There’s a useful post over at econsultancy by Eric Abensur of cloud-based commerce company Venda, that asks a simple, but very pertinent question, is social commerce worth the investment?

The short answer – according to the post – is a qualified yes, if retailers adopt the right approach and tone.

For the e-consultancy post, social commerce is not about turning social media into a marketplace, but using social media to promote the marketplace/site you’re selling on – essentially through social sharing. For instance, Etsy sellers use Pinterest for free advertising, and 20% of buyers come to the craft marketplace from seeing shared pics on Pinterest.  Use e-commerce software to sell, and social software to share. Simple, right?

But is that it? Is social commerce really just regular e-commerce with social sharing added in?  Well it’s certainly part of it.  Social commerce software solutions with traction - TurnTo, 8thBridge, AddShoppers, inSparq, Bazaarvoice, Lithium, Sellaround – are all increasingly focusing on adding premium social features to e-commerce solutions – with ratings and reviews, Social Q&A, social recommendations, and customizable share buttons leading the pack. This is social commerce as a plugin, or rather, a set of plugins – and yes, it is worth the investment.  Why? Because these social plugins for e-commerce sites are simple, time and cost-efficient ways to help retailers monetize the referral value of their customers – which can be up to 40% of total customer lifetime value. Social commerce as a plugin is a no-brainer.

But there’s more to social commerce than a plugin.  The opportunity is to use social commerce for business model innovation – using a social mindset to create and capture customer value in new and different ways.

• Tuangou (team buying) – selling to groups, not individuals (e.g. Mercedes has offered members of social networks the opportunity to club together an buy in bulk with group discounts)
• Pop-up Retail - using social media as a channel for selling limited editions. (e.g., this year Mercedes launched a special limited edition Smart Car sold only on the Chinese version of Twitter)
• Collaborative Consumption – selling stuff for sharing (e.g. Zipcar, AirBnB, Zopa)
• Collaborative Commerce – using social technology to manage supply chain alliances and collaboration. For example, last year luxury retail chain Neiman Marcus said it will put together a limited collection from 24 American designers this holiday season with an unlikely partner … discounter Target Corp

Social plugins are a good way to start with social commerce, they are worth the investment.  But the big wins will happen when companies adopt a social mindset to do business model innovation – by thinking we-commerce not me-commerce.  The future of social commerce will happen with business model innovation, not a plugin.

(Via Social Commerce Today)

Results further indicated that these convergent processes depend on a shared network of frontal (known to be involved in regulating behavior; it also processes feelings of reward and plays a role in attention, planning and memory), temporal and parietal (helps integrate sensory information, and contributes to bodily coordination and language processing) brain regions. The results support an integrative framework for understanding the architecture of executive, social and emotional processes.

(Via NeuroRelay)

This isn’t a Kafka knock-off story about a retail associate turning into a giant bug, although the conclusion could be just as hideous.  I have always thought that the airline industry illuminates the way for retailers in some aspects.  I saw kiosks and QRCodes used at airlines before I saw them in stores, for example.  And airlines invented loyalty programs.  I appreciate the customer service and perks I get from my airline, and I wish I would be treated similarly by my retailers. But regardless of how much I spend with a retailer, I’m always treated as any other member of the herd, with the exception of high-end boutiques and possibly departments stores.  An article by Jeff Katz suggested that retail is following the path of airlines, and it gave me pause.

Katz, a former airline industry executive, points out that airlines determined that their customers are driven by price more than any other factor, so they have lowered their prices and stripped down service accordingly.  Then they let their customers pay for the things that matter to them, basically relying on add-on services, like preferred seat and bag fees, for profit.  The retail landscape isn’t that much different with today’s customers myopically focused on price.  Traditional retailers can’t expend the effort and dollars to provide service to customers that whip out their phones and buy from a lower-price competitor (hello Amazon and eBay) that has less overhead.

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and venture capitalist, has been trumpeting the coming downfall of brick-and-mortar stores based on the fact that the overhead doesn’t allow them to compete with online retailers.  And while I understand where he’s coming from, I don’t agree at all.  Competition has and will continue to cause retailers to change.  Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are leveraging new touchpoints (notice I’m staying away from the dreaded “channel” term) and understanding how to provide greater personalization.  (Whenever I receive coupons from Target, I just have to wonder exactly how much they know.)  And while the technology exists for my pre-teen daughter to order clothing and shoes online, she will never do it.  She enjoys shopping too much.

Back to the airline industry… Retailers have the technology to track every interaction with me, and they can even personalize offers based on my patronage, their inventories, and the state of the local economy.  So just like I know my fellow passengers in row 20 (the exit row on MD-80s) each paid a different price for the exact same flight, we could be moving toward personalized pricing in stores.  And why stop there?  Browse the aisles, use a dressing room, make a return — all might someday have fees associated.  (Remember re-stocking fees?)  Of course those fees will be waived for their most loyal customers, plus we get to use the express checkout as well.

So will consumers put up with the airline-ification of retail?  In some ways they already have. Just look at big-box, rock-bottom price, self-checkout stores.  The associates are about as friendly as TSA agents, and yet we still buy because we are so driven by lowest price.  Do you pay a fee to enter a Costco or Sam’s Club?  Yes you do.  This Kafka “monstrous vermin” is starting to look pretty scary.

Fortunately, there’s enough room in the retail industry for bare-bones retailers all the way up to personal shoppers and many points in between.  Retail is not going to die, nor is it going to merge with USAirways (although American Airlines might).  It is definitely going through major changes, most of which will benefit consumers. Every retailer has the opportunity to stake a claim to their market, their brand, and their offering. They are differentiated on price, service, and experience.  Some will neatly wrap my purchase in tissue-paper while others will charge me for a shopping bag.  Its all good because I make the choice.

So we’ll take some lessons from the airline industry, but we’ll also avoid some of their mistakes.  I look forward to the opportunity to tune my shopping experience to fit my needs, both online and in stores.

(Via Insight-Driven Retailing Blog)

ConAgra Foods, makers of Healthy Choice and Marie Callender’s meals, created the video below to show what the future of shopping may look like from behind Google Glass.  This is clearly not possible today but is within the realm of possibility for the near future.

I was annoyed they chose to follow two people instead of just one.  I assume they did it to illustrate the conversation between the women, but it distracts from the overall shopping theme.  If the conversation was that important, it would have been better to ask for product advice.  I was more impressed with the voice response than the augmented reality aspects.  Being able to direct commands to Glass vs people in the room is tough — usually you need to preface commands with a keyword or press a button.

Being able to overlay text on products is pretty tough as well.  Today you’d need to use a barcode or marker of some sort because image recognition is just too unreliable, especially when all the products look similar.  At best you can count the number of facing items and possibly recognize the brands.

Checkout was certainly fast!  Surprised they didn’t have to blink Morse Code for their PINs.  All in all I thought most of what they accomplished would have worked well on their smartphones without Glass.  It certainly has me thinking about the future.

Would have been funny to see one of the women run into an endcap because spam blocked her vision.  Maybe next time.

(Via Insight-Driven Retailing Blog)

Service Design – From Insight to Implementation
by Andy Polaine, Lavrans Løvlie & Ben Reason
Rosenfeld Media – March 2013

We have unsatisfactory experiences when we use banks, buses, health services and insurance companies. They don’t make us feel happier or richer. Why are they not designed as well as the products we love to use such as an Apple iPod or a BMW?

The ‘developed’ world has moved beyond the industrial mindset of products and the majority of ‘products’ that we encounter are actually parts of a larger service network. These services comprise people, technology, places, time and objects that form the entire service experience. In most cases some of the touchpoints are designed, but in many situations the service as a complete ecology just “happens” and is not consciously designed at all, which is why they don’t feel like iPods or BMWs.

One of the goals of service design is to redress this imbalance and to design services that have the same appeal and experience as the products we love, whether it is buying insurance, going on holiday, filling in a tax return, or having a heart transplant. Another important aspect of service design is its potential for design innovation and intervention in the big issues facing us, such as transport, sustainability, government, finance, communications and healthcare.

Given that we live in a service and information age, a practical, thoughtful book about how to design better services is urgently needed.

Along with many other insights, this book offers:

• A clear explanation of what service design is and what makes it different from other ways of thinking about design, marketing and business.
• Service design insights, methods and case studies to help you move up the project food chain and have a bigger design impact on the entire service ecosystem.
• Practical advice to help you sell the value of service thinking within your organisation and to clients.
• Ways to help you develop business, design, environmental and social innovation through service design.

Also of note: Free webcast by the authors (recommended!)

(Via Putting people first)

Cervezas Artesanales de Madrid:

Madrid ha sido desde antaño una región con tradición cervecera, siempre tuvo pequeñas fábricas repartidas por su territorio que con el paso del tiempo se fueron haciendo grandes e importantes para acabar siendo compradas y fusionadas con grandes grupos del sector.

Y es que Madrid cuenta con un valor muy importante para la cerveza: su agua, que siempre ha tenido fama de ser buena. Y como el agua constituye el 90% de la cerveza, tener un agua de calidad es un excelente punto de partida para el establecimiento de fábricas en la región y para competir con otras cerveceras de España.

Por si esto fuera poco, nuestra ciudad cuenta también con dos elementos claves para el éxito del consumo de cerveza: una climatología seca y soleada, y una red de bares única por habitante, 14.600 bares y restaurantes, uno por cada 450 habitantes.

Así que, con estas premisas y ahora que vuelve a estar de moda lo artesano, el campo para volver a fabricar cervezas de calidad y a pequeña escala con el marchamo de la región estaba despejado. Y así han sabido verlo en estos tiempos de crisis, tan necesitados de nuevas iniciativas, varios emprendedores.

En Julio de 2010, fruto ruto de un grupo de emprendedores, liderados por David Castro y a los que une la pasión por la cerveza, el mundo empresarial y el apego a la historia y gentes de Madrid, con el ánimo de ofrecer al mercado una serie de cervezas artesanales de alta calidad y bajo volumen de producción nace, bajo el nombre de la diosa icono de Madrid, La Cibeles, una nueva marca de cervezas fabricadas en la comunidad, “la única cerveza que tiene un monumento” como ellos mismos dicen.

En 2012 y en una nave de un polígono industrial situado en la localidad de las Rozas de Madrid veía la luz una segunda marca: La Virgen. Sus promotores: dos emprendedores madrileños que trabajaban en San Francisco (Estados Unidos) y empezaron a elaborar cerveza en su propia casa, Jaime Riesgo, un publicitario avezado y su mujer, Ana Elena Coello, asesora de inversiones. Ambos, junto a Estanis Carenzo y Pablo Giudice, de Sudestada, iniciaron la aventura.

Merece la pena acercarse hasta allí, no solo por la calidad de sus cervezas o su ya famoso perrito caliente, sino por la gracia del lugar, que parece semiclandestino, una nave blanca con hechuras de garaje en la que, como en casi todos los lugares donde se fabrican cervezas artesanas, los tanques de acero inoxidable parecen de juguete.

Quien quiera conocer el proceso no tiene más que concertar una cita por teléfono y se lo enseñarán todo, incluidas las cubas de fermentación, los depósitos de frío donde reposan las cervezas antes del embotellado y hasta la caldera, que se alimenta con un curioso y muy ecológico combustible, huesos de aceituna.

Cierran toda la semana, salvo jueves y viernes a partir de las 19,30 y también abren los sábados, incluso por la mañana. Cuentan con una barra y varios grifos y la clientela llena las mesas que se desparraman por el callejón donde se encuentra la nave lo que le da un aire como de bar improvisado, o lo que podríamos denominar, siguiendo la moda actual, un “pop-up bar”.

Un lugar muy diferente nos ofrece la Fábrica de Cervezas Maravillas, un bonito espacio situado en pleno centro de Madrid donde degustar también las cervezas artesanales que producen sus dos maestros cerveceros, el francés Thierry Hascoët y David Rodríguez, estadounidense de origen español.

Este pequeño pero diáfano espacio diseñado por la interiorista Tamara Pintado (otra de las socias) tiene una sala de degustación, con sus cañeros, su barra y unas cuantas mesas altas y, detrás, la pequeña fábrica, a la vista del público, donde se elabora el preciado líquido.

A nosotros, por motivos profesionales, nos gustó más este último local, pero os aconsejamos visitar las fábricas y probar algunas variedades, bien allí mismo o adquiriéndolas en alguno de los lugares donde las venden embotelladas.

El secreto de estas “craft beers” y los sabores acentuados que consiguen, está, como no podía ser de otra manera, en el proceso de producción de las microcervecerías: elaboración totalmente natural a partir de agua, cereales malteados, lúpulo y levadura, sin conservantes ni aditivos. El resultado son cervezas vivas e intensas, sin pasteurizar, ni filtrar, con más cuerpo, y, generalmente, de gusto y aroma más potente que las no artesanales.

El público que consume estas marcas va desde el entendido de la cerveza qué distingue aromas y matices, hasta gente que quiere probar algo diferente y que sin tener ni idea del proceso de fabricación pide que le expliquen qué es cada cosa.

Así que más que para el popular “salir de cañas” estas cervezas y los lugares en que se pueden degustar sirven para fomentar la cultura y el consumo de la (buena) cerveza en la capital y para educar al paladar cervecero y probar cosas nuevas. Además, estaremos contribuyendo a la economía local.

Pero este fenómeno de las cervezas artesanales y sus pequeñas (o no tanto) fábricas no es exclusivo de la capital, ya os hablamos también en otra entrada de la estupenda Fábrica de Cervezas Moritz catalana, la más antigua de España, por poner otro ejemplo. ¿Y cuáles son las razones para este éxito en nuestro país? Pues como muy acertadamente creemos apuntaba un conocido bloguero del diario El País:

Suelen ser buenas, se atreven a competir con el vino en la mesa.

Presumen de vocación ecológica.

Representan algo exclusivo a precio asequible.

O sea, las mismas claves para el éxito que vemos repetidas en muchos sectores y modelos de negocio que os venimos mostrando: calidad y diferenciación a precios razonables.

Revisiones

(Via Revisión Interior)