GRAPEVINE – Millions of people no longer head home to sign on to the Internet to shop. And that number is growing as fast as iPhone, Android and BlackBerry mobile devices can be stocked in stores.
One in three mobile phones in the hands of American shoppers this holiday shopping season will be smart phones that empower – and entice – consumers in real time.
Last year, more than 60 million Americans were mobile Web users, up 33 percent from 2008, according to Nielsen. This holiday season, Nielsen predicts one-third of all mobile phones in use will be smart phones, up from 21 percent a year ago.
Panel presentation combines new data, insights and best practices with a sneak peek at a new mobile shopping tool and a candid “mystery shopper” video that explores the challenges consumers face in the cross-channel world
Shop.org Annual Summit – Dallas, TX – September 27, 2010 – RichRelevance®, the leading provider of dynamic e-commerce personalization for the world’s largest retailers, today announced that RichRelevance CEO David Selinger will lead a presentation and panel with executives from Vitamin Shoppe and Patagonia on Optimizing the Cross-Channel Experience for the Anytime, Anywhere, Anyplace, Consumer at the Shop.org Annual Summit on Sept. 28 at 3:15 CST. The session will equip retailers with the practical insights, strategies and tools necessary to take full advantage of the changing ways consumers shop – and showcase new ways to deliver a seamless customer experience across all channels through a more harmonious balance of technology, process and people.
“Retailers are quickly learning that consumers interact with their brand – not with channels like the website or the local store – and they recognize the need to provide a seamless consumer experience,” said Selinger. “However, technology and consumer behavior continue to evolve at an exponential pace, outstripping the ability of even most the sophisticated retailers, leaving them with few places to turn for
actionable insights and best practices. With these new realities in mind, we are excited to give retailers an arsenal of knowledge and tools that they can use to capitalize on the massive cross-channel opportunity.”
The strategic discussion and interactive Q&A includes panel participants Kevin Churchill, Director of Merchandising of Patagonia and Lou Weiss, Chief Marketing Officer of Vitamin Shoppe, providing a comprehensive, insider’s view into what senior e-commerce executives are doing to move closer to the perfect world of “blended channels”. Attendees will also enjoy “mystery shopper” videos that explore what the customer faces when navigating the cross-channel retail landscape. In addition, the session showcases original research conducted in New York and London by Hall & Partners on behalf of RichRelevance and retail consultancy, Paco Underhill’s Envirosell.
Following this session, Selinger will also be moderating an open roundtable, entitled Respecting the Shopper: Creating & Maintaining Loyalty in a Cross-Channel World. In this roundtable, Selinger will connect directly with Shop.org attendees to delve deeper and more personally into their cross-channel activities – and opportunities – through an open dialogue with retail peers.
“Cross-channel ‘nirvana’ is very much possible, but it takes a dedication to your brand and your customers that many times gets lost in the multiple silos that currently exist in retail organizations,” continued Selinger. “We are excited for this opportunity at Shop.org to challenge attendees to respect their shoppers by creating an experience that embraces the new consumer.”
About Shop.org Annual Summit
The Shop.org Annual Summit takes place September 27-29 in Dallas, Texas at the Gaylord Texan Hotel & Convention Center. One of the largest events in the retail industry, the Summit includes educational content, an EXPO Hall, and networking opportunities for retailers.
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance is the leading provider of dynamic e-commerce personalization for the world’s largest retailers, including Wal-Mart, Overstock.com and Sears. Founded and led by the e-commerce expert who pioneered personalization R&D at Amazon.com, RichRelevance helps retailers increase revenues (over $1B in attributable sales since June 2008) by powering relevant experiences throughout the customer lifecycle and across multiple sales channels. The company stands apart for its dedicated team of personalization experts, integrated product suite, and award-winning personalization engine, which enables twice as many consumer touchpoints as the industry average. RichRelevance is located in San Francisco, with offices in Seattle and London. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.com.
{rr} Labs debuts new tools to help retailers and consumer take advantage of the cross-channel experience, including a mobile shopping application and InstantShopper portal
Shop.org Annual Summit – Dallas, TX – September 27, 2010 –RichRelevance®, the leading provider of dynamic e-commerce personalization for the world’s largest retailers, today announced the debut of three new cross-channel innovations fresh from {rr} Labs that help retailers take advantage of personalization, the mobile shopping revolution and the new ways consumers shop – across web, mobile and in-store. The demos, which can be seen at the RichRelevance booth (#707) at the Shop.org Annual Summit, include the new ClickSee™ visual and interactive product navigation tool and the RichRecs+mobile™ iPhone application developed in concert with Sprella for Patagonia that presents shoppers with personalized product recommendations direct to their smart phone device. RichRelevance will also preview the new InstantShopper beta that exposes hundreds of relevant products across a wide variety of retailers as a shopper types in the letters of her shopping search query.
“Today’s consumers don’t interact with only a website or a catalogue, and they expect a streamlined experience no matter where they shop,” said RichRelevance Founder and CEO David Selinger. “Smart retailers are equipping themselves with the tools they need to stay nimble as consumers jump from one channel to the next – or even in multiple channels at the same time. From mobile to new product search innovations, we’re bringing the very best in cross-channel innovation to this year’s Shop.org conference.”
The Best of Cross-Channel Innovation
Personalization has proven to be the most effective strategy for engaging online shoppers with a relevant experience tailored to their goals and needs. Building on RichRelevance’s industry-leading enRICH™ Personalization Engine, {rr} Labs is on the cutting-edge of multichannel retail with new applications that marry personalization with changing consumer shopping behavior. These include:
• ClickSee: Shop.org attendees will be able to interact with a ClickSee application and see its capabilities in displaying large numbers of products across a wide range of categories all at once. ClickSee is an interactive display and navigation tool that displays hundreds of tailored, relevant products at a glance. Using the same data modeling that supports RichRecs™ (personalized product recommendations), this interactive grid dynamically re-populates in milliseconds with each click, allowing customers to rapidly zero in on what they like or are looking for. ClickSee also promotes cross-sell and up-sell opportunities by pairing similar products with complementary merchandise and is particularly applicable to browsing highly visual merchandise—soft goods, apparel, accessories, or other verticals where taste-based purchases are predominant.
• RichRecs + mobile: Shop.org attendees will get the first-ever look at an iPhone shopping application that presents shoppers with personalized product recommendations on their smartphone. Featuring Patagonia Apparel, the concept will illustrate how RichRelevance’s personalization technology combined with Sprella’s mobile application platform allows shoppers to scan a barcode and immediately see relevant product information, including personalized product recommendations based on demonstrated preferences. These cross-sells or up-sells may be complementary products available in-store, or additional products that can be purchased via the mobile phone application. In addition, geo-location capabilities allow retailers to identify purchase and viewing patterns of shoppers in a particular location and recommend products best suited them. For example, a clothing retailer may present more rain-friendly products to customers in Seattle, and more warm weather clothing to customers in Florida.
• RichRelevance InstantShopper: Based on the recently debuted Google Instant, RichRelevance has created an application that combines visual and text-based search to expose hundreds of relevant products at a glance, making it easy and fun to discover new products for the holiday and beyond. Now, when a consumer searches for a gift, InstantShopper identifies a relevant product category within two characters (for example, showing watch cases for “wa”) and automatically populates the display with the top sellers or most popular items among 12 leading RichRelevance client sites. The assortment continues to change as the shopper continues typing, highlighting new items that might be interesting. The new tool also shortens the path to purchase through an integrated “Add To Cart” functionality.
“The winning retailers this holiday and beyond will be the ones who don’t ignore, but embrace, the new consumer who hops between store, web and mobile,” said Ben Stefanski, Director of Catalog & Online Sales at Patagonia. “With the introduction of our new iPhone shopping application, we are embracing the way our customers want to engage with our retail and apparel brand – and putting an efficient, rewarding and fun twist on the experience.”
“The mobile channel provides endless possibilities to reach consumers – whether in-store or on the go – and retailers are looking for true innovation as they step into the new mobile world,” said Greg Whelan, Co-founder of Seattle-based Sprella. “We’ve teamed with RichRelevance to bring the best in personalization to consumers on their mobile phones and help retailers bridge the gap between online and offline worlds. We are very excited to join RichRelevance at Shop.org and showcase the power of recommendations and mobile.”
About Shop.org Annual Summit
The Shop.org Annual Summit takes place September 27-29 in Dallas, Texas at the Gaylord Texan Hotel & Convention Center. One of the largest events in the retail industry, the Summit includes educational content, an EXPO Hall, and networking opportunities for retailers.
About Patagonia
Patagonia, with sales last year of over $330M, is noted internationally for its commitment to product quality and environmental activism. Incorporating environmental responsibility in to product development, the company has, since 1996, used only organically grown cotton in its clothing line. With its most recent launch of synthetic fiber-to-fiber recycling, Patagonia is taking back worn-out polyester and nylon clothing and reincarnating it as new products, forever capturing the raw materials used in making virgin fiber. The company also advocates corporate transparency through its interactive website, The Footprint Chronicles, which outlines the environmental and social footprint of individual products. Patagonia was featured as The Coolest Company on the Planet on Fortune Magazine’s April 2007 cover.
About Sprella
Sprella helps brands and retailers build spectacular iPhone and iPad applications, designed to delight their customers, and drive sales. Sprella delivers feature-rich iPhone and iPad applications that present full product catalogs with rich descriptions, zoomable images, videos, reviews and recommendations – all designed for an enjoyable mobile usage experience. These applications enable customers to have all the information they need to make a shopping decision at their fingertips, whether at home or in-store. And when customers are ready to purchase, Sprella enables a pain-free mobile payment and checkout experience. For more information, please visit www.sprella.com.
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance is the leading provider of dynamic e-commerce personalization for the world’s largest retailers, including Wal-Mart, Overstock.com and Sears. Founded and led by the e-commerce expert who pioneered personalization R&D at Amazon.com, RichRelevance helps retailers increase revenues (over $1B in attributable sales since June 2008) by powering relevant experiences throughout the customer lifecycle and across multiple sales channels. The company stands apart for its dedicated team of personalization experts, integrated product suite, and award-winning personalization engine, which enables twice as many consumer touchpoints as the industry average. RichRelevance is located in San Francisco, with offices in Seattle and London. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.com.
Joint session examines how merchants can effectively integrate and measure the cross-channel experience this holiday season and beyond
San Francisco, CA – Sept. 21, 2010 – RichRelevance®, the leading provider of dynamic e-commerce personalization for the world’s largest retailers, today announced that RichRelevance CEO David Selinger will join retail expert, best-selling author and Envirosell CEO Paco Underhill at DDI Forum 2010 in a presentation that examines how merchants can most effectively integrate cross-channel experiences to drive purchase intent, consideration and acquisition. The session will take place on September 24 at 2:15 p.m. PDT at the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country in Santa Rosa, California.
“Channels are converging, and the branding engines of the 20th century are getting their lunch handed back to them,” said Mr. Underhill. “The store and the online channel are unified entities in the consumer’s mind. Retailers need to radically update the way they think about the cross-channel experience – or risk losing the life and death game that is retail.”
Based on original research from RichRelevance and Envirosell, the session will detail how merchandisers and marketers can manage business analytics to develop winning strategies including: upsell and cross-sell tactics, multi-channel loyalty and translation of the in-store marketing suite to the online store. The two retail experts will showcase best practices for streamlining the consumer experience across channels and guidelines for coordinating strategies.
“Too often the opportunity for a 360° brand is missed through the disconnects between a retailer’s many customer touchpoints,” said Selinger. “The winning retailers will be the ones who can leverage a seamless cross-channel experience and embrace the new habits of consumers. We are excited to partner with Paco and Envirosell to bring awareness and best practices to retailers as they embrace the new consumer who seamlessly interfaces between a retailer’s physical store, the web and mobile.”
The longest-running event of its kind in the industry, the DDI Forum covers topics and discussions of the most pressing issues among thought leaders in the retail design community. Presented by DDI Magazine, the Forum brings together the best and brightest of the retail design industry. The 2010 DDI Forum takes place Sept. 23-25.
About Envirosell
Founded by Paco Underhill, Envirosell is the premier consumer behavior research and consulting agency for commercial environments, integrating analysis of layout, merchandising and operations. With 25 years of experience conducting in-store research for major consumer product manufacturers, retailers, banks, restaurants and design agencies, Envirosell boasts a client list that includes almost half of the Fortune 50 list. To each project Envirosell brings internationally recognized experience and unmatched processing skills, understanding the dynamics of shopping behavior and the factors that impact the customer experience as well as the actual purchase decision. Envirosell is based in New York with offices in Tokyo, Milan, Moscow, Mexico City, São Paulo and Bangalore.
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance is the leading provider of dynamic e-commerce personalization for the world’s largest retailers, including Wal-Mart, Overstock.com and Sears. Founded and led by the e-commerce expert who pioneered personalization R&D at Amazon.com, RichRelevance helps retailers increase revenues (over $1B in attributable sales since June 2008) by powering relevant experiences throughout the customer lifecycle and across multiple sales channels. The company stands apart for its dedicated team of personalization experts, integrated product suite, and award-winning personalization engine, which enables twice as many consumer touchpoints as the industry average. RichRelevance is located in San Francisco, with offices in Seattle and London. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.com.
Netflix created the $1 million Netflix Prize in 2006 as a way to reward developers of a next-generation film-rating prediction algorithm.
The idea sounded seductively simple: If developers could predict how users would rate a film, they could use that prediction to decide whether it makes sense to recommend the film to them or not.
The winner would be the first person to develop an algorithm capable of predicting user ratings of films at least 10 percent more accurately than Netflix’s internally developed Cinematch algorithm. Three years and 43,000 entries later — from more than 5,100 teams in 185 countries — a winner appears to have emerged. The winner will be officially announced this month, and it’s down to two teams.
…
By Darren Vengroff, chief scientist, RichRelevance.
Amazon and Facebook made headlines with the new application that allows shoppers to receive product recommendations based on their Facebook preferences (‘likes’).