Whatever you’re looking for on the Internet—entertainment, a product to purchase, a connection to a community—in most cases, you’re likely to receive an overwhelming amount of results to choose from. These relevant search results are valuable to you… Or are they?

Published on : http://method.com/

More and more commentators are wondering if the tools we create to give us more choices—such as search engines—are delivering less variety, ultimately limiting chance discoveries and exposure to new ideas.

On the BBC’s The Culture Show, Aleks Krotoski recently examined the role of serendipity as an online commodity, questioning whether the Internet is as innovative as we think. She points out that computers have the unique ability to make valuable, unseen connections for us. Instead of maximizing that potential, our search filters keep us focused on only the most relevant information.

Alex explains, “We will never have the opportunity to bump into something truly new, because the machines are predicting our futures based on our past preferences, creating an infinite loop of cultural homogenization.”

The concern over the consequences of homogenized choice is not entirely new. David Byrne noted in his book Bicycle Diaries, that in many urban developments gentrification leads to separation, rather than integration, of different social and cultural groups. This separation leads to less collisions between ideas and the stifling of creativity.

David describes, “I think online communities tend to group like with like, which is fine for some tasks, but sometimes inspiration comes from accidental meetings and encounters with people outside one’s own demographic, and is less likely if you only communicate with your ‘friends’…”

Other commentators also question if recommendations based on a combination of one’s preferences, social profile, and history of consumption really offers new opportunities. In an article for Design Week,Steve Price discussed how the role of media retailers is changing in the age of the “Filter Bubble.”

“Google, as amazing as it is, can only answer the questions you ask it,” he states. “It cannot tell you which questions you should be asking. Search results and news feeds are all now influenced by engines that take as a point of entry all that they know about you and spit back the information they think you’ll want. What is on the screen when you open Spotify? Recommendations on new music based on its knowledge of you. What happens if you visit Rough Trade Records? You often leave with albums and music from artists you’ve never heard of, having heard it played in the store, or from talking to one of the employees who clearly live and breathe music.”

Concerns aside, the tech community seems to be moving in the direction of “smarter” recommendation engines. For example, The Filter founded by Peter Gabriel. These developments suggest we might soon see recommendations for vacuum cleaners based on one’s music tastes. For example, a robotic system called HyperActive Bob has been developed to anticipate customer behaviors in fast food restaurants. This includes correlating a customer’s type of car with what he or she might order, but this particular filter has failed to prove successful so far.

When the self-referential nature of media increases the speed of recycling ideas in film, design, music, fashion and global culture as a whole, what will it take to receive truly original recommendations? What can we design into user experiences that will allow for the unexpected?

Imagine the possibilities of using “dumber” algorithms that will allow us to be pleasantly surprised by serendipity wherever we are…and whenever we “don’t” expect it.

If you liked this article we recommend: http://youtu.be/9ZlBUglE6Hc

Alexander Grünsteidl & Nikki Roddy @ Method

Is the time right for the emergence of the Webfront showroom? A place that links the high-street to online retail but does not necessarily depend on traditional retail margins to be profitable. A space that allows you to discover products and services, follow demonstrations and then try them out for yourself. You then are able to order products or sign up to subscriptions directly in the showroom or postpone this decision to a later moment at home or on the road.We recently wrote in “The Last Click” article how business models for the high street have to change in response to online commerce and will give rise to new retail formats.

Ian Yolles of NAU discusses in the BusinessWeek article Retail2.0

“Of course, for many shoppers, online research of prices or customer reviews is the first step towards a store purchase. Others survey products in a store to decide which they want and then find the best deal online. In others words, for many consumers the Web and the mall are both parts of a larger shopping experience. “Nobody has really done anything to connect the dots and take discontinuity out of customer behavior [online and offline],”

Webfronts, coined and trademarked by NAU, are places which only showcase products and services whilst purchases are completed online and products then are shipped directly to the customer within a couple of days. These places have little or no merchandise for on the spot sales, in order to reduce inventory and distribution costs. Instead they offer hands-on demonstrations of services, or allow customers to try items, like garments, for size. Typically self service or managed kiosks are available to place an order online.

Over the past years quite a few instances of these innovative retail formats have emerged. But for various reasons many of them, after having been launched in a PR cloud of pioneering optimism, have failed to become economically viable.

It’s clear that these hybrid retail formats are not suitable for all types of merchandise and transactions especially in the FMCG and perishables sector, but then again, each sector is currently experimenting with internet integration.

We would like to understand why some hopeful integrated retail formats failed and others became successful, and how we can make this formula succeed in future development. There is only little data available but we can at least bring together a selection of examples to compare different emerging models and look at the pros and cons.

At the core of the debate on integrated internet retail innovation is the uneasy diversion from established, well proven, retail formats. These formats are based on common sales practices:

• Setting conditions for impulse purchases, by attracting customers with aggressively priced, loss-leading merchandise.
• Various forms of price perception manipulation based on artificial sales offers and staged price reductions that lead to price erosion of products. As recently reported in | Never-ending sales “have to stop” | BBC | October 2009 |
• Up-selling by applying perceived quality differences within a family line of products to obtain higher margins.
• Creating cross-selling situations that tempt customers to add more items to their shopping basket.
• Negotiate unique and exclusive products with suppliers that allows the retailer to command the price with the highest margin, whilst telling the customer you are offering better service by helping to select the otherwise incomparable product.

Retail is about only two things; sell more items with low margins or few items with large margins. The whole design of retail environments online or offline is based on these few principles.

Customer behaviour proves these business models to be very successful. Though at a time when consumption patterns are changing as we exit the industrial- and enter the information-society, we should consider different sustainable models to manage customer relationships. One form will come from the fact that the nature of connected products is changing value perception of transactions.

Customer expectations are driven by a whole range of psychological factors. We don’t know how much we can manage these motivations and delay for example instant gratification of an impulse purchase and supplement it with something else. It will be at the core of these hybrid retail experiences that service design solution will have to be developed to satisfy customer needs and keep shoppers returning.

The increasing dominance of some (global) brands have lead to the Flagship-Store, which in effect is more about maintaining a brand image and fostering customer relationship rather than promoting instant sales. The question is if department like stores and curated boutique sized shops can offer profitable services based on business models which link smaller scale producers to their customers without necessarily providing direct sales?

Here is a selection of different approaches to the Webfront retail format, some more explicit and others almost transparently interwoven into the existing context.

Starbucks and iTunes

Starbucks was already a very successful vendor of music compilations cds, when it hooked up with Apple iTunes, offering wireless access to the location’s playlist from within the iTunes Application on for example an iPhone. A customer can see the current song playing and download it for the usual price. In addition a free song of the day is given away with a purchase coupon. Each Starbucks location becomes in fact a Webfront for the iTunes Online Store. It demonstrates that music stores don’t need to look like “traditional” music stores.

Apple and Starbucks iTunes WiFi integration hands-on | endgadget | Nov 2007 |

Shazam

Shazam turns any location that plays music into a Webfront. The customer uses his/her phone to transmit a sample of the music playing in the space, to a server and receives details about the song, album and artist, including a link to purchase the song from iTunes. Dj Clubs, Bars, Shopping-malls, Cars all become locations that can act as instant Websfronts.

The store in this case is often formed by the social context in which music is consumed. The crucial question is if Shazam would be willing to share in the revenue as the location and time of exposure is known to the application.

NAU Webfront stores

Nau was an apparel company with an environmentally aware, sustainable mission, based around a disruptive business format. It aimed at fundamentally reinventing its relationship with customers. One of their many innovations was the design of their retail space, which they don’t call a “store”, but rather a Webfront. It combined the efficiencies of the Web with the intimacy of the boutique. At a Nau Webfront, one sample of every piece in the collection and every available size hangs ready for visiting customers to try on. The company encourages shoppers to use the Webfront just as a testing platform for the clothes. The central mechanism is a self-serve kiosk that transfers the online shopping experience to an on-site touch screen kiosk and encourages customers to have their purchases sent home, with the incentive of a 10% discount and free shipping. By running retail this way, Nau dramatically decreases the regular inventory required at its multiple physical locations, thereby reducing the impacts of freight and lengthy supply chains.”

summary articles:

In a Search for the Authentic, I found nau|TrendBites | Jan 2008 |

Leap Of Faith | Fast Company | POLLY LABARRE | Dec 2007 |

about the customer experience:

Nau in Chicago: an interactive, sustainable, apparel store | Team Kane Street | Sept 2007 |

Unfortunately the company had to close a year after opening after failing to raise the next level of funding, and is currently re-launching as a web only store.

Sustainable clothier Nau pulls the plug | Jerry Casey | The Oregonian | May 02, 2008

What Nau? | Good magazine | Luke O’Brien | October 2008

Analysts consider the failure after just one year of operation due to trying to reinvent too many retail practices simultaneously, whilst not being able to create enough storefronts and develop parallel sales channels to become profitable. We would be interested to learn more about how customer behaviour had changed in reaction to this new off-hybrid format. Apparently about half the customers, many more than the 10% predicted, choose to have purchases sent home. Although undoubtedly at the heart of the customer experience, the apparently pricey to develop website struggled to become usable soon enough.

Various technologies are being brought together to facilitate these new environments. A summary of these can be found in this The New York Times article | Thinking of Going Blond? consult the Kiosk First | March 2009 |

Intel shopping kiosk prototype with Frog Design video of the prototype

The question is not if we can make the technology work, but how far existing retail infrastructures need to be adapted, if the cost of implementation offers sufficient ROI and most importantly if it can be made acceptable to customers.

Oki-Ni

Oki-Ni has been operating a similar retail format before NAU, featuring temporary gallery type shopfronts in different locations.

Images of the Gallery Shop

Their concept is based on offering exclusive products sourced from global renowned brands to unique collaborations with a range of niche brands, combined with the accessibility of on-line retail. The physical gallery is a place where consumers can view and try clothes. These outlets don’t sell any of the products, which must be ordered directly from the internet for delivery within a few days. Interestingly these pop-up galleries are seen as temporary marketing tools “We always see the galleries as a springboard to the internet. They are a marketing push in each territory where people become aware of the brand but then are happy to go online. Once we’ve become established in a territory, the galleries are not as important and then our focus as a retailer is online,” says Paddy Meehan.

UK RETAIL: Window shopping with a difference at Oki-Ni. | Goliath | February 2005

eBay Drop Off stores

Initially hyped as a new successful business opportunity with low start-up costs and growing returns. The format is based on branded high-street locations which accept and manage items to be auctioned on eBay and share in any profits made from a deal. After few initial success stories, many franchises failed. It turned out that location overhead, services costs which included labour to research products, create suitable images to present an item online, and writing descriptions were too high in relation to the deal margins on most low cost auction items. At the same time some more expensive items like cars were prohibited unless the franchise would obtain specific trade licenses.

http://tradingassistantjournal.com/2008/03/ebay-franchise-drop-stores-why-they-failed/

Evans cycles

Evans Cycles makes use of in-store sales kiosks to aggressively expand business across London.

So called “Info Hub” kiosks are prominently placed on the shop floor and allow online browsing as a shared activity between staff and customer, ordering anything from their online catalogue and then have it send for pick-up at the store or delivery at home. Employing instore online sales kiosks allowed Evans to rapidly open new locations, even settling for smaller, less suitable shop properties, in close proximity to their competitors, whilst overcoming limitations of having not enough space to stock the complete range, and instead only displaying items suitable for the target audience at each location.

Evans Cycles buying options

Apple Flagship stores

Brand Flagship stores are in fact nothing but Webfronts. We always wondered how far for example the Apple Stores are designed to be Webfront locations. The Apple high-street stores are intertwined with the Online Apple Stores. They have been the game changers in the consumer electronics sector, allowing people to touch and tryout products before buying. It is claimed that Apple Stores have some of the highest retail turnover per square meter in the industry. But surely (even if we can’t prove it) the salaries of the numerous staff must be paid by more than just in-store profit margins.

“Retail Analyst: Apple Store Regent Street most profitable for size in London “To make £60 million a year from a shop of Apple’s size is absolutely phenomenal””

The figures in this analysis seem way over the top, but then again it’s within the range of the possible; over £150k average a day and £15k an hour. Lets assume they process consistently 100 paying customers an hour that would create an average spending amount of £150. Sure enough this calculation is to simplistic. It would be interesting to learn how sales are divided between core Apple hardware, third party products, software and accessories?

But what surprises me that although many have studied the Apple Stores since their first opening in 2001, no-one has been able to successfully emulate the formula. Even in London, the Nokia flagship store, across from the Apple Store on Regent Street, both, not quite incidentally, designed by the same company, Eight Inc. seems to completely miss the point. This showroom really can’t be more than an advertising space, in an environment when most handset sales are tied in with the service providers.

We wonder if it is about the presentation format, or about the choice of products which are out of synch with requirements in multi-channel customer relationships? Incidentally Microsoft just opened the first store this week copying many successful elements from the Apple formula.

It seems like this formula only works for brands that can offer a complete package; in Apple’s case, everything from hardware to software, to content. It makes us question if these type of stores actually can be developed in a different consumer sectors and with merchandise sourced from different brands without a core brand forming the central organising principle.

Perhaps the food sector can offer some insights?

Ocado the only way to shop for groceries.

Tesco, Every little helps and Tesco direct

We are really interested in the relationship between groceries bought the traditional way in Waitrose supermarkets and products ordered online. Or for the same reason how customers both shop online on Tesco Direct and Tesco.co.uk and Sainsbury’s online whilst having visited the comparable local supermarket locations. How much are the items chosen on the Webshop, depending on initial discovery on the physical shelf. On the other hand, how many products in the online shopping basket come from cross selling opportunities, for example by offering ready shopping lists based on recipes, which would have be difficult to realise on a physical shelf? How much is Waitrose a Webfront for Ocado.com? Instead most online discussions are about how much they compete on product ranges and prices.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocado

De Kijkshop

Just as a curiosity to include in this list is the 35 year old Kijkshop. (literally translated Look-Shop) A unique shopping format from the Netherlands. Initially the stores were located off main shopping locations but easy to reach by car. The shops were mostly designed with dark walls and flooring, with spotlights highlighting merchandise locked inside glass showcases. Each items was provided with extensive printed descriptions. Customers note down the product numbers selected items and pass them to a cashier. Merchandise is then delivered boxed up straight from the warehouse. When the the chain changed ownership a few years ago, a more conventional format, with products openly accessible to the customer, thought to provide incentives for impulse purchases, was tested in one of the locations. After failing to achieve the intended effect, the company has decided to remain with the proven format.

First was the announcement of the change

Kijkshop stopt met vitrineformule | Nieuwe eigenaar verwacht omzetstijging door ’open aanpak’ | Trouw | August 2007

Then came the “disillusioning” insight after a year of trials, that the original formula was still pretty effective.

Aanbod Kijkshop blijft achter glas | de Ondernemer | April 2008

Similar to Argos in the UK, the Kijkshop has increasing web presence, although it’s arguable how far the relationship with the high-street showrooms goes.

Wired Store Christmas Pop-Up

Here the well known magazine “Wired” lends its brand to endorse the selection of gadgets for a pop-up store during the holiday season. It is a yearly pop-up store in New York, “curated” by Wired staff, but as some commentators note, more likely driven by lucrative sponsorship deals. It’s a place where you are actually able to touch products you otherwise only encounter in blogs and magazine articles. A range of advertorial events and charity games are hosted on site during this period. Customers don’t purchase directly but from internet kiosks around the store. Items are then shipped to their homes in time before Xmas. The main aspect of this format is similar to Oki-Ni but to the level that Wired only takes a fee from sponsors to offset the cost for product placement and does not take a percentage of the sales revenue. The inaugural Wired pop-up store sold $9 million worth of merchandise,65 gadgets in all, and attracted 14,000 visitors. As such the Wired store becomes a trusted mediator between companies and customers.

related articles:

photos of example products in the store by Digital Lifestyles

Wired Magazine Becomes Holiday Retailer | Phil Wahba, | Special to the Sun | November 2006

Some critical notes by PFK.com

Sample Lab

The obvious conclusion to where contemporary business models, in acknowledgement of the relationship between the high street and online retail, are heading is the Japanese Sample Lab franchise. It’s a true try-vertising space where potential consumers, called try-sumers come to test and experience products for free, before buying them elsewhere. The model evolved from the mostly unwanted, in-your-face free samples, offered at inopportune moments in the street or whilst browsing in department stores. The business formula is build on product placement and includes demonstrations in a stylish but neutral environment creating a unique retail experience. Customers become members for a nominal yearly fee. At each visit they can try everything on display and then take 5 items home. Before being able to return to a store try-sumers are requested to fill out a questionnaire, either on the spot or in their own time online or on their phone. Companies who place products will receive information from in-store surveys and at same time will gain wider awareness of their products and services by word-of-mouth, spread in the social network of the Sample Lab members.

It is an alternative to the free-samples, often packed with print magazines, now with a vanishing role in competition with content on the internet. The model is probably best oriented to FMCG products but we are wondering how far this could be stretched to introduce online services and for example specific mobile phone apps. In the case of some consumer electronic products it has already proven to be a suitable place to gain exposure with people that otherwise would not be inclined to visit their a brand flagship stores related to the product. “…By renting lab space, Sony was able to put Playstations into the hands of women, many of them for the first time…There are a lot of people Sony can’t reach with their regular promotional events. Sony marketing thought this would be a way to access customers who normally wouldn’t visit game software shops or electronics stores…”

It’s All about the Freebies | American Way | Ethan Rouen | May 2009

A Trip To The Sample Lab | Nightly Business Report | March 2008 |

Conclusion

This is only a small selection of the most prominent cases exploring hybrid business models, combining brick and mortar and online retail. It will require more than just placement of CRM technologies within existing retail environments to achieve customer acceptance, what we call a new Culture of Use, and satisfy underlying consumer needs. The question still is how far places on the high street need to evolve to adjust to these changes and what completely new formats will arise. What mechanisms draw people into shops on the high-street, compared to access to stores on their mobile phone in their hand? How can we create enough stickiness that people want to return to destinations on the high-street?

E-tailing – has the revolution arrived? BBC January 2009

High street reaction to online march too slow, says George Davies Retail Week September 2009

Barcode and location based price comparison services, including augmented reality applications which overlay information on top of the physical world, are about to become mainstream. This will have a profound impact on business models in retail, will in the long run affect the way we conduct transactions in public space and will impact urban planning …

going shopping with a camera

Lets cast our imagination a few, lets say ten years forward. You walk by your local deli and your GPS enabled mobile phone, or some other piece of location aware wearable technology vibrates. A few days ago you agreed to dinner with friends and set a reminder on a service like reQall, to pick up a bottle of wine in the case you are in the vicinity of the shop. You walk into the shop and pick up a nice looking bottle. You scan the barcode  with Redlaser and confirm that this is indeed a variety you might like based on previous purchases. Whilst you are glancing at an expert review of the bottle and compare the rating with an trustworthy online forum, you notice an alert that shows the prices and locations of nearby shops offering the same bottle of wine. It turns out that another shop down the road offers a three-for-two deal and you decide it is worth to walk the couple of minutes.

T-Mobile G1 Shop Savvy Demo

In this scenario the retailer who made the effort to inspire you to consider this particular bottle of wine, loses out on the deal. You’ve been to his store before, it’s in a convenient location, the store has a great ambience and on previous visits the staff seemed knowledgeable, but in the end the deal offered at the box selling warehouse merchant around the corner is too good to let go. For various reasons the deli on the high-street has to calculate higher margins to be able to offer the level of service that attracts customers, but is unable to compete once information on price is available freely. In German there’s even a term for this: “Beratungsddiebstahl”. Loosely translated as “Customer Advice Theft”.

This scenario can be played out with a variety of products in different markets. Retailers will consistently loose out on sales and have their customers pulled away, even if they offer better services, as soon as any unfavorable price differences exist. It’s not long before the shop offering additional service will have to close. Sounds familiar?  In fact over centuries, changing availability and access to information, together with increasing mobility have been the major forces to alter the functional lay-out of our cities.

Actually this scenario is about to become reality much sooner. Most underlying technologies have been around for a while and many similar applications are expected to appear on iPhone, Android, Nokia and other platforms within the coming year.

More interestingly … I believe the above scenario will never become common place in the form described, as it becomes obsolete as soon as it is realized.

The resulting closure of shops in this scenario has unintended effects for the winemaker, affecting distribution and in succession the availability of his wine. This effect is already noticeable on the UK high street where a variety of stores are squeezed out of existence. (Sure the winemaker has the opportunity to sell his wine online, but that is a different story)

A BBC Click recently reported in an interview with a German games developer, as the amount of independent stores on the high street is shrinking, that smaller computer and console game manufacturers have diminishing opportunities to reach out to customers. According to the report less than 50 independent buyers for computer and console games are left in the UK. Smaller manufacturers find less and less outlets, few are able to set up their own branded shops and find it increasingly difficult to compete with large global brands both on and off-line.

One common strategy is to make products incomparable in retail. Companies will revert to old tricks, differentiating virtually the same product, lets say a compact camera called Gotak CS-y03 and the similar Gotak BS-09 to offer exclusive deals to different retailers. The cameras are virtually the same whilst the BS-09 includes a seldom used auto-smile-detection software feature, added on firmware level, allowing to price this product with a slightly different margin to remain competitive. A variety of similar strategies are deployed by manufacturers that produce multiple brands on top of the same product platforms to diversify margins for their retailers.

Drive by advertising

Lets look at a similar scenario, but from a slightly different perspective. Instead of the proactive case, having intentionally set a location based reminder to buy wine, we now have a more passive approach; contextual advertisements based on your location, time of day, weather, social context, your diary, mood and any other measurable patterns.

In a recent discussion amongst friends, we were talking about the soon to emerge widespread application of location based services, especially the common scenarios of GPS type location tracking together with geo-coded data. This will allow for example menus of restaurants to pop up on your mobile phone as you drive through the city, receiving alerts in the form of vouchers as you pass hotspots in synch with the preferences set in your profile. This will include time and location limited deals, offering selective access through coupons, to content and products available in your proximity. You can expect every few hundred meters yet another attempt to sell you some perfume or wet your appetite  for the latest lunchtime pizza deal. You can easily picture yourself driving down your local high-street or approaching a shopping mall from the highway, being bombarded by the same Starbucks, Pizza Express, H&M, Footlocker ect messages on your phone.

We realized that many of these location aware scenarios anticipate a variety of choices from a diversity of retailers situated in brick and mortar locations, vying for our attention. Instead we will be seeing the same messages appear repeatedly on our mobile devices whilst we traverse our homogenized public environments.

Starbuck locations in central London

Or am I wrong and these technologies will enable retailers to compete again on a local level; shops can now be “discovered” away from the well trodden paths of the high-street pavements, disperse footfall to side alleys by pointing potential customers to walk “around the corner”. This might diminish the value of “location, location, location” and level the real estate prices, so independent shops can manage their margins on a more competitive level with out of town online warehouses? The high-street will increasingly become a proxy to the online world and we expect new types of retail hospitality type of environments to start populating the the spaces vacated by retailers relying on traditional transactions.

from Flickr group

Augmented reality applications

This is not an argument against the development and commercialization of these technologies. To the contrary we are excited about for example  Augmented Reality applications, which currently start appearing on consumer level devices. for example Layar Wikitude by  Mobilizy and Delicious Monster using registration barcodes on books. cds and dvds creates a seemless link between books owned on your bookshelf and online recommendations from Amazon. These technologies and affiliated services emerge as part of the evolving nature of our networked society. Many of these applications are being realized on a “can do” basis. Relatively cheap and computationally powerful mobile platforms are now sufficiently distributed in the population. Online access to rich geo-tagged databases is rapidly growing. The time is ripe for services to come out of labs and offer opportunities for many start-ups to grab a piece of a potentially huge market.

What will happen?

It’s not surprising that retailers wont be too happy with people holding their mobiles too close to products on shelves and will want to prevent taking pictures inside their shops. Currently many places forbid photography, citing the right to “privacy” of fellow customers. But how will shops be able to enforce this? “Checking” your phone whilst taking a picture and running a price comparison app is hardly detectable by security staff. It’s a lost game similar to the early days of digital cameras, when concert visitors were told to leave their camera’s by the entrance because of possible copyright infringement. Now, a few years later, we are instead encouraged to take as many pictures as we like and upload them as soon as possible to a Facebook fan page. In the long run we will need a way of dealing with a situation were many products, including digital spectacles and brooches, will have camera type technology build-in and continuously store and compare image data online. This will lead to a situation where brand outlets will be inviting people to publish as many pictures as they want, to demonstrate brand loyalty , whilst department type stores who aggregate products through buyers who negotiate purchase and sales prices with the manufacturers and suppliers, will want to avoid people comparing prices.

Price aggregator sites serve a self defeating purpose. Once a site emerges the price differences between comparable products will run down to bare minimum levels, just about covering margins to sustain the cost of warehousing and delivery. A situation only maintainable by companies operating on sheer volume . At some point most prices will become almost similar and the reason to exist, the very purpose of the site, makes itself obsolete.

What’s next?

Location based price comparison technologies, if applied straight out of the lab to the current retail environment, are plain naive from a business point of view. We can and will not be able to run them successfully for any length of time unless we develop radically different business models that take into account how products are introduced and exposed across all communication channels and customer touch-points.

The emergence of these technologies is is unstoppable. The effect of these will be different, in different geographic locations, none the less the impact will be profound. We need to reconsider business models considering new forms of pricing, sales strategies, haggling, financing and distribution. We will need to understand the role of up- and especially cross-selling in these new sales environments. It will affect how we will encounter public spaces in the near future and we better prepare for it. Already now many traditional retail typologies are vanishing from the high street e.g. The Bookstores, Music-stores, travel agents, electric retailers are all becoming extinct. I don’t believe we should keep these types artificially alive in a wave of nostalgia. Instead we should actively encourage projects that consider how pubic space will be affected by new technologies and how we can take this massive opportunity to design appropriate solutions around innovative business models. We should not make yet again the mistake of watching and condemning something like music piracy, in the mean time ignoring to develop alternative business and experience models that match the sign of the times. Whilst these technologies will have considerable impact on the way communities interact in the near future, politicians are probably still ignorant of what is emerging. Once we planned cities for cars, now we might require complete new approaches to urban planning, based on integrating brick and mortar with an overlay of the virtual.

further reading:

ShopSavvy by Big in Japan for Google Android

The Future of Retail: Instant Price Match, Ad Lab

Stores Clueless About Mobile Barcode Scanning Applications?, Read Write Web

Barcode Shopping – The Future Of mCommerce?, Lester Madden