I am a regular reader of Morning News Beat, but I have to admit I missed this comment and a colleague had to point it out to me. Kevin Coupe was writing in reference to retail kiosks and made the following observation:
while the idea of computer screens or kiosks would seem to be modern, it in fact strikes me as dated technology. Diageo ought to be looking forward more, and considering in its plans the fact that as more and more people have smart phones, they are walking into stores with miniature kiosks in their pocketsand that building screens and kiosks is an investment in technology that soon will be obsolete.
I love the sentiment of the statement even if I disagree with the overall assertion. Lets start with where I disagree so we can get that out of the way. Kiosks and electronic signage are far from soon to be obsolete. In fact we have barely cracked the surface on the different ways we can leverage these technologies to engage customers in retail stores. A retailer that sits back and waits for the customer to come to them via technology (using their own smart phone or other device) risks losing market share to more aggressive competitors. In todays market we need to look for every opportunity to bring our brand to our customersnot the other way aroundand kiosks and electronic signage are a great way to do that.
Forget about the obsolescence argument though so we can focus on the concept of miniature kiosks in customers pockets. On this we agreesmart phones present a great way to provide additional tools for your customers. At the moment the most compelling new technology to turn customer-owned devices into mini kiosks has to be Microsoft Tag.
The idea behind Tag is extremely simpleleverage the camera in mobile devices as a sort of next generation barcode reader. Heres how it works:
- Position you mobile device so that a Tag is in the view finder of your device camera.
- The Tag application software reads the tag and uses the Tag definition to query servers for the data that corresponds to the Tag.
- The corresponding data is returned to the Tag application where it can be acted on.
Example Tag:
Thats it. It is very simple, which is the beauty of the concept. It very simply provides a way to obtain data on a mobile device and at its core a Tag is really only a more flexible version of a UPC. The most compelling difference is the Tag can be more reliably read by just about any mobile phone with a simple digital camera.
So, now that we can use a customers device to read data what do we do with it? Simple, we use it to make our customers lives easier. Here are a couple of ways we can do that:
- Place a Tags on store shelves for each product. This will allow customers to read the Tag and obtain product data that will help them make buying decisions.
- Place Tags on loyalty cards. This will allow customers to quickly access information about their loyalty rewards.
- Place Tags on weekly fliers/inserts. This will allow customers to scan the Tag and get a list of promotions that are specific to their buying habits.
- Place Tags on receipts. This will allow customers to quickly access the same information they might obtain by scanning their loyalty card. It could also be used to create an electronic version of the receipt for expense purposes.
- Place Tags on Gift Cards to allow customers to consolidate balances from multiple cards on to a single card. I would love for Starbucks to do this. I am a big fan of Starbucks coffee and at any given time I seem to have 2 to 3 cards with random balances on them. I would love to be able to use my phone to scan a tag on the card and have its balance transferred to my primary card.
Speaking of Starbucks, we recently put together a mobile demo that uses Starbucks business model as inspiration (we love Starbucks coffeea topic for another day). Check out the video below to see a quick demonstration. NOTE this demo and video were NOT funded by or sponsored by Starbucks. This scenario purely the invention of Clarity Consulting and it has not been reviewed or endorsed by the coffee maker. Excuse the cheesy narrationI need to hire better voice talent.
MTag from Gary Gilmer on Vimeo. In our view, Microsoft Tag presents an excellent opportunity to quickly turn your customers mobile devices into Pocket Kiosks. Cost of entry into this space is going to be pretty inexpensive as most of the hardware costs are covered by the customer. It is not a replacement for in-store kiosks or in-store electronic signage but it is certainly an outstanding compliment to those technologies.
