With the Digital Retailing Expo just wrapping up, and most industry pundits and analysts presenting
bullish views on the market, I've come across a few articles lately
that remind us that sometimes more isn't always better.
The first is a widely publicized article from the Chicago Tribune titled "service gets lost in self-serve world,"
(registration required) by Steven Swanson. It was written about a
month ago, but lately has been picked apart in a number of
counter-articles from the powers that be at kiosks.org
and elsewhere, and for good reason. Swanson suggests that, "[t]he
explosion in self-serve options is generating a backlash," citing
self-serve gas pumps and ATMs as vehicles of laziness by big corporate
entities that are making consumers do too much work. Yet later on
in his own article he cites Dennis Galletta, an information systems
professor at Temple University's Fox School of Business and Management,
who says, "People want this... I think nowadays people are less
patient. People not only want this technology, they demand it."
So
go figure. In my opinion, customers tend to be fairly vocal about
what they like and what they don't like. The continuing push
towards self-service (via kiosk devices, handhelds, etc.) suggests that people do
like being able to help themselves and save time in the process.
And of course, my opinion is mirrored by Greg Swistak, Executive
Director of the Kiosks.org Association (KOA). In his rebuttal to the Swanson article,
he notes that, "In a recent MarketWatch interview, Carol Tome, chief
financial officer of The Home Depot, reported that self-service
check-outs deployed in Home Depot stores are popular with customers. In
fact, one out of three customers choose self-service machines when they
are available. Why? Because when the machines are available, check-out
time is reduced by 40 percent. Besides the convenience and shorter time
spent in the store, consumers also benefit from increased employee
assistance on the sales floor. Employees who used to operate the
check-outs now assist shoppers by finding items or answering questions."
Swanson's
claim that self-service devices reduce the amount of "face time" that
customers get with store employees seems to be further deflated by
Tome's observations at The Home Depot. In fact, many of our
clients using self-service kiosks note that the applications and
information that the kiosk provides allow their staff to service
customers better, increasing the face time available for personalized
customer interactions. A recent article from ePaynews
indicates the same trend: 36% of consumers surveyed in stores that
currently lack self-checkout systems said they would like to see
self-checkout installed.
Of course, the digital signage industry
isn't without its own skeptics. Two articles have been brought to
my attention recently that deal with the distraction and visual clutter
that digital signs can create. The first comes from this article at Yahoo News
about Loews Theatres playing commercials before movies begin.
This is a hot-button topic for many moviegoers, especially because some
theaters will actually push back the start time of the movies to show
commercials (which is what the Yahoo article is really about).
Some initial research has suggested that this approach is going to backfire, and in fact an online group has even sprung up at www.captiveaudience.org to protest in-theater marketing. On top of this is the work of nonprofit groups like Commercial Alert, who seek to reduce the amount of marketing and commercial advertising content that we encounter in our day-to-day lives.
The important part (for us, at least) is that many of the theater chains use networked digital signage players
hooked up to a projector to show the pre-movie content. They can
thus generate playlists of information, entertainment and
commercial content and distribute it to different theaters using networked narrowcasting technology instead of
having to send out DVDs every few weeks or rely on local management to
make up PowerPoint presentations and slide shows for each
theater. So now we have an application which paints digital
signage in a bad light, is perceived poorly by the majority of its
audience, and has garnered the attention of the national press.
Not good.
This news comes on the heels of another article, this time from The Feature, entitled "Intrusion doesn't constitute advertising."
The author focuses on a supposedly opt-in campaign to send Bluetooth
messages to user's cellphones, but his argument easily extends to other
digital retailing techniques as well. He does make one good
point: if the content on your digital displays isn't compelling viewers
to watch, but is instead forcing them (because of logistics or layout
or whatever), then you're not going to be marketing to them at all --
you're going to be alienating them.
So what should the takeaway
here be? Nobody wants to deploy a system that will discourage
use, decrease customer satisfaction, or worse. But at the same
time, retailers and others are always on the lookout for ways to
increase revenue and market their products. There has to be a
balance point somewhere, and of course it's going to be entirely
dependent upon your application, your audience, and the captivity of said audience.
Hmm... sounds like the start of another blog article :)