Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Online kiosk-like IRL shopping center

Imagine a mega mall filled with specialty type items like wearables, to expensive appliances, medical or technological devices, but the purpose is not to leave with any physical products. Once you find what you like, it would be shipped to you. The reason for not stocking product for immediate distribution is because this is only about the shopping selection process. The mall would only need to stock of one or two of each product in each size. Users come in to try-on, and physically handle products in niche categories, that would classify as "wish I could try it once first, but heck, I'll just order one of these 5 options online". Users would get a firsthand feeling before commiting to an expensive permanent purchase. Sure it would be annoying to have a to wait a few days for the purchases, but that's how it is when you order online anyway. At least this way, you can try several higher end models, whereas when shopping online that would be costly or impractical, and you would need to just pick one.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Paperless shopping, please: Receipts mailed to your inbox?

It occurred to me recently that while my local grocery shop has all my details thanks to their persistence in getting me to sign up for their bonus card, they still force-feed me paper receipts of my purchases every single time. This might be for legal reasons (proof of purchase, etc.), but I would say the time has come to offer a smarter alternative via the magical, new-fangled system called e-mail.

Imagine you are in the self-check-out lane, finishing up your purchase, and instead of having the blaring machine implore you to grab the multiple bits of paper (receipt, coupons, customer copy of the receipt), you're given the choice of sending it to your e-mail address. The e-mail would include the UUID of your purchase, and links to CSV/PDF files of your purchase, plus coupons and other marketing garbage. As an added service, at the end of the month you would receive a tally e-mail of all your purchases, also with CSV/PDF versions downloadable from a secure site.

Why has no store chain implemented this yet? They'd save money on paper purchases, it would speed up the check-out process, and they have a reason to send me an e-mail that they can fill up with marketing stuff!