Voices: the CMB Blog

The day that we all become as tech-savvy and suave as Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible is fast approaching.  How do I know?  A few years after a Cruise movie is on the big screen, his cool gadgets are for sale in a store near you.  Don’t believe me?  Just watch any 24-hour cable news show and you will see that they are all using the same multi-touch wall display that Tom Cruise first popularized in the movie, Minority Report.

Now, Google is saying that we can be just like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible with the release of his iconic sunglasses that project information onto the lens.  Can you imagine it? You could be walking around New York City with turn by turn navigation, getting information on local restaurants, activities, even places your friends have recently checked in on Foursquare or Facebook, all while strolling along, looking up instead of down at a phone (or a map… remember those?!).

The fervor and excitement this device is creating has endless potential. I think a product like this will influence how retailers reach out to shoppers.  For example, in the future, the customer won’t be sitting at home, miles away from a store location…they will be right outside your door searching for products on their sleek Mission-Impossible-sunglasses.  As a result of this change, more focused local or location-based advertising will begin to replace the need for expansive mass media campaigns.

The shift to more personalized advertising is already taking place with the rapid popularization of the smartphone.  According to our Consumer Pulse report: How Smartphones are Changing the Retail Shopping Experience, released last year, over half of all smartphone owners use their device when shopping in a retail store. Currently, retailers are wary of these customers as “show roomers” who will go in store to browse, but who make their purchases online to find a better price. 

Instead of worrying, retailers need to take action and realize that these tech advancements in shopping can be used to their advantage to create a personalized shopping experience.  Leveraging data already collected from loyalty programs or Point of Sale can provide shoppers with a compelling reason to make their purchases in a retail store, creating and providing a seamless and elevated experience for the buyer.  The resources to make this experience a reality are available; retailers have the data, it is just a matter of learning how to use it effectively.

Someday, when we are all like Tom Cruise and wearing spy-like glasses, advertising will need to be personalized and relevant to the individual.  Such a marketing technique will draw people in, breaking through the mass noise and bombardment of content available all around you.  No longer will accurate advertising and recommendation-engine results be relegated to online sites alone—it will be a part of your everyday life, maybe even programmed into your sunglasses.

What do you think?  Will mobile technology transform the retail shopping experience?

Posted by Kirsten Rasmuson, Kirsten is a Senior Project Manager on CMB’s Retail practice. She’s looking forward to welcoming our new robot overlords.

“You would make great rail meat.”

If you’d asked me this April, I would have guessed that “rail meat” had something to do with a train and maybe an unlucky cow. But as sailors know rail meat  is “a sailing term used for people who use their weight to stop a boat from capsizing while racing.”

This summer a friend introduced me to sailing and gave me the opportunity to be rail meat in a of couple races.  I learned that sailing is both chaotic and loud, and it was during the endless shouting of commands (where the only word I really understood was “duck!”) that I came to realize that sailing is all about communication.  The teams that exceled were the ones that found a way to clearly communicate with each other.  In business as in sailing, breakdowns in communication can spell disaster.  In the world of market research, how we communicate our questions to respondents can have a real impact on the results we get.

Here are a few tips to avoid capsizing a project.

Know your audience.  I remember the very first time I was allowed to steer the boat during a fun outing and was told to “tack.”  My random wheel spinning elicited the question “what are you doing?” to which I honestly responded “I have no idea!”  When writing questionnaires, it is important to write for your respondents.  If they are not industry insiders, then don’t use those terms.  Remember, you will always get data back, but it may not be an answer to the question you posed unless it's clearly worded.

Keep it simple.  Use the simplest terminology possible when you are writing the questionnaire.  Then have someone outside your core project team read it to see how they interpret questions.  You might be amazed at the kinds of words people interpret differently.  For instance, if I ask you to define “marketing” I bet I would get many different interpretations back even though most readers of this blog are marketers.

Stay Organized:  A poorly organized and worded questionnaire can be frustrating at any length. Asking respondents to complete questions organized by topic is logical. Begin the questionnaire with simple questions, and move to the more complex. This increases the comfort of the respondent and the likelihood they’ll stay with you until the last question.

Like staying upright on a sailboat, developing questionnaires can be hard work but committing yourself to communicating clearly in your questionnaire will help keep your project sailing smoothly.

Kirsten Rasmuson is a Senior Project Manager at CMB. Next summer she looks forward to a promotion from rail meat to crew member.