This day, you’ve come to your favorite store, where the employees are fluent in the dance between social data, commercial intent, and real time physical interaction. Your associate simply nods and says “let me know if I can help you,” smiles, and lets you pass. She reads from your face and body language that you don’t want too much more than that. She was right.
At the mens department you find your favorite jeans, but don’t want to dig through the piles to find your size. Instead you point your phone at the stack, and the Gap App tells you the store, alas, is out of size 34. Would you like to purchase them online, and have them sent to your home? They’ll be there later today, because a store across town has them in stock, and Gap provides same day delivery within a 50 mile radius. You press “Yes”, the purchase is confirmed, and, your retail desires fulfilled, you head toward the door.
As you leave, the associate you passed earlier thanks you for your purchase.
Well that was pleasant, you think, as you walk down the street. Out comes your phone again, and you bring up the Gap application again. Maybe you will get that blouse for your daughter, after all. (via John Battelle)
the new info shopper. These people just can’t buy anything unless they first look it up online and get the lowdown. These shoppers have the Internet at work, typically hold information-based or office-park jobs, have some college or grad school, and are often making ends meet with two jobs, kids, and pets on a middle or upper-middle-class income.
New Info Shoppers - WSJ.com
Sawickipedia: Spin won’t work in this day and age. Great products - great specs, great reviews and great fans. Without those you will fail. There’s a reason Apple is kicking ass it has all three. And there’s a reason the US auto makers need bailouts they don’t. Memo to product developers in all industries if you can’t build a great product take Steve Jobs’s advice, then don’t build it all because these new gen info shoppers won’t buy it.
(via sawickipedia)
Amen! Much more than just middle and upper middle class people don’t buy anything w/o checking reviews online. I’d say anyone who isn’t so broke they can’t afford a 4 year old computer and a dial-up Internet connection is a new info shopper.
(via tedr)
Agree. I don’t buy stuff I have not read a review or other form of information.
It is the fate and perhaps the greatness of our society that it offers everything and confirms nothing.
