BrainTrust Query: How Tablets Could Revolutionize the Shopper Path to Purchase
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is an excerpt from an article from the Joel Rubinson on Marketing Research blog.
As when any technology becomes adopted, the prices for tablets, one of this past holiday season's hottest gifts, should eventually see a dramatic drop. We already see this starting to happen with the Amazon Kindle Fire. Forrester estimates that the current single digit penetration of tablets will increase 3-to-4 fold by 2015. With that, maturation in usage patterns is expected.
Then it struck me: the tablet is the first device that can actually travel with the shopper through the complete path to purchase.
The tablet is inherently a mobile device. Imagine a store completely wired for Wi-Fi so you can use your tablet as you shop. Imagine you have planned your trip at home, on your tablet, by scanning what you are about to run out of and by searching on your tablet for coupons and interesting dinner ideas. While you are doing this, smart marketers and retailers are advertising their products and offers using an interactive sight/sound/motion experience. Now, you have created a shopping list on your tablet, which also contains all of your frequent shopper information for the store you are about to visit.
When you enter the store with your tablet, it recognizes your presence and greets you with a video message from the store manager. You place the tablet in your shopping cart so you can watch it as you go and your shopping list automatically gets reorganized so you can see which items are in each aisle you enter. This will encourage a shopper to completely navigate the store, which any retailer would love. While you are walking down the aisle, windows awake on your tablet delivering messages that are relevant to you based on shopping history and interactively offering you deals.
Research already indicates that tablet owners already spend more time accessing the internet via their tablets than their computers. And tablets are becoming preferred devices among their owners for online shopping, according to Forrester. Today, that is from the living room, but why should it be restricted so?