Sound is the new click and touch

The world is changing and smart phones are helping a lot to change the world.
More and more applications for the iPhone and Androids are using sound for interaction instead of touching or clicking on banners.

Last night I watched one of my favorite shows "Eureka". During the show an ad came up to tell the audience to start their Shazam application to get exclusive videos from the show.
Shazam is an app which listen usually to music and gives the user the name of the song and author back. It is a pretty nice app, for people like me, who never know any songs. It is easy to use, you start the app hold the phone in front of a speaker and hit the button. 10 seconds later the info is on the phone screen.
This time, with Eureka, it gave me much more info back and worked perfect.







Pretty amazing how advertising is combining TV and smart phones and using sound for this.

If would have to put in a code or scan an image on the TV it would have been too much work, but starting an app without leaving the bed is perfect.

This is not the first time that an app is using sound to tricker certain things on your phone. The first time i saw, was with the Best Buy movie mode app. The app will translate the hilarious minions talking, when you run this app in selected 3D cinemas. The translation is text only that other movie visitors don't get disturbed.

Sony has for their 51 blue ray video an app which will give the user specials when watching the movie.

And then there is kickbucks. An app to collect points in stores. You can either get points by scanning barcodes or through sound.
The idea is that certain stores have multiple speakers installed in different places of store. The app will collect points, whenever the user is close to one of the speakers. The person might go to the dressing room and gets 50 points. These points can be redeemed through the app at the offered stores.



The idea with sound is great because it has better proximity than GPS. GPS is only as good as 20 meters and not working well in buildings. With sound you can get better results.
The application works impressive well, however you can fake the system if you have two iPhones. One is using iAnalyzer to record and play sound and the the other is running kickbucks. However it only works if you are in or close to the store.
But I was able to collect 1200 points instead of only 50 points.

Bottom line is, that companies are understanding that there is much more possibilities than just clicking on a screen or typing with keyboard to interact with customer or target audience.

The next iPhone will have a RFID reader which opens much more for the world, especially for retail stores.

The Internet stores started to take consumers away from brick and mortar stores. Smart phones and their apps will take the consumer away from the Internet stores but bring them back again to the b&m stores.

Smart phones are helping to combine online and offline into one new type of shopping experience.


- Posted using My iPad

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Spring Hill,United States

Publix is starting to offer curbside delivery

Starting in September, Publix will offer curbside service in two test locations (Atlanta and Tampa).
Consumer can order their products online (all discounts apply) and then have a window of 30 minutes to pick up their products at Publix by driving to Publix and wait till an associate is bringing the goods out and load the car. The service will cost $7.99 plus the costs of the goods.
This another approach to get consumer to buy eatable goods over the Internet. Back in 2000 I used a service in Cologne (Germany) which delivered the food to my home, which was convenient because my apartment was on the 5th floor. I did not need to carry heavy water bottles. Then, the service was $20 and I was willing to pay. The service unfortunately died, most likely because the costs for the grocery store to deliver was too high. In 2007 is used D'Agostino in New York and I liked it. I did not mind to pay more to get my goods delivered. Unfortunately their online store did offer products which were not at the next D'Agostino to my house. Many times I got replacement products. I remember I did order a certain French Camembert and got instead a German Brie.
Especially in Germany ordering perishable goods online with home delivery makes sense. We all work during normal work hours, and in Germany are almost no stores where you can buy Sundays or during week after 8PM. It does make sense as well in cities like NY. Having a car is luxury, finding a parking spot to normal conditions is not possible. Carrying the goods through metro and through half of Manhattan is painful and more exercise than fun.

But I am not sure yet, why I need the service in cities where stores are open 7 days a week and parking is no issue. I might want to order online and pick up to avoid crowds and to find easier things I am looking for. For Publix it might be not the best idea, people who are shopping online want usually certain products, and if they are not available they want look for similar product, they go to another online store. Different in brick and mortar stores, once there, we buy different cereals if necessary to avoid to drive to another store and I think this is the biggest issue why we don't yet order every day products online. It is harder to find online the product than in stores because we don't know what we are looking for. Not always the product we want is available and then is the impulse buy. Many times we know 5 items we want to buy, but actually buy 10 items. In a brick and mortar store it is so easy. Just throw your items in the cart and be surprised about the bill at the end.
Online, we won't do so much impulse buying, first the product are not so nice displayed when browsing (there are no isle to walk buy) and second we see instantly how much we are going to spend, which reduces impulse buy.
Talking a item out of the basket when bill is too high is embarrassing, other people will see it at least the cashier. Deleting an item before checking out (online) does not hurt and nobody will see.

We will see how the curbside service from Publix will go.


- Posted using My iPad

Location:W Laurel St,Tampa,United States