Reporting from the Shop.org Summit in Vegas…these posts will come in sporadically during the day
I finish my last post about how it might be smart for the shopping comparison engines to position themselves as virtual conceireges, and walk into the next session at Shop.org to hear Sam Taylor, SVP of Best Buy talking about personal shopping assistants.
Best Buy has been working on an in-store personal shopping assistant program over the last couple years. There’s an online version, but it’s definitely not as robust as the in store service where your personal shopping assistant will grab the products on your shoppping list, recommend alternative products, etc. Furthermore, the whole point of the shopping assistants is to develop a relationship with the consumer…and relationships are best developed in a face-to-face meeting. [A bit of a side note here...obviously, with an online shopping comparison engine, a consumer isn't going to have the opportunity for face-to-face interaction, but maybe a free phone call with the merchant is the answer - More on Skype/eBay later]
Sam also introduced the Best Buy Kitchen Design Service (launching soon). The ‘Basic’ mode allows the customer to desgin a kitchen and play with wall color, flooring, countertops, cabinet styles, etc. In the ‘Design Your Own Room’ mode, the user can enter room dimensions, change the ceiling height, window width, etc. In either mode, the user can also pick out the products he wants as the user has access right there to the entire Best Buy product database (and can find products by price, features, etc.). The user can even see specialty, on-order products to which Best Buy has access. Once the design is saved, the customer can e-mail it to friends for feedback. Even better, the user can e-mail the design to an in-store personal shopping assistant so that assistant can prepare for the in-store visit over the weekend.
In the end, this experience requires an initial investment of time on behalf of the user, creates virtual capital, motivates the next visit (most likely an in-store visit), and increases the involvement of the consumers (think Lego Factory, Judy’s Book, etc.). Seems like a smart approach!
As more and more reatailers offers this type of valuable service, do the shopping comparison engines become less important? Again, price will always be an important factor in a buying decision, but if retailers do a better job ‘Locking In’ the customer, those customers might not be as inclined to go to a shopping comparison engine. Because of this, the comparison engines have to move way beyond price; playing ‘Virtual Concierge’ is just one idea. This is partly why MSN Shopping makes sense to me. MSN Shopping locks me in with their Editor’s Picks and other quality content. This is why Become.com makes sense to me. Become locks me in with their buying guides. Integrating coupons (a couple engines do this) also has the same effect.
Where am I going with this? Everyday someone asks me: What the best comparison engine?. I usually give some weak answer along the lines of ‘They are all pretty good’. I actually believe this…they are all pretty good. But that’s the problem. How does a shopping comparison engine set itself apart from the rest of the pack? More importantly, how does that engine lock in visitors so they don’t have to continue to spend sooo much money on the PPC engines? A lot of little product features are nice, and comprehensiveness is a must, but I think community, personalization, and content might end up being key differentiation points.
