The command center is staffed by a team of 50 people who are monitoring more than 300 keywords. According to Taulbee Jackson, president and CEO of Indianapolis-based digital media agency Raidious, which is overseeing the command center operation, they are already managing more than 1,500 published responses to fan comments per day – a number expected to grow dramatically as the game approaches.

The team responds to fan comments in real-time, provides directions and venue information, as well as gathers and shares information to ensure fans don’t miss any of the action. The staff also provides fan-powered tips on what’s happening via four social media channels – Facebook,Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr. Security is a major issue and the command center will help with emergency management and as-needed crisis assistance.

Here is a list of details regarding the social media command center.

Facility:

• 50 staff and volunteers working over the course of two weeks, in two shifts
• 2,800 sq ft. facility seats up to 35
• Upgraded to redundant fibre internet access (20 up / 20 down)
• iPad controlled integrated A/V system
• 9-screen monitor wall (over 100 sq feet)
• (12) 27” iMac Touch Down stations
• (6) Producer stations
• Conference Room, Reception Area, Coffee + Drinks
• Game-Planning Station overlooking Meridian Street
• Approx. 300 sq ft of whiteboard space
• Located at corner of Meridian and Maryland above the Hard Rock Cafe

Priorities:

1. Safety – respond first to any safety-oriented issue / crisis
2. Super Service – respond to any negative dialog related to the city or event, & help people have a great experience!
3. Coverage – know what’s happening when and where, capture it and publish it
4. Amplification – find positive dialog, or positive consumer content, and amplify it

As an online retailer, social commerce offers you three options – adding e-commerce apps to social media, adding social apps to e-commerce, or driving e-commerce traffic through ‘social infomediaries’ like Pinterest that add a social layer to the e-commerce experience indirectly via a third-party site, without all the hassle of app integration.

Are social infomediaries like Pinterest the future of smart and simple social commerce?

The mobile shopping app drove more than $110 million worth of in-store revenue for its partner retailers in 2011, which was the first full year it was in operation. Currently, Shopkick works with 11 national retail brands in the US, including BestBuy, Target, Macy’s and Old Navy.

With consumers researching products in brick and mortar stores, then going online to make a purchase, showrooming has become a damning problem for retail brands. Shopkick sees itself as an antidote to that dilemma.

“Some mobile services drive people out of stores, not into stores, with online comparison shopping that turn stores into ‘showrooms.’” said Cyriac Roeding, CEO of Shopkick. “Shopkick drives people into stores by rewarding them with things they love just for visiting.”

Path to Purchase

Shopkick aims to be the single location-based shopping app for retailers, brands and shoppers alike. People don’t switch wallets or outfits going from the grocery store to the mall, so assuming they’ll want separate apps for the various ways and places they shop ignores consumer preferences. To best serve all its constituents, Shopkick rewards behavior throughout the path to purchase, including:

• Discovery: Shopkick users interact with stores in the app 150 million times per month, and that allows brand and retailers to reach them at home and on-the go. Media partnerships with InStyle and the CW amplify the discovery.
• Visits: Shopkick uses what it refers to as presence detection technology that rewards shoppers from the moment they walk into partner stores.
• Purchase: Thanks to a recent partnership with Visa, Shopkick rewards shoppers when they make a purchase at a participating partner retailer using their Visa debit or credit card as part of the Buy & Collect program.

Presence Detection Key to Shopkick Success

Shopkick’s patent-pending presence technology is what sets it apart from other apps, which rely on often inaccurate GPS. Thanks to a small box located within the store, which emits a signal that the app detects and decodes, it knows the shopper is actually in the store and, as a result, provides reward points, called “kicks” to the shopper.

Shopkick by the Numbers

Based on numbers reported to SCT, Shopkick has:

• 3 million active users;
• 1 billion in-app offers have been viewed;
• 5 million walk-ins to partner stores in December 2011;
• 10 million products have been scanned.

There is even more evidence that Shopkick works for retailers and brands. For example: 

• During the 2011 holiday shopping season, shopkick users interacted with stores through the app more than 3.1 million times per day on average, up from just over 1 million in August 2011;
• There were approximately 150 million interactions with retailers from the launch of Old Navy on November 10, 2011 through the end of the year.

As to who is using the app, 64 percent of all Shopkick users are younger women, most of whom are moms. Since women are responsible for 85 percent of all purchases, that certainly bodes well for retailers.

Shopkick Partner Metrics

Lastly, here are some metrics related to Shopkick partners:

• Eleven national retail partners:  American Eagle Outfitters, Best Buy, Crate and Barrel, Macy’s, Simon Property Group (the nation’s largest mall operator), The Sports Authority, Target, Toys“R”Us, west elm and The Wet Seal;
• In 2011, Best Buy, Simon Property Group, Crate & Barrel and west elm expanded their shopkick program include all locations nationwide;
• New partners in 2011: Old Navy (rolled out nationally at launch), Visa, InStyle, CoverGirl, Disney, Levi’s, Libman, Mead Johnson, Meguiar’s, Mr. Clean, Olay, Revlon, Tilex, Trident, and VTech;
• Over 35 major brand partners including Clorox, Disney, HP, Intel, Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Gerber, Hasbro, Nickelodeon and more;

Shopkick’s goal for 2012 is to do more of the same – continually increase the number of retail partners and app users, which should translate into more dollars being spent in the store and not on Amazon.

To build your brand. Yep.

That’s the approach that CPG giant Unilever is taking to launch a brand extension to its billion-dollar mega-brand Axe (‘Lynx’ in the UK) in the UK, ‘Lynx Attract for Her’.  A first 100 cans of the hither-to men-only brand went on sale to the brands 700K+ fans on a pop-up Facebook fan-store.

100 cans at £3.25 ($5.11) netted the brand all of £325 ($511) when they went on sale at 4pm, January 23, 2012 – and sold out pretty much immediately.  Why bother?

Cynics will call it a PR stunt. Unilever can claim “launched on Facebook” credibility for the youth-oriented Lynx Attract for Her. And in the trade press, the stunt has captured headlines.  Good for Unilever sales teams negotiating shelf space in supermarkets and drug stores, and good resumé fodder for the digital team too.

But we think launching products with pop-up stores on Facebook, and more generally brand-building with pop-up f-commerce is smart branding.

Why? Because word of mouth is critical to branding, particularly at product launch, when adoption rates can be accelerated by word of mouth. And Facebook is essentially a word of mouth platform. Ultimately, a brand – a trademark imbued with value – exists in the mind and on the lips of customers, not as a label on a product.  So the more positive word of mouth you can stimulate at product launch the bigger and better your brand.  So from a branding perspective, it makes good sense to launch on Facebook.

Moreover, research shows that word of mouth makes brand advertising more effective (essentially because it adds source credibility to advertising messages), and with Unilever throwing a multi-million pound advertising campaign behind the Axe/Lynx for women launch, the pop-up fan-store will help with advertising effectiveness.  Essentially the Axe fan-store will build brand value by activating brand fans (700K+ registered on Facebook) through fan-first exclusivity.

Another advantage of using a temporary pop-up fan-store (as opposed to an Asos style permanent store) is that Unilever neatly sidesteps the politics of a brand selling direct to consumer and risking the wrath of retail partners; Joey Kau, e-commerce manager at Unilever, said, “There are no plans to move away from our current distribution channel and we’ll continue to distribute products in the way that we have been doing.”

There’s often a disconnect between the worlds of sales and branding, but ultimately branding is all about sales – specifically your ability to extract margin.  From a commercial point of view, brand building is all about increasing your ability to extract margin by imbuing your brand name with value.  By imbuing a brand with word of mouth value, pop-up fan-stores in social media can have a powerful brand-building effect. Kudos Unilever.

Imagine walking into a retail store and, upon crossing the threshold, have it know you are there. Not the store personnel mind you, but the store itself. That’s been the experience of 25 year-old shopper Diana Ku for more than a year, thanks to an app called Shopkick.

Prior to her discovery of the app in August 2010 (she saw a poster in a dressing room of American Eagle that talked about it), Ku was primarily an online shopper. “Before I found the app, I did most of my shopping online, but the app has caused me to go into stores,” said Ku. “Otherwise, I would be doing more online shopping without the app than I do now.”

That change in shopping behavior is music to the ears of Shopkick creator, Cyriac Roeding, who designed the app with the revolutionary goal of transforming retail shopping in the real world.

“Shopkick is changing how consumers shop into a much better experience using their smartphones by realizing that someone is at a store where they get rewarded just for coming in,” said Roeding.

Shopkick uses a virtual currency called “kicks,” which consumers can redeem at participating retailers, including BestBuy, Macys, Target, American Eagle and seven others stores. Alternatively, consumers can use the rewards points to give donations to charity, purchase dinner vouchers, Facebook credits, or a number of other ways.

The technology differs from other geo-location apps such as Foursquare because it doesn’t rely on GPS, which Roeding says is “highly inaccurate.” Rather, Shopkick uses what he refers to as “presence technology” through a small box located in stores that emits an audio signal, which is imperceptible to the human ear, but that smartphone microphones can pick up and decode. The signal is only perceived by the microphone once the shopper crosses the store’s threshold.

Retail’s Number One Problem

Roeding said the number one problem faced by retailers is foot traffic, so getting customers through the door is the key to driving incremental transactions. The predicament, he says, is that most stores have it backwards, which led him to ask, “If foot traffic is so important, then why not reward customers for coming into store?”

The answer, according to Roeding, is that no one has a clue that a shopper is there until they purchase an item with their credit card. “That’s the first moment when it’s too late to add an item to you basket. Most stores only greet you when you’re leaving and that’s a little awkward,” he stated. “The purpose of the app is to turn this around and welcome shoppers when they come in, not the other way around.”

Based on in-store conversion rates, which can range between 20 – 95 percent (as opposed to e-commerce, which averages less than one percent) based on the type of store, getting more foot traffic can be the difference between a store becoming little more than a showroom for Amazon or other online retailer as opposed to a destination where shoppers like Ku spend more of their time.

Retail is a $3 trillion industry, the third largest industry in the United States behind energy and healthcare. Therefore, the importance of making the shopping experience a better is of inestimable value. Overlaying a digital layer onto it  is what Roeding believes will make for fundamental change.

Stores need a renewal of vision as to why they exist, states Roeding: “They are not places to pick up items sitting on shelves, but, rather, destinations designed to provide consumers with a good experience, solve problems or give them great forms of entertainment. Stores exist to enrich the consumer’s life.”

Roeding sees a confluence of two trends that mandate the need for retailers to change:

1. Consumers demand it. Prior to the advent of the Internet and e-commerce in particular, retail had no reason to change, which often meant the consumer was left with a less than desirable shopping experience. That is no longer the case. “Consumers are much savvier. They have alternatives that didn’t exist before. Now they can go online where no one mistreats them,” he said.
2. Mobile commerce has transformed shopping. “Smartphones are the only interactive medium you carry with you when you enter a non-interactive physical store. By overlaying the real world with a digital layer, you enhance the shopping experience  and make it better.” remarked Roeding.

Shopping Versus Social as the Core

Even more revolutionary than the app itself is Roeding’s belief about how social commerce should function. “There is a misunderstanding in the market about social commerce. Retailers are not going to win by trying to move people from social layer to shopping. The leap from social to commerce is to far. It feels awkward to sell things in social environment,” he stated, and cited Facebook’s shutting down of Deals after only three months as case-in-point. Instead, Roeding believes that, in order for social commerce to work, shopping must comprise the core, with social as an additional layer.

Roeding’s stance is not based on reason alone. His passion for leading the way to such change is evident, as can be seen in the following soliloquy:

“I’m for dramatically changing how consumers experience shopping. I’m for people waking up in morning and knowing exactly what is interesting to them; for people having Sunday afternoon without having to wade through piles of newspaper shopping inserts to find the one deal that’s interesting to them; for people walking into a store and being treated like an individual rather than a nameless face. I’m for people walking out of the store with a smile on their face rather than frown – feeling well-treated rather than being treated like a number, without having found what they were looking for. I’m for creating the possibility that consumers can have wonderful shopping experience in real world.”

Roeding’s zeal has certainly rubbed off on Diana Ku, who says she likes getting rewarded for in-store shopping. In fact, it has caused her to visit stores that she never considered prior to downloading the app. “The added incentive provided by the app has made me want to go out and shop more. It’s made me get off my computer and get into the store. Now I even go to stores that I wouldn’t otherwise,” she acknowledged.

It is his belief that overlaying a digital layer on top of shopping in traditional brick-and-mortar retail will be the key to getting people like Ku off their sofas and into stores. That is the driving force behind his creation of Shopkick and is precisely the reason we consider him to be a social commerce revolutionary!

Roeding’s Revolutionary Rule

“Don’t mistake social as the core of the shopping experience. Social is a means to make shopping better, not vice-versa.” 

1. Convergence Emergence – social goes transmedia; social OOH (out-of-home -aka interactive posters/billboards) and social POS (socially connected point of sale)
2. The Cult of Influence – measuring, harnessing and exploiting social influence – Klout is just the beginning
3. Gamification Nation – increasing social app appeal with game techniques breaks out of consumer-ville and into professional and public applications
4. Social Sharing – from frictionless (automatic) sharing to elective sharing, we’ll be sharing more of what we do with the world
5. Social Television – second screen social interaction around TV; Twitter voting/feedback and TV check-in apps like Get Glue are just the start
6. The Micro Economy – peer-to-peer marketplaces, open-outsourcing (crowdsourcing) contests to flourish in an economy where efficiency rules

Check out the comments too – in-between Klout-haters there are some interesting reactions.

Alas the original is in French, but here’s what you need to know in English

• Take a look at eBay or Amazon’s home page from 10 years ago, and you’ll think not much has changed in e-commerce
• Amazon still rules the e-commerce world, with it’s main marketplace site, vertical niche boutiques (zappos, way, beautybar), and subscription shops (diapers, soap)
• But three key trends are transforming e-commerce – disruptive technology (html 5, oauth), social media (through social commerce), and mobile devices

Trend 1: Disruptive Experiences 

• Rich commerce (3D, AR, interactive video, virtual models)
• Single Page Stores (Blixt&Dunder, Flaek)
• Simple Stores (Read Sweater, Bucky Cubes) (inc. one product per category – just buy this one)
• Dynamic Pricing (decreasing wonderprice, blind auctions (deal de ouf), micro-flash promos (4 seconds to buy)

Trend 2: Social Commerce

• Buyer Communities (gdgt)
• Group-Buy
• Shop and Share (just bought it)
• Curation (Polyvore)
• Community Recommendations (Fashism)
• Co-Browsing
• F-Commerce (facebook store)
• F-Commerce (facebook store-front (redirects))

Trend 3: Mobile

• Mobile apps (price comparison)
• Mobile apps (e-commerce)
• Mobile apps (personalisation)
• Mobile apps (loyalty)
• Mobile apps (catalogues – touch-enabled)
• New mobile devices screens (tablets, in-car, photoframes, media players)

That’s quite a shift away from how f-commerce has been conducted up to now. For the most part, brands engaging with the platform have done so through Facebook Pages. From what the article suggests, that is about to change. Wade Gerten, CEO of social commerce platform provider 8thBridge, went so far as to say that “the days of fan pages are dead.”

The culprit mandating this change is the new Facebook Timeline, a scrapbook-like replacement for personal profiles, which will be rolled out to everyone next week. Brands can create apps designed to fit within the Timeline and, to date, about 80 have.

A related article at Internet Retailer explains how these apps work. For example, Facebook users can go beyond the “Like” to a whole new level of interaction in that they can now choose to “Love, Want or Own” a product. When a consumer interacts with these features that information gets shared in their Timeline, on friend’s newsfeeds and via the Ticker.

The apps promise a greater degree of integration with ecommerce websites, as well. Wade Gerten says, “These tools allow us to add social features to web sites, which is where everyone is shopping, instead of doing so on a Facebook fan page, where not that many people go.”

Does this mean that, with the introduction of Timeline, apps are in and Facebook Pages are out? I won’t go that far, but it does mean that sharing of brand-related information becomes more natural. Again, to quote Gerten, ““Brands can literally be woven into a consumer’s life. Billions of Facebook users use the site for the same reason they buy brands – they want to be loved and they want to belong.”

Based on my own experience, Facebook Pages do seem like a third leg. Once I Like a page, there is often very little incentive to revisit it, so I can see Gerten’s point. Conversely, because these new apps tie directly into a user’s Timeline, it stands to reason they will warrant more attention.

Another question to be considered is, will Pages also take on a Timeline-type structure? Though no word has come from Facebook suggesting that will be the case, I can see no reason not to make a change. That’s been Facebook’s practice in the past and it makes sense to maintain symmetry between Pages and user profiles (er, Timelines, that is). Also, with the much richer graphic appeal of Timelines, Facebook Pages look passé and archaic.

Even though they may have very active fan pages, my advice to smart brands is to jump on the app bandwagon sooner than later before the gold rush hits. With the mandatory rollout of Timeline coming next week, this seems like the perfect time.

This second article is about social shopping communities and modelling behaviour with clickstream data from Rainer Olbrich and Christian Holsing from the marketing department of the German University of Hagen

Speed Summary

Olbrich, Rainer and Holsing, Christian (2011) Modeling Consumer Purchasing Behavior in Social Shopping Communities with Clickstream Data International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Volume 16 Number 2, Winter 2011-12, pp. 15-40.

• Social shopping is about connecting consumers and shopping together Parallel to the increasing importance of the Internet as a shopping channel, the advent of Web 2.0 is rapidly moving the online landscape into a truly consumer-driven era. In the area of e-commerce, this results in a linkage of online shopping and social networking, initiating a new form of e-commerce, that of social shopping that connects consumers and lets them discover, share, recommend, rate, and purchase products.
• Third-party infomediary sites such as Polyvore, host social shopping communities (SSCs) [a “virtual community of consumption”] offering  social shopping features such as user generated ratings, recommendation lists, tags, styles (pinboard collages) and user profiles that can initiate or simplify purchase decisions. These user benefits have lead to a high user growth rate for SSCs (Polyvore attracts more than 6 million unique visitors per month). For brands, such as Nike and Coach SSCs, this means are a solution for increasing product awareness (e.g. through style contests)
• Key features of Social Shopping Communities
• First launched about five years ago
• Target mainly women and focus on hard-to-compare soft-goods such as fashion and lifestyle product
• Include direct shopping features such as search and filter (category, gender, brand, price, and shop) as well social shopping features (recommendation lists, ratings, tagging, and ‘styles’ – pin boarded  collages, and critically user profiles allowing people to follow fellow shoppers with similar tastes)
• User content (UGC) is a key part of the business model for SSC services, because users add value to the service with their own content.
• Affiliate business model, receive fees from the participating online shops for each click-out (pay per click) and actual sales (pay per sale).
• Effective social shopping features include (measured using clickstream data (web logging software output) of 2.73 million sessions);
• Social shopping features such as user ratings and tagging are positively correlated to click-outs (from a product page to purchase page – either onsite or on infomediaries such as Polyvore). Retailers delivering a good experience should therefore actively encourage shoppers to rate and tag them, as should manufacturers and brands onsite and on infomediaries
• However social shopping features such as lists and styles (pinboard collages) are negatively correlated to click-outs – but they do increase site stickiness. This may be due to information overload, psychological reactance (being turned off by being forced to use them), and the fact that these social features are attract casual browsers rather than goal-oriented shoppers.
• Although some social features do not drive e-commerce traffic, they may help reach and retain a new shopper profile, people (mostly women) who ‘shop for fun’ and use shopping for entertainment. These social shoppers have high economic value – registered social shoppers are more likely to click-out than average
• Sticky social features may therefor be useful for customer acquisition and customer loyalty, even if they don’t drive transactions. Moreover, these sticky social features may enhance advertising revenue on social shopping communities due to increased time on site (exposure to ads). Retailers and manufacturers should consider running style contests for new products pre-launch to gauge potential demand
• Overall social shopping features should be combined with price filtering, ordering and comparison as this is correlated to click-outs
• The following social shopping hypotheses were confirmed
• Hypothesis 1: the longer the view time [a proxy for consumer involvement - perceived personal relevance], the greater the likelihood of a click-out. TRUE
• Hypothesis 2: the longer the average view time per page, the lower the likelihood of a click-out [due to goal-oriented as opposed to exploratory shopping] TRUE
• Hypothesis 3: the more frequently product-detail sites are visited, the lower the likelihood of a click-out. TRUE
• Hypothesis 4: the longer the average view time per product-detail site, the greater the likelihood of a click-out. TRUE
• Hypothesis 5: the more frequently each direct shopping feature (brand, category, search field, gender, price, sales, and shop) is used, the lower the likelihood of a click-out (indicative of exploratory shopping). TRUE (except price)
• Hypothesis 6: the more frequently the home page is visited, the lower the likelihood of a click-out (indicative of exploratory shopping). TRUE
• Hypothesis 7a: the higher the overall average product rating, the greater the likelihood of a click-out. TRUE
• Hypothesis 7b: the higher the overall average shop rating, the greater the likelihood of a click-out. TRUE
• Hypothesis 8a: the more frequently lists are used, the lower the likelihood of a click-out (indicative of exploratory shopping). TRUE
• Hypothesis 8b: the more frequently styles are used, the lower the likelihood of a click-out (indicative of exploratory shopping). TRUE
• Hypothesis 9: the more frequently tags are used, the greater the likelihood of a click-out (useful for goal-oriented shopping). TRUE
• Hypothesis 10: the more frequently user profiles are used, the lower the likelihood of a click-out (indicative of exploratory shopping). TRUE

Commentary: We love the concept of social shopping sites as infomediaries – providing trustworthy information and guidance (often user generated) to inform exploratory shopping and shopping decisions (see McKinsey book ‘Net Worth‘ for more on infomediaries), and their utility in driving brand awareness, gauging demand as well as attracting and retaining ‘social shoppers’ (customer acquisition and loyalty) people, usually women, who shop for fun and entertainment.

ABSTRACT

Modeling Consumer Purchasing Behavior in Social Shopping Communities with Clickstream Data

Rainer Olbrich and Christian Holsing

ABSTRACT: Social shopping communities (SSCs) evolve from a linkage of social networking and online shopping. Apart from direct shopping features in shopbots (e.g., search fields), SSCs additionally offer user-generated social shopping features. These include recommendation lists, ratings, styles (i.e., assortments arranged by users), tags, and user profiles. Purchases can be made by following a link to a participating online shop (“click- out”). SSCs are experiencing high growth rates in consumer popularity (e.g., Polyvore attracts more than 6 million unique visitors per month). Thus, this business model has received considerable venture capital in recent years. By analyzing clickstream data, we investigate which factors, especially social shopping features, are significant for predicting purchasing behavior within SSCs. Our logit model includes about 2.73 million visiting sessions and shows that social shopping features exert a significant impact, both positive and negative. Tags and high ratings have a positive impact on a click-out. In contrast, the more lists and styles used, the less likely the user is to make a click-out. Yet, lists and styles seem to enhance site stickiness and browsing. Moreover, the more direct shopping features that are used, the less likely the user is to conduct a click-out. Increasing trans- action costs and information overload could be potential reasons. We also found that community members are more likely to make a click-out than ordinary users. This implies that community members are more profitable.

KEY WORDS AND PHRASES: Clickstream data, online consumer purchasing behavior, social shopping, user-generated content, virtual community.

In a guest editorial at Forbes, John Caron, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Modiv Media, a mobile shopper marketing company, has some definite opinions and studied insights about the growth of mobile commerce in 2012. He sees it as a year of “convergence and context.”

Caron defines convergence as a time when “bricks and mobile finally integrate to provide a holistic shopping experience” within the confines of the physical store.

Context, he says, is when mobile “couponing, offers, location, check-ins, etc. become personalized to the individual shopper.” It is the combination of those two trends that retailers need to understand in order to reinvigorate in-store shopping.

This is precisely what Shopkick is doing with its mobile application. It knows when you cross the store’s threshold and provides the personalized experience that Caron prizes so highly he refers to it as “transformational.”

Caron sees several benefits accruing from the incorporation of these trends among retailers that include saving shoppers both time and money, while providing a truly personalized, seamless shopping experience within the store..

He delineates between mobile-enabled e-commerce, which he says is nothing more than transacting a sale on an e-commerce site via a mobile device and full mobile commerce, which is “the ability to purchase physical goods in the store via an app that interacts with the store’s point-of-sale system.” He says that 90% of what we refer to as mobile commerce really fits within the framework of the former.

In Caron’s mind, true mobile commerce is the amalgamation of brick-and-mortar and digital technology. Everything else falls outside that category. In 2012, according to Caron the handwriting is on the wall. He says stores that embrace this methodology will thrive, while that who don’t will continue to be “showrooms and warehouses for mobile apps that have displaced them.”