“This case study is just the first analysis in an ongoing relationship between Interactions, Google and Tableau to provide retailers and CPGS with data management solutions and insightful analysis,” a spokesperson for Interactions tells WebProNews. “While the results of the initial study may seem obvious, this type of analysis provides retailers with specific detailed information not previously available that will help them launch more successful marketing efforts resulting in increased basket size and cannibalization of competitors’ shoppers.”

Using BigQuery and Tableau’s visual analytics software, Interactions layered “fine-grain transactional-level sales data” with multi-source, detailed regional weather data, and is using it as a predictive tool during and prior to specific weather events in order to help retailers minimize (or eliminate) out-of-stock issues, optimize item assortments in high-demand categories, and increase sales in those categories.

“Early results suggest that these insights could deliver significant benefits, including boosting the return on investment for marketing and advertising spend and improving targeted and individualized shopper communications resulting in increased basket size and cannibalization of competitors’ shoppers,” the company says.

The analysis specifically focused on identifying negative weather events, classifying them by severity, and measuring the effects they had on sales before, during and after those events. The company says it was able to track new patterns in sales and shopper behavior.

“Interactive performance of Google BigQuery, combined with Tableau’s intuitive visualization tools enabled our analysts to interactively explore huge quantities of data – hundreds of millions of rows – with incredible efficiency. In some cases taking analysis that would ordinarily require a week down to just hours and minutes. This time-to-insight was previously impossible,” said Giovanni DeMeo, Vice President of Global Marketing and Analytics for Interactions. “It enabled us to visually share that information with our retailer and CPG partners, and use it to enhance in-store activity and increase sales. This is only one of an infinite number of ways that we will now be using big data to improve the revenue and profitability of our partners.”

“Retailers have access to massive amounts of complex data to help them make good decisions. The trick is to find a way to easily visualize and analyze it effectively,” said Francois Ajenstat, Director of Product Management at Tableau. “By combining the flexibility and horsepower of Google BigQuery with Tableau’s visual analytics, Interactions has delivered insights that were not previously revealed. Retailers and CPGs will now be able to make real-time data driven decisions to inform their business.”

According to Interactions, it was able to reveal, down to the product level, which items had the most significant change in sales (both increases and decreases), and what varied in shopper behavior for similar weather events, considering the time of day, day of week, geographic location, and proximity to competitor locations. The data was actually able to identify 28 categories with significant changes in sales (compared to the control).

Based on the data, one day before statistically similar weather events, sales in those categories spiked from 20% to 261% over the same day in the previous year, and dropped in sales during the peak of the event and for four days after. This happened not only in regions that actually experienced the event, but also in those where the event had been predicted, but never occurred.

“If weather reports predicted a storm a week ahead, people still waited until the day before the event to do their event-specific shopping,” says Interactions. “In one scenario, and contrary to every other shopping behavior, this resulted in a huge spike in Monday sales over the preceding weekend for a predicted Tuesday weather event.”

Interactions, Google and Tableau are discussing more details about their findings at the Tableau European Customer Conference in London on Tuesday.

This week, one Target shopper stumbled onto what seemed to be a tacit criticism of overweight people. Susan Clemens was shopping on Target’s website when she noticed that the color for a plus-size dress was listed as “Manatee Gray.” She checked the non-plus-size version of the dress and found that the same color was listed as “Heather Gray.”

Clemens tweeted her findings and, as these things tend to do on the internet, it began to spread. The comment sparked debate over whether the garment industry disapproves of overweight people, while also fueling a debate about how women are portrayed in media.

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Susan Clemens
@suZen

What the. Plus sized women get “Manatee Grey” while standard sizes are “Dark Heather Grey.” @Target#notbuyingithttp://t.co/nzHNYoytnp

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2 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Within a day Target responded to Clemens, telling her they had a team looking into the matter. The store later told Forbes that “Manatee Gray” is a color used for many different products, and that in this particular case the people responsible for creating the listings had not communicated properly. Though the proper color for both sizes of the dress is “Manatee Gray,” the color is now listed as simply “Gray.”

Target has issued a direct apology to Clemens via Twitter:

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Target
@Target

@suZen We apologize for this unintentional oversight & never intend to offend our guests. We’ve heard you, and we’re working to fix it ASAP.

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1 day ago via Spredfast · powered by @socialditto

It’s a shopping app upon which Microsoft has collaborated with The Pike Place Market Preservation And Development Authority. It’s piloting the offering in Seattle, but perhaps it will be expanded throughout the country and with other markets.

“Created by the Bing team, Edibly lets you see what’s new at the market via the ‘What’s New Page’, search and browse through products, create a shopping list to prepare for your outing and navigate through the market using the digital map,” says Christian Marc Schmidt, Senior UX Designer on Bing’s Information, Platform and Experiences Team.

The app will let you preview what is available at the store and view and compare products. You can see where vendors and products you want are on a map, in addition to just looking at what’s new.

This could be an interesting app if expanded to include other stores and obviously other locations. I guess that will depend on how the pilot goes, and if Microsoft is able to get other partners on board.

Do you shop directly on Facebook? Is it a good shopping experience? Let us know.

As a result, 8thBridge began working on a new social commerce platform called Graphite, which launched this week. Wade Gerten, the CEO of 8thBridge, spoke to WebProNews and told us that this new tool doesn’t focus on pushing shoppers to Facebook brand stores, but instead, it focuses on the existing channels shoppers use.

“What Graphite enables us to do, for the first time, is take those social shopping experiences and let them run in your existing channels, so in your website, in your brick and mortar store, through mobile apps, and any other channel,” he said.

The platform, which was built with Facebook’s Custom Open Graph, specifically integrates with existing brand sites. Retailers can include customized buttons beyond the “like” to include action verbs such as “love,” “want,” “need,” and more. In other words, the role of Facebook in Graphite is more for social discovery and information about products.

Gerten told us that the new social commerce platform has benefits for both consumers and brands. For consumers, it provides a better shopping experience and doesn’t take them out of their comfort zone. When a user presses one of the customized buttons on an ecommerce site, the action is displayed on his Facebook Timeline for his friends to see.

From a brand’s perspective, there are also many opportunities. According to Gerten, the majority of shopping on Facebook over the last year has consisted of sharing a product with another friend, not actual purchases.

“From a brand’s point of view, what it brings you is a much more powerful way to engage in social commerce,” he said.

“It’s that person-to-person sharing that drives social commerce,” Gerten added.

Gerten did point out that Graphite does not allow brands to push offers to consumers. On the other hand, it creates a more natural shopping experience for both the retailer and the consumer. With this model, he believes ecommerce revenues will increase.

“We think it’s the time when social commerce really starts to put some real revenue numbers on the board,” he said.

This new era of social commerce that Graphite brings is a drastic transformation from the early days of ecommerce that essentially consisted of a digital copy of a brand’s catalog. Gerten believes that, by shaping ecommerce around people as Graphite does, the resulting experience is more closely related to offline shopping.

At launch, some of 8thBridge Graphite’s partners include Ticketmaster, American Apparel, Hallmark, Elle, and Oscar de la Renta. Gerten did tell us that the company would be announcing more brands in the very near future.

What will this new social commerce platform bring to your shopping experience? We’d love to know.

A lovely infographic from our friends at Lemon.com details a recent IBM study that found people were all too willing to give up their privacy for a better shopping experience. Now they aren’t giving up all of their personal details, but it’s still the kind of stuff that people generally don’t like giving away.

Among the statistics in the study, it was found that an overwhelming 75 percent of respondents were willing to share data about their media usage. Well, that’s not that bad. There are already plenty of tracking applications that marketers use to track this everyday. It’s the fact that the person is willingly handing it over that’s important.

Another 73 percent are willing to hand over their demographic info. Once again, not that bad considering that marketers already use this data all the time to market to their customers. It’s when 61 percent of the respondents are willing to identify themselves by name and address that the sirens begin to go off. That’s the kind of information that nobody wants to share, but they will if there’s a personalized shopping experience to be had.

In what may be the most damning to privacy proponents, it’s found that 56 percent are willing to share their physical location for these amazing deals. I don’t like the idea of people knowing where I am at the moment, but what if you get a localized deal for the place you’re at right that very moment. Would you agree to it then? A contemporary example is the Nintendo Zone application for the Nintendo 3DS. Depending on the location, it unlocks deals and information about shopping for that current store.

If shoppers are to give away this information, they want something in return. What would that be? They want “communication tailored to their unique interests, locations, and lifestyles; reaching out via channels each consumer prefers (not mass media); compelling reasons to shop now; and personalized sales and offerings.” That all sounds pretty sweet and it only comes at the cost of your personal privacy.

Would you give up your personal details for a better deal at, say, Best Buy or Victoria’s Secret? Or are you one of the true privacy defenders who don’t give marketers any leeway? Let us know in the comments.

These new findings point to the striking penetration of smart phone enabled shoppers or “smart-shopping” into the everyday lives of Americans.

Based on data from a hybrid phone/online study conducted in December 2011 and February 2012 with a national sample of 314 smart phone owners, the survey found that sixty-six percent (66%) use their smart phones to aid in shopping, and thirty-eight percent (38%) do so while actually in a traditional retail store. Smart phone owners are about as likely to access shopping information in the store aisle (29%) as in the rest of the store (25%).

While actually near point of sale, shoppers are most likely to:

Look up facts and features (15%)
Compare prices at different stores (11%)
Read product reviews on retail sites (9%)
Compare prices at retailer’s websites (8%)

“Smart phone enabled shopping or ‘smart-shopping’ is rapidly becoming a mainstream activity for smart phone owners. Given the rapid rise in smart phone ownership, traditional retailers and product brand managers face a new wave of challenges to serve increasingly informed and independent consumers,” notes Owen Shapiro, Vice President of LJS. “The use of point of sale price checks breaks down one of the long-standing advantages held by retailers on ‘blind priced’ items – products that consumers buy infrequently or that are low involvement.”

The following video shows you how you can sync, tweet, and save:

Over millions of digital coupons have been claimed in the past days, in fact, the Syncard campaign has been so successful that partners like McDonals and Whole Foods have decided to increase their cap offerings to meet demands.

A representative for American Express stated that the Twitter coupons have exceeded expectations and is doing even better than their Foursquare initiative that followed a similar platform.

Perhaps the days of sifting through dozens of newspapers to find valuable coupons are over. Elizabeth Rutledge, Amex’s EVP of global network marketing and information, later told ClickZ via an email: “Already, millions of Twitter users are engaging with and receiving special offers from the brands and retailers they care about…In digital, and especially mobile, the simplicity and non-clunkiness of the user experience is key.”

Many people have been putting their scissors away and opting instead to join e-mail clubs to receive special deals directly from merchants, but forms of value shopping like Syncard may be gaining on special e-mail offers. Syncard is very successful because it caters to immediate gratification – no more waiting for e-mails from fast food chains for that free burger or shake, if you possess a qualifying American Express Card then you can save big within a few days without killing trees.

ClickZ provides examples of the different offers that have been available during the past five days: “By tweeting hashtag #AmexWholefoods, consumers receive $20 off purchases of $75 or more at the natural foods market made with their Amex cards. McDonald’s is offering a $5 discount through its #AmexMcDonalds hashtag. Best Buy, FTD, Zappos.com, Century 21 department stores, Gulf Oil, Cheese Factory, FexEx Office, Sports Authority, Seamless.com, and Ticketmaster are other launch partners in the effort.”

The most popular activity for shoppers using their smartphone is price comparison. Countless apps in the iOS App Store and Android App Market allow users a myriad of ways to check prices of products at both online and brick-and-mortar retailers. Thirty-eight percent of smartphone owners check prices online while they’re in a store, and 38% also shop from their phones. Reading online reviews of products was the second most popular activity at 32%, while nearly a quarter (24%) look for online coupons.

Interestingtly, the least popular activity on Nielsen’s list is also the thing the most smartphone owners wish they could do. Only 9% of users said that they use their phone to pay for goods or services at the point of sale, yet over 70% of all app downloaders said they were at least slightly interested in doing so. Interestingly, iPhone users expressed more interest in mobile payment technology than Android users.

Several Android phones have the necessary near-field communication (NFC) technology to power mobile payment systems. Google even has its own mobile payment service, Google Wallet, that is available to some Android users. The iPhone, on the other hand, has no NFC capabilities, despite persistent rumors that the technology would be coming to the previous two generations of iPhone.

Rumors that the next iPhone would be getting NFC technology gained new life earlier this month when MasterCard executive Ed McLaughlin said in an interview that every handset manufacturer he knew of had NFC technology in the works. When asked if that included Apple, McLaughlin avoided answering directly, but insisted that every manufacturer was working to incorporate NFC.

Whether Apple really is working to incorporate NFC into the iPhone is certainly up for debate, but Nielsen’s numbers suggest that they have good reason to consider it. Almost 40% of iOS users said they were either extremely interested or very interested, while a further 36% said they were somewhat or slightly interested, leaving only 25% of iPhone users who were not interested in the technology at all.

What do you think? Would you like to see mobile payment technology come to the iPhone? Would you like to see it expanded on Android phones? Sound off in the comments.

During the holiday shopping season, 41% of consumers made purchases directly on their smartphones, 46% noted that they picked out their item on their smartphone, and completed the purchase in-store, and 37% said they researched their item on their phone, and bought it online. Of the three modes of purchase, it was also noted that consumers with tablet devices were more prone to read product reviews and look up more product information, likely due to their larger screens and portability, according to Dai Pham, of Google Mobile Ads Marketing. It’s now easier to get detailed information about a product from the couch, kitchen or bed, with a tablet device.

Naturally, most consumers are using their smartphones to contact the retailers directly, with click-to-call phone numbers on company websites making this convenient. With 80% of consumers saying that they’d used their smartphones while shopping this year, along with 70% of tablet users, it is essentially that retailers optimize their websites to engage customers on all three devices.

For more information on consumer trends in regards to desktop, mobile and tablet devices, check out a report on Post Holiday Learnings for 2012.

A new survey, Shopping Trends Among 18-25 Year-Olds, conducted by a group of LIM College students and in conjunction with the NRF Student Association, revealed that 68% of young people aged 18-25 years “prefer to shop in stores than online for apparel and shoes.” In announcing the release, Alexis Michaelides, student leader of the LIM College’s campus NRF Student Association, said, “We have read and observed what industry leaders had been saying about our use of technology for shopping and it did not match our own habits and preferences.”

The study also contains a bit of good news for all of those brick and mortar stores who feel like they’re living under the Amazon sword. Another member of the LIM College NRFSA team, Nicole Flasch-Mihalko, added, “Retail observers have been significantly overestimating our use of online and digital technology for shopping. We like shopping in stores and are not as engaged in shopping on the Internet as many have touted. I guess the demise of the brick and mortar format of retailing– at least for 18-25 year-olds– is grossly exaggerated.”

Some key take-aways from the study:

What’s funny is that the second bullet point up there is exactly the opposite of that oh-so treacherous Amazon Price Check app that infuriated everybody during the recent Christmas holiday. And since it only mentions apparel and shoes as items that young people shop for in brick and mortar stores, does that mean they are either purchasing media (e.g., movies, music) online? (I bet they’re just stealin’ that swag via their ultra-fast dorm room Internet connection.)

While this is a intriguing study, it’d be more telling and reliable if the results could be duplicated among a larger sample size and, perhaps, inclusive of a broader geography of youngsters since, I’m assuming, that the survey only included data from Manhattanites since LIM is located there. Have you been to brick and mortar stores in NYC? It’s considerably different than the weekend trips to Target or the local mall.

Nevertheless. Carry on, my wayward brick and mortar sons!