point that devices, and the people who use them, will find themselves in the 4th kind of context of social interaction, with all its peculiarities and contingencies. Just as our behavior and worldview shapes and is shaped by the moment in which we find ourselves, so too will our apps and information need to adapt to the moment.  In other words, devices will need to be more human.

4. Socio-Cultural Context

The whole humankind is riven with contrasting practices, cultures, tongues, traditions and world views. A cultural context may exist on levels as diverse as a workplace, a family, a building, a city, a county, a state, a nation, a continent, a hemisphere etc. A cultural context provides a shared understanding of meaning provides a framework for what “works” in the world. It is what helps you recognize “your kind” in all senses of the word.

And it is at the point of socio-cultural understanding where gain a better perspective on what will and will not be accepted in the mobile universe.  We need to understand the essence behind the veil of design and usage to uncover meaning.  Take the beer pouring app as an example.  Here we have a simple app that mimics the pouring of a beer when you tilt your device.  On the surface it has little relevance to our daily lives.  It serves no direct function and yet it has been tremendously successful because of the cultural needs it to which it speaks – workplace breaks from the mundane, the ability to show off the newest thing, male-to-male pair bonding, etc.  It’s absurdity is precisely what makes it relevant.  But in another context, say Saudi Arabia, the context shifts and meaning change to fit that particular milieu.

The nature of our successes lies in understanding the reasons behind our beliefs and actions, in the symbolic exchanges we are part of and our abilities to code and decode those symbolic exchanges.  The nature of our mistakes essentially lie in a lack of comprehension. It leads to UI and app development that speak to a minority of the population even as they try to sell to the masses. Without understand the underlying epistemological constructs of a group (or more accurately, a mix of often associated groups at different points of interaction and interpretation) then we miss opportunities.

So What?

So why does any of this matter?  It matters because good design and messaging are increasingly difficult to master.  Our great technological leaps forward have also produced more complexity, which in turn leads to a greater need to make sense of what is “going on” in the broadest sense of the term when it comes to gathering insights and translating them into design and business applications. Without a means by which to categorize context, we can’t isolate those things that matter most.  And we miss enormous opportunities.

Tablets and Retail: If You Build It Will They Come?

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Everyone is moving toward incorporating tablets into their larger mobile and digital strategies.  65 percent of Fortune 100 companies plan on it. And whether or not they execute on it in the near-term, the fact that they’re talking about it means something.  But this is a wild new frontier, just as the emergence of the web was a new and wild in the 90s.  Getting the strategy right means digging a little deeper into what you design and why you design it.

First and foremost, it’s about the application and the context in which it will find itself used. Retailers and designers need to think of the application in terms of how it can fundamentally change the retail dynamic.  The application needs to be more than an interesting novelty, it needs to address the unspoken, contextual realities of the people selling products. The application and tablets need to be indispensable to store associates. That means thinking about how the device will be used on the sales floor – will it detract from the interpersonal interaction or add to them; will it make the job of the sales associate more difficult physically as they go about their day with a device in hand; will it be an improvement or a hindrance?

The application and the device may be interesting or novel, but will they help customer/shopper interactions?  The application may help from an operational standpoint, but it may not be something the sales person wants to use. In fact, it may get in the way.  So understanding the culture of shopping and the larger context is the first step in developing a useful tool.

Second, know well before launch how the app and the device will factor into your back-end infrastructure.  How good a job does the provider and/or developer of supporting enterprise efforts? Can the company infrastructure accommodate the new technology and everything it brings with it?  How much will it cost to integrate it with the existing system?

Third and last, decide the platform with more than technology in mind. Think about context.  One strategy is to focus on applications that will run on any tablet through the browser.  Be platform agnostic.  But let’s take a moment to examine the reality of tablet sales.  Apple has an early lead in design, ease of use and developer participation.  It has brand fanaticism and is a focal point of discussion between people, including sales staff and shoppers.  It owns the category, just as Kleenex owns tissue. It certainly wouldn’t be wise to dismiss Google’s open platform model, forget about the brand equity of Motorola, or ignore the weight of Microsoft, but it’s important to think about how the device and platform will factor into brand image and the sales process.

By Gavin

A Shopper’s Journey – What One Example Can Tell Us

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About a week ago I ran into a neighbor who had just become the proud new owner of an iPad. Nothing about that would have piqued most people’s curiosity. Oh, the fact that he was a PC guy might have made it interesting, but in and of itself the purchase of an iPad meant little.  However, when he told the story of how he came to make the purchase, things got more interesting, because it all stemmed from the need to buy beer.

We’ll call this neighbor John. It was the first really lovely day of spring – one of those days where it’s perfect to be outside, but still early enough that it negates any reason to do yard work or plant flowers (indeed, we had snow a week later).  So John decided it would be a perfect day to sit on the porch and drink a couple of beers.  He headed to the liquor store and picked up a six pack of Anchor Steam, which reminded him of his grad school days in the Bay Area, a time when he was a voracious reader.  His sense of nostalgia kicked into overdrive, John headed across the street from the liquor store in search of a good book to round out the day of relaxation in the sun.  Not long into the process of shopping for a book, his eye was caught by the Nook being sold at the front of the store, the Nook Color in particular.  He made a point of saying that he had no intention of buying an e-reader, but wanted to see what all the fuss was about and test out the technology. Not long into the trial run, he started to ask, “With all the things this can do, I wonder if I should buy it? On the other hand, people seem to be talking about the iPad. I’m sure it’s mostly bullshit, but I should check it out.”  And so, John (the PC guy) headed a few blocks to the Apple store.  Thirty minutes later he walked out of the store with 64 GB iPad, a cover for it and a keyboard docking station.  What had started out as a plan to make an $8.00 purchase ended with an $800.00 purchase.

So why does it matter? John’s story is perhaps extreme, but it demonstrates that shopping behavior is complex and a sound marketing strategy needs to account for those elements of human behavior that defy quantification.  It matters because John’s decisions were driven by a series of memories and events that could never be predicted in statistical data. They could never be marketed to if all a company did was focus on talking to shoppers about features. According to the Richard Ellis Group, 92% of retailers plan to increase store openings in 2010. 70% of purchase decisions happen in store. 68% of in-store purchases are impulse buys. 59% of purchases are unplanned. Looking at those numbers and John’s story, it speaks not only to the need to develop a marketing campaign and retail experience that draws people in, but one that keeps them coming back again and again.

Whether we like it or not, human beings need symbolism and metaphor to function properly.  Every ritual we have, every religious ceremony, every myth, every iconic figure is tied to subconscious patters of culture and personal experience we can’t escape. To manage your brand, you need to talk to both the conscious and the subconscious.  If you want to establish real loyalty and inspire spontaneous buying in an age where procuring goods is simply a matter of an internet connection and a couple of clicks, you have to speak to these deeper needs and symbols.

By Gavin