By trying to embrace a new Innovative Marketing strategy in retail, marketers are able to meet targeted consumer needs such as product customization, or quality and speed of service and payment. Below are examples about how their experimentation with retail tech and how this is helping them achieve their strategic goals.
Rebecca Minkoff Store in Soho, NYC
Strategic Objective: Provide a pleasing, differentiated, interactive experience to its customers and help them better and more easily accessorize fashion items.
Rebecca Minkoff entered into partnership with eBay to design an interactive, connected retail store, combining the best of retail with e-commerce for a unique and technologically advanced shopping experience.
In her store, customers may order tea, espresso or water to sip while they perform their shopping. They may select their preference and enter in their phone number on the connected wall, similar to large-scale computer touchscreen in which they may swipe and view all product displayed in-store, request a sales associate’s assistance and try on product via the mirror function. The interactive dressing rooms identify each item a customer brings in through a sensor that recognizes a code from an RFID tag attached to each outfit. The dressing room mirrors are equipped with four different light settings enabling customers to view their look at different times of day dependent upon the event they are shopping for.
Moreover, customers may view and choose suggested products selected by Rebecca Minkoff to pair with the item they have opted to try on, often increasing the number of items a customer will bring into the dressing room and potentially purchase. If customers want to remember the items they tried on, they can save their shopping session by filling in in their information. Customers can easily check out with PayPal when purchasing an item if desired.
AT&T Store Chicago
Strategic Objectives: Showcase AT&T’s new technology and position the company as a life-enhancing brand.
AT&T’s flagship store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, is filled with innovative technology; for example the internet-enabled car that can be instructed to “hold calls” and provide car diagnostics and trip information to users. The store also sells customisable phone accessories with regards to photos from users’ photo libraries. Interactive exhibits provide information about the history of phone technology and by tracking which visitors interacted the most, AT&T may constantly adjust and enhance the exhibit’s content.
Tesco Korea and the U.K.
Strategic Objective: Make shopping for staples as quick & easy as possible, delivery on request.
To complete their objective to increasing sales while limiting investment in new real estate, Tesco opted for an ingenious solution: offering 2-dimensional stores in high traffic locations, like subways in Korea, or airports in the U.K., so that people can shop with their phones, snap item QR codes, and have delivery timed for just after they arrive home after work (Korea) or from a trip (The U.K.).
Les Nouveaux Ateliers in France & Belgium
Strategic Objective: Provide customers with the best possible fit for their custom-made clothes.
Les Nouveaux Ateliers is a small chain of boutiques in France and Belgium, where men can have custom-made suits made to order with the fit, fabrics and colour combinations they wish to. What is innovative in the process is that each shop has a body scanner, which takes up to 200 different, precise measurements of their body, with more accuracy than tailors can take, and as a result, the fit is about as exact as you can get.
