There is an app (iOS & Android) that’s recently popped up that does combine all of the above elements while offering retailers the ability to close the loop AND let customers tap into their social graph for recommendations: Sticky Bits – http://www.stickybits.com / http://j.mp/b2rzyB (iTunes store link).

It opens up some very interesting opportunities for merchants and we’re going to be incorporating it into some upcoming store concepts.

My biggest learning from Apple Retail’s success is that having great labor in the store trumps everything else. The problem is that when you grow to Best Buy’s size (much less Walmarts) it’s pretty hard to hire 150,000 great retail employees. Even Apple is now struggling to maintain their retail staff quality as they grow. So were going to need to some great tools to augment the experience.

The trust factor of these tools will be key. That’s one reason I think we need social network aware peer reviews. I wouldn’t trust a random strangers good review of a new TV (or my techno-phobic mothers for that matter) but I’d certainly trust trust your review! So if I wasn’t planning on buying a TV when I went to the store (and so didn’t pre-research it), how am I going to figure out if it has your seal of approval when I’m standing in the store?

A thing that’s important is the trust factor. What would make that? The app has to feel like it’s neutral and unbiased, that is, it should be as usable by a mom-and-pop as it is by a big-box chain. That would be achieved by having a low technical and financial barrier to entry, much like Google AdWords for example.

Adding to the trust factor is some sort of user feedback – an element of hive-mind if you will – to qualify the value of the offers and reward the good ones. This will tend to weed out the stupid no-value plays like the Best Buy / ShopKick example referenced above. Kind of like Yelp, but more fluid.

anyway my $0.02

Different consumers are at different places on the curve at any given moment, you (and other early adopters) are probably in the “Trough of Disillusionment” while I suspect the bulk of shoppers aren’t even on the “peak of inflated expectations” yet. The magic question is how deep will the trough be when the bulk of consumers get to it? Will it be difficult to pull out of it, or will they seamlessly move on to the “slope of enlightenment”?

If 500M facebook users all tried to use smartphones in a retail store today, I’d say the trough would be terribly deep, but hopefully all these players have a bit of time to make the experience better before then.

The reason I think the need is real and that all of this isn’t just a “new shiny technology” is because we’ve all fundamentally decided we need to be more educated about products before we make a purchase decision, and the amount of info we need/expect is getting harder and harder for retailers to deliver with traditional merchandising tools. At the same time, all trends point to mobile devices replacing our Desktop/Laptops as our primary info device in next few years. So I think it’s inevitable that we’ll use the SmartPhone of the future to do some of our research in store. Once you make that leap you are clearly going to want the phone to know what products are in front of you, available for immediate purchase, recommended by your most knowledgeable friends, etc…

My $0.02 anyway

Have QR Tags already jumped the shark (because they don’t deliver anything intriguing and they are painful to use)?

Has LBS died before coming to life?

Are all these “new/clever/shiny” things really necessary? Or we just love them because they are new/clever/shiny?

The bigger question is: Is mobile marketing as a whole screwing up?

Honestly, about the only retail-2-mobile experience I continue to use is Google. I Search, I get quick info; I save my deep Search/Research for the laptop at home. Are there engagements I’d want and enjoy? Youbetcha. But, no one is delivering them.

I hate to admit it, but when I’m looking at retailer lists I usually have my green eye-shades on and am trying to figure out who is building new stores, doing remodels, has the most doors in a category, etc… I don’t think enough in terms of who is gaining more mindshare, etc… as much as I should. Thanks for reminding me!

Jason

When I first walk in the store, it reads “Country Store” to me, more than “Nautical”. The boat elements do read a bit as “old world spice trader”, but my first impression was that the nautical stuff was aggregated in the Salt section of the store and that it was more of a “Sea Salt” kind of theme.

The Children’s coloring/play area is also nautically themed, so maybe the store designers were trying to get “Spice Trader” more than I realized.

You can walk any of my clients stores and find countless similar misses on projects that I was involved in, so my point is definable not that OfficeMax isn’t a good retailer (they are).

I wanted to use the above “learning opportunities” to emphasize how much planning and thought needs to go into ease of implementation and execution.

People that aren’t retail savvy (or don’t have large chain experience) tend to propose all kinds of solutions that are likely to have “execution challenges.”