Touch screen helps retailers break through physical shelves

Displaying small-scale products on limited shelves, but not reaching the expected transaction rate, but the popular products that can be sold reduce the sample rate. Businesses are struggling. "We should continue to sell those popular products, although we must inevitably compete with other stores' homogenized products for price."

So, how can traditional retailers break through the limitations of physical shelves, give consumers more choices, and help them find what they really need in order to avoid the price wars of popular products and increase their competitiveness?

From June 8th to July 7th, eBay will launch the first four touchscreen “shopping windows” in densely populated areas in New York City, selling 30 models from Kate Spade Saturday, a popular brand of apparel and accessories retailer Fifth & Pacific Cos Inc. product. The latest display screen eBay plans to launch is about 9 feet (2.7 meters) wide and about 2 feet (0.6 meters) high, and will be installed on the front window of a physical store that has ended its business hours. Consumers can order merchandise by touching the display screen, and then the delivery person will deliver the goods within one hour. Consumers can pay directly to the delivery person through PayPal Here, a mobile payment service developed by eBay.

Steve Jankovic, head of Innovation and New Ventures at eBay, points out: "This kind of virtual store can expand the boundaries of physical stores, allowing physical stores to reach any space through online technology."

New Shopping Malls in Europe and the United States Experienced in the United States Chinese-language reports: Shopping malls such as Macy's, HSN, and Adidas are all setting up large, television-like interactive screens to give customers shopping online.

Messi's beauty shopping kiosk has a touch screen TV on both sides, where customers can browse all the brands of cosmetics in the mall.

Adidas has set up a 2.1-meter-high touch screen wall in a London mall that can be divided into different sections and divided into different sections (currently, there are three widths, about 2.7 meters, 3.9 meters and 5.2 meters, respectively). In addition to displaying the basic information of the product, these screen walls allow customers to view the product from any angle, and can rotate and enlarge. When the customer finds his favorite product, he can put it into a virtual shopping cart. After entering his identification information, the information will be sent to the counter and the customer will move to where he will pay the money.

This sales method has increased the sales volume of a soccer shoe in two weeks by 500% compared with the traditional form of presentation six months ago.

Obrad, director of business experience at Adidas, said that touching the screen wall is like an endless shelf, and customers can access a large number of products because it is no longer restricted by the inventory of traditional shopping malls.

Mitch Joel, president of digital promotional agency Twist Image, said that the past limitation was how many products could be put on the spot. Now that you no longer have that problem.

Redefining touch kiosks In some large shopping malls in China, we can often see some touch kiosks on the stairs: they are provided by discount service providers and can print coupons for some shops (but these coupons often It does not apply to shops in some shopping malls, often making these machines a tasteless place; some are set up by shopping malls, allowing you to check the distribution of all shops in the mall and some brief introductions.

Through the above foreign cases, combined with the status quo of domestic shopping malls, this gives me an inspiration: how to use these touch screens more efficiently? - Show products that do not appear on the merchant's shelves!

Mall interactive touch shopping system shopping mall to establish a set of interactive touch shopping guide system, using a touch inquiry machine to create a virtual shelf space.

First, the merchant prepares product information data (including pictures, copy, sale price, etc.), and then gives the data to the mall manager (can also be completed by the mall manager, just charge the merchant a specific fee), managed by the mall. The data will be organized into the mall's touch inquiry machine. This system of shopping malls has an essential component - filter mechanism: including catalogs (refer to Taobao's home page layout, all products are cataloged, of course, this classification should be established in accordance with the different characteristics of the product), recommendations The system (when the customer views a certain product, the page prompts the other customers viewing the product to also check which products or goods with similar attributes) and search function (the search results can be further sorted according to price, popularity, brand, etc.), In order to display these merchandise information in an orderly manner to customers, consumers can quickly and easily find the merchandise they are interested in, and provide details of the merchandise store (including brand introductions and all the merchandise and non-shelf merchandise operated). . When the consumer has a preliminary interest in something that is not on the shelf, he only needs to follow the instructions of the touch inquiry machine to walk into this store, so that the shopping guide can provide this product. Before that, the product may only be lying quietly in a certain corner of the shop, and there is no need to compete with those mainstream products for limited display space.

Shopping malls can feed each product to the merchant in a certain cycle of clicks. If the click-through rate of a niche product is good, then the merchant can consider whether to let it squeeze onto the shelf, so that it also becomes a hot possibility. .

When the conditions are ripe, the mall can open the background of the access system to the merchants to achieve more powerful functions:

1. Let merchants upload and modify their own products;

2. Let merchants publish the latest promotion information in real time to attract customers to the store;

3. Touch the terminal machine to join the purchase function: the customer finds the favorite product and clicks on the purchase directly. The system feeds back the information to the merchant. The merchant prepares the product. The customer only needs to go to the merchant counter to pay for the goods.

This kind of shopping model that combines the rich communication methods of the digital world and interacts with products in the physical world will bring unprecedented vitality to traditional retail terminals:

1. Bring more shelf space and lower sales cost to merchants so that they can provide more choices to achieve more sales;

2. Bringing consumers a new, unique shopping experience;

3. Set up an efficient communication bridge between shopping malls, businesses and consumers.

From the offline to the online store counterattack When the entire database is complete to a certain extent, the mall can integrate resources, establish their own online platform or enter other platforms, the merchants of these commodity data packaged online, down from the line Push it online. The shopping mall at this time acts as a collector-like character for Tmall, but I think it can do better at least two points:

The first one is to make online purchases more comfortable for customers. Customers may not be buying on the spot for various reasons (not enough money, inconvenient to carry, unwanted size, etc.) when visiting the mall. Find the corresponding merchant on the purchase. Different from the previous online offline experience, the product on the line is the one that he experienced online at that time, and the supplier is also the merchant under the line. He is concerned with the authenticity and quality of the product. Concerns about sources and other information will be greatly reduced, because he has an overall image of the goods and merchants online, which can greatly increase his chances of buying.

The second is to buy and return the goods online, and when the customer buys goods for gifts in the mall, he finds it inappropriate (the size is not suitable, the style does not like, etc.) or finds some defects that were not noticed at that time. The online return of goods through sales voucher, and then sent to the merchant by courier, which for those customers far away from the mall, will provide a more comprehensive and convenient after-sales service, which is also conducive to reducing customer anxiety and promote They are buying on the spot.

This will make it possible for the mall to realize a strong road that has never passed along the long tail of products, people, and channels.