But in many cases, it’s non-tech savvy people going into a store not knowing exactly what they want. Like say they want to buy a flat screen TV. How big? Plasma or LCD? What response rate?

They don’t even know how important it is to ask those questions, let alone how the features will effect their enjoyment of the final product. Instead they go into a store, look at the big long row of TVs, punch a few buttons, get bewildered at all the choices, then leave and probably go do the same at a competitor’s store provided no one comes up to them. This happens until they either give up and make a blind choice, or can find someone tech savvy who knows how to ask the right questions.

The availability of auto information online has not put car salespeople out of a job. I very much doubt the in store salesperson is going to up and disappear either.

As a general rule, sales folks are comp’d based on their sales… Technology’s role is to make them more effective at selling. Contra-wise there are customers whose ability to be sold is seemingly inversely proportional to the efforts of a Sales person to “Sell them”. (Just as there are customers who are proportionately likely to buy based on sales efforts.) A good sales person knows (or should) how to make that call and should be able to direct the prospective customer to the appropriate sales experience.

The question of how much human interaction in a sale comes down to what’s the value of the transaction? Do you want a Sales person chasing a $10 sale or a $100 sale? For many transactions you (the business) may want a low touch sale because the value of most transactions is low. However, you may want to make sure that having your sales people follow the higher value transactions doesn’t cause you to lose the smaller/lower value transactions. To solve this will require smart tools, analysis of the processes, and the adoption of customer friendly technologies. From things like Mobile Device accessible product information portals to more effective and informative displays… to pod-less (checkout stand-less) retail systems that speed up a purchase.

Whether the answer is a Mobile Device based solution is more a question of who the customer base is and what kinds of interactions those customers would likely find value from without being frustrated out of buying.

My question is whether there is a minimum amount of face-to-face communication required for certain business transactions. Will consumers continue to accept more and more technology as it’s pushed out? Or, will they demand it? This would be valuable to know, and marketers shouldn’t assume that technology–any technology–will be embraced. Many of us still regularly curse telephony systems that don’t give us a menu option for our simple questions–and don’t offer a pathway to reach a real human, either.

Texting is cool stuff for the 18-to-40-year old consumer segment, and their buying power is considerable. But what about the needs of older consumers, who similarly have great buying power, but aren’t as predisposed to whip out a cell phone and send a text message when they want product information for a stereo component.

A related article I wrote on the topic: “Samplesaint Belives Barcodes and Cell Phones are a Heavenly Match.” http://www.customerthink.com/blog/samplesaint_wants_to_prove_that_barcodes_and_cell_phones_are_a_heavenly_match

It would be great to hear more ideas on this topic.

Take a look at http://www.iscanetworks.com/ to see another way of achieving what you want that is ubiquitous.

Cheers
Steve

It is actually possible that in the future, the in-store retail salespeople, the cashiers, and the brick-and-mortar retailers go away all together.

When you think about it, when you go to a brick-and-mortar store you can already get all kinds of product information, including competitive pricing, in a split second. For example, on the iPhone platform, there is an app called RedLaser (among others) that directly scans the barcode off a product to provide a full set of information to facilitate the purchase decision process.

If we combine that with the tests that are currently underway in mobile payment (E.g: have a look to this article that I was reading this morning –> http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/12/02/square-starts-testing-a-mobile-payment-system-for-the-iphone/ ), we may be tempted to think that even the cashiers may progressively be replaced by digital streams of information flying in the air at light speed.

Last but not least, when the long tail models of marketing segmentation, that have orginally been spawned by the adoption of the Internet, will gain in granularity, consumers will have fewer and fewer incentives to go through the hassle of brick-and-mortar retail shopping. The convenience of buying on-the-go and of being delivered products anywhere you want, anytime you want, may very well gradually replace the dusty, and working capital heavy, traditional retail model.

In my view, it is just a matter of time before we trust and adopt the limitless opportunities stemming from the mobile world… How much time?

Now, imagine him being in a store… the retail store has invested in the physicality of having the inventory at hand… but the consumer can simply scan the UPC and get bids from a number of online retailers within a few seconds. Now the choice is which is the better value, the price for having the item now or waiting for it to be delivered. Its this kind of interaction that is coming, regardless of whether retailers embrace it or not… The question is are they ready for the disruptions of business models its likely to cause?