Monday, November 17, 2014

Smart Dressing Rooms: Cool or Creepy?

It's been found that customers that shop online and in store tend to purchase more than customers who only shop through one of the channels. Thus, retailers and brands try to connect the two experiences so better track customers and understand their shopping behaviors.

In the new stores of Rebecca Minkoff in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tokyo, dressing rooms feature Kinect senors that record customer motions, adjustable lighting, touch screens, and a sophisticated tracking system which identifies the customer and remembers what they bring into the fitting room and don't purchase. The goal is to create a personalized shopping experience and can seamless connect online and offline shopping.

Ebay has invested a large sum of money in the technology and Rebecca Minkoff is betting their customers will appreciate this forward thinking technology. However, dressing room mirrors that track customer behaviors bring up many privacy issues and lawmakers are also weighing in, describing it as "intrusive and unsettling." Retailers investing in this technology believe that customers will prefer the benefits from pervasive in-store shopping to any potential loss of privacy.

Ebay's test project for Rebecca Minkoff is one of the largest attempts of an Amazon style e-commerce experience, leads generated by clicks and highly personalized shopping experience. Customers are greeted with a large touch screen that takes free drink orders in exchange for a phone number. The large touch screen also allows customers to browse the entire catalog and put together outfits. All clothing and accessories are tagged with RFID. Different sizes and colors of an article of clothing are pulled up on the mirror. If something doesn't fit, the customer can add a different size to their online shopping cart.

The brand's co-founder is extremely interested in the technology because his label's core demographic - tech-savy millennial women - are the ones on Instagram and expect a highly curated collection.

I think this new smart dressing room would only work on a small group of customers. They should have the ability to easily opt out of the service and be well aware that their actions are being tracked in the store. This concept isn't for everyone but can be a very powerful marketing tool if used on the right group of people.

Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/3035229/the-smart-dressing-room-experiment-how-irl-shopping-is-getting-less-private-but-more-persona

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