Kangaroo Technologies Blog

Reverse Showrooming: A Look at the Other Side showrooming, the consumer behavior of browsing brick-and-mortar stores to evaluate a product before purchasing it online. We warned traditional retailers of this threat to in-store sales and suggested ways to combat the popular behavior. Although brick-and-mortar retailers may have seemed doomed by the prevalence of showrooming, recent studies paint a more hopeful picture. The Data “Reverse showrooming” (or “webrooming”) has actually been reported to be more common than showrooming. As the name suggests, reverse showrooming is the consumer behavior of researching a product online before purchasing it in-store. In a 2013 Harris Poll survey, roughly 69% of 2,000 American adults reported having engaged in reverse showrooming, compared to 46% for showrooming. Moreover, when a 2013 Urban Land Institute survey asked over 1,000 Americans ages 18-35 about their preferred way to buy electronics, shoes and cosmetics, more people responded that they preferred to reverse showroom than to showroom for those items. The survey also indicated that while showroomers spend an average of $174 when they make their ultimate purchase online, reverse showroomers spend an average of $204 when they buy in-store. These numbers should be encouraging to traditional retailers, suggesting that the balance may be tilting in their favor. So where do reverse showroomers commonly begin and end their shopping experience? Perhaps not surprisingly, the online search usually starts with Amazon (the same destination where many showroomers end) and finishes at Walmart, Best Buy or Target (the same destinations where many showroomers begin). These shared destinations can be explained in part by the considerable overlap between the two groups – that is, many customers who showroom also reverse showroom, and vice versa. According to the same Harris Poll survey, nine in ten showroomers have reverse showroomed and six in ten reverse showroomers have showroomed. Reasons Behind Reverse Showrooming In general, understanding what drives consumers to shop the way they do is essential to any effective sales strategy. Some of the top reasons that reverse showroomers cite for buying a product in-store instead of online are: avoiding shipping costs; a desire to touch and feel the product; available inventory; and the ability to return the product to the store if needed. On the other hand, some of the top reasons people cite for buying online instead of in-store are: the availability of free shipping and online-only discounts; the lack of crowds and long check-out lines; and an easy-to-use website. Lessons for Retailers Armed with these types of data, brick and mortar retailers should feel better prepared to capitalize on reverse showrooming and attract sales to their stores instead of their competitors’ stores. Below are some suggestions: Have a good inventory monitoring system in place. Perhaps this one is too obvious to mention, but if a retailer does not have the product, the consumer will buy it from another store that does, or forgo buying at a store altogether. Create easy-to-use mobile applications and websites and set up in-store terminals that allow consumers to search for inventory, specifications, reviews, offers and coupons. Nielsen’s 2014 Digital Consumer Report estimates that 65% of Americans own a smartphone. And have no doubt that they will use it while in the store (even if they have already done some research beforehand). Great mobile applications/websites and designated terminals enhance the customer’s in-store shopping experience and keep the customer on the retailer’s own sites and content. Incorporate digital marketing programs in the stores. For example, Target has a website and mobile application called Cartwheel which generates offer codes online for consumers to use in-store only. And last holiday season, Nordstrom arranged its in-store displays based on top items pinned on Pinterest, demonstrating that it was listening to its audience and ensuring that those items were in stock. Integrate e-commerce conveniences with in-store ones. Online ordering and in-store pickup is a great example and one that more and more retailers are offering each day. Offer convenient, easy and secure in-store checkout. Eliminate one of the top-cited reasons people avoid stores: long check-out lines. Properly train sales staff. Many consumers still value having their questions answered by real human beings. In a 2013 Deloitte survey, more than half of respondents said knowledgeable in-store staff would make them more likely to buy in-store. As the suggestions above show, the response to reverse showrooming should not be too different from the response to showrooming (after all, the two behaviors are far from mutually exclusive). As our virtual and physical shopping experiences become increasingly merged through technology and consumers constantly move back and forth between the two worlds, traditional retailers should take an omni-channel approach to satisfy as many consumer desires as possible. Couretsy :retaillawadvisor

2016: Could this be the year of the Physical Web? The Physical Web is the Google-led initiative to bring location-based content and interaction to the mass market. It offers the browser as an alternative user interface to the app-based model made popular with the iBeacon, and it promises a model that can scale.

More on ‘MoboMoney’, India’s first contact-less digital payment ecosystem at TECH MAHINDRA site

blog appeared at Getelastic

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons are finally set to hit the mainstream in 2016, following a strong 2015 third quarter in shipment data and contract figures. Through its new research area, BLE Beacon Technologies and Services, ABI Research, a leader in technology market intelligence, tracks the BLE beacon contract and shipment data across more than 20 verticals. “ABI Research populated its contract tracker with a handful of impactful names in the last quarter, including IKEA, H&M, Macy’s, Target, Pizza Hut, Elle, Espirit, McDonalds and Carrefour,” says Patrick Connolly, Principal Analyst at ABI Research. “Meanwhile, companies like Groupon, Facebook and Google are starting to bring their SME beacon strategies to market. Adoption is now across the retail board with really strong interest from the Quick Serve Restaurants (QSR), as well as banking sectors.” Additionally, the Out of Home (OOH) advertising market is showing rapid expansion, with the first major deployments in Europe. Currently, Strӧer is announcing plans for 50,000 deployments in Germany, with Exterion Media following suit in Holland and the UK. “India is also a recent market adopter, with InteractionOne deploying a 1,000 beacon network,” continues Connolly. “We are also seeing some very large asset tracking contracts for BLE beacons in industrial, vending, hospital and airport market sectors.” Read ABI Research’s BLE Beacon Technologies, Applications and Revenues report. https://www.abiresearch.com/market-research/product/1022878-ble-beacon-technologies-applications-and-r/ Courtesy:ABI Research

72% of consumers said that a relevant mobile offer delivered to their smartphone while shopping in a store would significantly influence their likelihood to make a purchase.(According to Swirl’s research )

Responsive Web Design makes your web page look good on all devices (desktops, tablets, and phones).

3 Seconds or less is the difference between a loyal customer and a lost one. Dyn surveyed more than 1400 consumers across 11 countries in North America, EMEA, and APAC to understand their shopping preferences, what they’re expecting, and what they're experiencing. We learned what is holding them back from buying more online and on mobile, plus what retailers need to do to turn skeptical consumers into longstanding customers. Download this report to get the results http://bit.ly/1Q9wkwD and learn: The state of online shopping How slow websites and security concerns hinder online shopping growth Why retailers struggle to fulfill promises of a consistent, omnichannel experience Whether consumers are willing to shop more across international borders

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Supercharging web page speed https://youtu.be/d5_6yHixpsQ

“Marketers should think beyond deals and discounts and focus on engagement and personalization.” Most marketers are not ready today to deliver the kind of real-time contextualization necessary for beacon engagements that customers will find valuable, according to a recent brief from Forrester Research. Interest in beacon technology among retailers is huge, according to the brief, “The Opportunities And Challenges Of Beacon Marketing.” However, marketers should be careful to not overhype the opportunity and forget to put the customer at the center of their strategies. “The biggest mistake that some marketers are making is using beacons as a technology gimmick or for the ‘gee whiz’ factor,” said Maya Mikhailov, executive vice president and co-founder of GPShopper. “Some retailers are using beacons solely as an alternative form of couponing. “While delivering relevant deals upon your customers visit is certainly a viable use for beacon technology, couponing is just a small part of a much larger initiative when implemented correctly,” she said. Courtesy: http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/how-some-beacon-programs-are-missing-the-mark

The combination of emerging proximity technologies for in-store mobile marketing and the growing popularity of mobile coupons will see 1.6bn coupons deployed annually via Bluetooth low energy beacons by 2020, according to a new study by Juniper Research. Currently, just 11m coupons are delivered a year using proximity marketing technology. While the technology is still relatively new, it has seen several high profile brands adopt beacons, such as US retailer Macy’s, which recently installed more than 4,000 across its stores. In-store beacons have consistently generated high redemption rates when used, with a campaign by Chinese jewellery chain CTF in early 2015 resulting in redemption rates of close to 60 per cent, and sales uplift of $16m (£10.6m). Reference: http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/beacon-use-will-see-1-6bn-coupons-deployed-by-2020/

Bonnaroo festival used iBeacons to learn what people liked most. The company notes that it didn’t collect any personal data about users and all data was collected anonymously. Here are the numbers: >Most Popular Stage: What Stage >Average length in VIP per person: 102.15 Minutes >How many total users went inside VIP: 1,980 People >Number of notifications each device received on average: 12.6 notifications >Total number of unique devices who experienced beacons: 20% of app installs >Delivered a total of proximity 97,270 messages to 20% of app installs over 4 festival days >Messages based on over 811,961 observed user events