Imagine the ability as a retailer to identify the gender of a buyer and change the messages within the store to match them. All a dream, apparently not – retailers are now starting to test and implement the technology.
I spent yesterday evening having dinner with a small group of CIOs from a range of large retailers in the UK. To be honest it was a little bit strange to have been invited but it was good to listen and join in the conversation. It was an experience to sit and listen to the issues they’re facing with implementing technology into both the online and offline environments.
The conversations touched on all areas of IT within a business from ERP systems on a global basis (and the issues this causes when your going across national barriers and when the business grows through acquisition and not organically) to Mobile apps. The mobile apps discussion was enlightening because of the perceived delay in entering the market, due to a miss understanding of the target market, a belief within the business that the customer base was not actually wanting to engage through this media because they we’re deemed to be the wrong demographic to be using mobile phones and devices. After receiving feedback from the customer they are now moving ahead with implementing mobile apps.
In relation to social media one of the businesses fully engaged with this media have identified that it enables them to have a much faster route to the customer enabling them to quickly resolve issues and manage the customer relationship a lot faster and provide a better experience of the brand to the customer. Some of the organisations are still at the point of taking full advantage of CRM to gather customer information from the online market space.
What I’ve learnt from the evening is even though these companies have a much bigger budget they still have to convince the business to forge ahead with technology and also that they may not fully have the answers and be doing it correctly, but they recognise the need to improve in order to stay competitive.
In relation to gender recognition one of the companies was currently carrying out in store testing to identify the gender of the customer and then change the marketing message being shown on in store visual displays. With more work and the ability to sense or suggest the users buying intent, this could lead to providing a much better lead in for the sales representative. Still in it’s infancy, it apparently has issues with women with very blond hair – apparently it makes them look like they are bald and therefore male….. I won’t have much problem with that one as I’m definitely bald and I’m clearly a man.
