Interactive Retail

Looks like we're going to have some competition in the mobile marketplace... 

FiTS = "Fashion Item Tracking System" -- not really a standard, just a marketing term used by Tagsys as far as I can tell.

Nordstrom already using Kinect "in the wild"

The tools for integrating content into multichannel simply aren't there today as far as I can tell. Has to cross CMS, catalog / inventory, social, and mobile. Argues for an API / content & data bus approach. "Clearly the new frontier for retailers is to figure out how to integrate data and content dynamically into the site experience, and move past the realm of thinking of search, navigation and merchandising as just leveraging product data from their e-commerce platforms. This comes with recognizing that in the world of online retailing, the content that customers value has evolved rapidly in the past few years. Though important, online content is no longer just about product catalog data such as features, pricing and special offers. Compared to even a year ago, consumers now demand much richer types of interactive and social content - user reviews, articles, buying guides and video content. Shoppers want all of this data at their fingertips to determine that they've found the best product."

"The Digital Signage Future Trends 2011 report gives readers a sense of the strong currents that will influence the course of the digital signage space in the next two years." -- need to read this

Bling Nation connects on Facebook via NFC powered "BlingTag" -- launching in Austin

This is vs. the Isis system that the other carriers are looking to work on

Interesting mentions of digital signage / kiosks

"Stores are becoming a billboard for the brand, showroom for products, high service location and collection/drop-off points for online orders 21% of internet transactions involve research in-store 'Sales per square foot' metric no longer reflects true contribution of stores" The physical retail has knock on effects with online presence and vice versa.

Findings here are key to the evolution of shopping -- the actual recognition that sales are not the only metric for physical locations.

Stats on QR Code usage

Great example of moving a digital interaction and making it physical again. Would be a great showcase for a third space of some kind.

2Q Apple release of NFC??!?

Interesting break down of chips and software capabilities in two upcoming phones

Posits that most NFC scenarios are based around payment, which will actually slow adoption. So, how to make money and who are the players in non-fee aka freemium NFC transactions.

"At stake is nothing less than the relationship with the consumer, a prize that retailers have only recently won and that they will not lose." Interesting premise. Basically that retailers are better positioned to meet the need of shoppers (agreed), and so will be able to control the real estate of apps that brands will once again have to buy time on. The winning scenarios are pitches as platform play vs. killer app that grows into a platform.

consumer goods, apparel and consumer electronics are the top three for RFID

1. Ideal for retail with pass-by-foot traffic 2. Bluetooth = no interaction through mobile carriers (I doubt this one - balanced vs. how many people have BT turned on) 3. Integrate with digital signage (assuming they have digital signage with round trip signaling) 4. Record devices (metrics / analytics!) 5. real time (again, assuming appropriate round trip metrics) 6. inexpensive vs. carrier messaging plus own the data (I guess they assume one-time hardware / software cost - again, doubtful; messaging as vs. carrier is interesting) 7. mobile messaging measurable (== bad experience with untargeted SMS messaging?) 8. ID and message thousands of phones (again, failure of SMS campaigns?)

Main interactive function for the Apple Store App is mainly find a store + book a time to meet.

This is a great example of interaction and what's possible today on an experimental basis with a standard toolchain.