September 18, 2015
Will visual search unlock m-commerce?
Through a special arrangement, what follows is an excerpt of an article from FierceRetail, an e-newsletter and website covering the latest retail technology news and analysis.
Mobile visual search capabilities have been cropping up in retailers’ apps with regularity for good reason: the feature will likely play a big role this coming holiday as shoppers turn to smartphones in droves.
More than just a new variation on the bar code scanner, visual search lets a shopper take a photo of something they like and then finds it for them. If it isn’t able to find the exact item, it finds the closest similar one. Neiman Marcus, Macy’s, Target and Toys "R" Us are among those using the technology in some way.
The technology can also turn the pages of a catalog or magazine into shoppable content, as Target did for the September issue of Elle magazine with a series of visual search enabled ads.
Visual search technology can also digitize a paper coupon or deliver a discount for a photographed product or a similar item. Slyce recently purchased SnipSnap and launched a new product for retailers called Snap-to-Coupon that does just that.
Slyce has also created its own mobile-only boutique called Craves, featuring a variety of retailers including Yoox, Nasty Gal, Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor, Neiman Marcus, ASOS, Mango, Singer22, Luisaviaroma, Forzieri, Silver Jeans and Coach.
![[Image: Neiman Marcus App]](/public/images/discussions/18549/slyce-still.jpg)
"The theoretical potential is huge," said Jim Okamura, managing partner, Okamura Consulting. "It’s still somewhat early on in terms of the utility of visual search."
The technology works great with shoes, Mr. Okamura points out. A shopper just captures the silhouette and the technology finds a similar one. How well it works in other categories remains to be seen. Neiman Marcus tested the feature with shoes and handbags first, but the wider rollout to other categories is too new to assess.
Yet in-store connectivity is still an issue in many locations and getting employees on board with new customer-facing initiatives can be difficult.
Shoppers are also unfamiliar with the technology and it can take a significant marketing campaign just to let them know about the feature.
Neiman Marcus’ store managers were all trained on the internal app before the rollout to shoppers. Sales associates are encouraged to have shoppers take a photo of an out-of-stock item using visual search in the store, which helps familiarize customers with the feature.
- Mobile visual search to unlock m-commerce – Fierce Retail Mobile
- Neiman Marcus expands Snap.Find.Shop visual search – FierceRetail Mobile
- Neiman Marcus CMO Wanda Gierhart talks visual search – FierceRetail Mobile
- JCPenney adds visual search – FierceRetail Mobile
- Macy’s Betting On QR Code Revival and Image Recognition – FierceRetail Mobile
- Toys R Us adds visual search – FierceRetail Mobile
- Mobile visual search has IT implications – FierceRetail IT
Discussion Questions
Do you expect mobile visual search capabilities will break out with consumers this upcoming holiday season? What do you see as the main hurdles to consumer adoption? What can retailers do to overcome them?
Poll
BrainTrust
Paula Rosenblum
Co-founder, RSR Research
Mark Price
Adjunct Professor of AI and Analytics, University of St. Thomas
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I can’t imagine the technology is mature enough to support the speed needed during the holiday season. Maybe in three years. But this year? No way.
Making the pages of fashion magazines (or any other printed communication) shoppable with a smartphone is terrific. In this sense, visual search will make mobile the next critical shopper tool. However, I am a bit skeptical about the quality of the search results. The article asserts that the “shopper just captures the silhouette and the technology finds a similar one.” Well, for a real fashionista, “a similar one” won’t do. She is capturing that photo because she wants THAT shoe, not just a similar stiletto. It’s not A clog, it’s THAT clog.
Even so, I imagine that categories like home improvement, craft hobbies, cooking and other technical areas would benefit greatly here.
This is the next evolution of marketing in general. The shopper is strictly visual at this point, in all regions of the world. Merchants and brands need to capitalize upon this by posting compelling visuals of their products that match the shoppers’ lifestyles and/or their aspirational lifestyles. Consumers are already adopting this. Merchants and brands have not yet universally taken advantage of this pent up demand. Brands and retailers need to publicize these capabilities broadly for shoppers to migrate to their proprietary and partner apps.
Mobile visual search is a complex subject that isn’t easy. Try the Google visual search sometime and you will find the results are hit or miss. I can see shoes to be a little easier because of the boundaries and pattern uniqueness, but to say it is a “break out” this year, that’s pushing it. It is a subject that is continuing to evolve with machine intelligence though
Holiday shopping is high risk for those who want to make sure they get the right item. That’s incentive enough to use mobile visual search. If the motivation is there, people will put in the effort to learn what to do.
I like the idea of retailers training their staff and in turn their shoppers. On several levels it engages customers with staff. I see that going beyond the actual use of the mobile visual search to overall shopper satisfaction with the experience they have with that retailer. But a visual search benefits more than one retailer/store and eventually, if it catches on, there will be a new goal. Note that we all did learn to use DVD players, DVRs and apps (well I’m not that confident about my use of apps yet).
I think the holiday season is its own experimental environment for learning the pros and cons of this technology and software. Surely the retailers won’t leave it just to chance.
While I certainly like the concept and believe it holds water, i haven’t seen it yet. Hmmmm. I know I may not be that important in the scheme of things, however I do put myself out there when it comes to new stuff.
If it hasn’t made it my way yet, I am skeptical that it is ready for THIS holiday season.
But that’s just my 2 cents.
“The theoretical potential is huge.” One of the best lines I’ve ever heard. Reality is this isn’t quite ready for prime-time just yet.
As a devoted user of Google Search images, the amount of “noise” in search results requires patience with keyword terms. I can’t imagine the noise in a visual algorithm search result. The Fourier transform algorithms Shazam uses for audio search as example, have a base catalog of every song to work from. A product search with every known product image in the database? Who knows, maybe….
Betting your favorite cell company is going to love this one. That 10gb data plan will be gone in no time. Not that a single picture is that large, but who can stop at just one.
No, I don’t see this being ready for Christmas. And fundamentally why would a lot of shoppers who have made the investment to get out and go to the store to get something, start doing “image research” from in the store? If they wanted to online shop, they could have done it from home with a big screen and better response time, and at their leisure, not in the rush of holiday shoppers. Yes finding a similar item in person to start the research with is interesting, but how hard is it to browse your way to a starting point in the first place?
I do not believe that mobile visual search will provide significant incremental revenue to online retailers this holiday season. The current interfaces vary significantly from site to site and application to application, which will make the experience very confusing for consumers.
For this technology to provide the opportunity that everyone wishes for it to, retailers must standardize on a limited set of search capabilities and incorporate those across their applications consistently. The same as the fundamental mechanism for search is the same if you search on Google, or Yahoo or Bing.
For this to happen, there must be a shakeout of technologies, which I anticipate happening in the next year. So I will look to 2016 as the big opportunity for mobile search technology.
This is super cool. It is the way of our future. In its infancy it will have to overcome technical glitches, but that’s pretty simple. The biggest challenge will be to achieve a tipping point where people think to use this as a primary search method.
When Slyce says its clients are not looking for ROI yet, that’s a dead giveaway that the use case is immature.
Visual search for diverse and unpredictable categories like fashion and toys is a partial solution. As Liz points out for fashionistas, similar likely isn’t good enough for Nieman Marcus shoppers. The same is true for shoppers of Toys “R” Us, another early adopter. You need THAT item. For more predictable categories, conventional search and browsing is fine.
On the other hand, visual search and digitizing of paper coupons (“snap and save”) opens up a wider variety of use cases across many categories. It also provides valuable clues to shopper intent that can be satisfied with push offers.