Last week, we visited a few grocery stores and spoke with a few shoppers about the shopping experience inside the stores. Our intention is to understand the end-user, shopper better before we meet with retail store customers.

1. Elderly couple – 60s

We approached them after noticing that they were having some difficulty locating a product. Wrong target. Neither of them had used a mobile application. They have been visiting the same store for years and did not think that they would use the service.

2. Young professional – Male – 30s

We asked him if he faces any difficulty locating products in the store and if he would find a mobile based service useful. He was all for the a retail store navigation service which would show him the products on sale. Interesting to note that he used a BlackBerry with no data plan.

3. Young professional – Female – 30s

Another potential early adopter. The lady was quite interested and very likely to use the application.

1. Overwaitea Food Group

I spoke to Mike of OWFG first thing in the morning, He said that the Business team was interested in viewing a live demo of the ZThru service in one of their stores. The process of arranging for the demo is likely to take at least 2- 3 weeks. So, our task is to have a pilot ready by April 3, 2013.

2. Reached out to John Derby, Director of Advertising at Wegmans Food Markets and requested and appointment to discuss the possibilities of retail store navigation.

3. Also, e-mailed Stephane regarding: outcome of previous tests and future licensing fees. I will be calling them to discuss in detail.

Per our discussion today, here are some questions for our shopper interviews. Please feel free to add more.

1. Has the shopper encountered difficulty in locating products inside a store? How important is the problem?

2. What are some of the problems that the shopper faces? How could the shopping experience be better in <XYZ retail chain>?

3. Would the shopper use a mobile application that helps locate products? How often is he/she likely to use it?

4. Does the shopper care about deals and promotions?

5. If yes, how does the shopper come to know about offers and promotions now? Can the delivery be improved?

6. Would a navigation mobile app that highlights promotions help? For instance, would display of promotions near the shopper’s current location help?

7. How much time does the shopper spend in the store per visit. Would he/she like to reduce the time spent there?

8. Would the shopper rather buy the stuff online?

We met with our mentor, Mario of LightHaus yesterday. We came away with quite a few new ideas:

Take away:

1.A cloud-based service model could still be used when the ZipThru product is offered as a module that fits into an existing retail store-specific mobile application.Advantages: 1) predictable and steady revenue 2) advertising

2. Sales channel partnerships – we could partner with Retail store network installers to sell the solution to retailers with whom they have existing relationships. This is a medium-to-long term action item.

3. Real-time deals based on product search and shopper behavior in the store

The marketing department of the retail store could offer real-time deals for a shopper based on products that are of interest. Products of interest can be determined from searches and from user behavior inside the store.

We attended the Branding and Ad event at the Vancity Theatre yesterday. It was a good learning experience to know about the world view of advertisers. We spoke to several executives from advertising firms to know their perspectives on the potential for advertising within a retail navigation service.

Number of contacts interviewed: 12

Our takeaway from the event:

1. Focus more on the interactive aspect of advertising than on the ad delivery platform. The focus appears to be in engaging the consumer of advertising content through social media, for example.

ZipThru could offer a different type of customer engagement where the user needs as well as position at a point of time can be used to deliver interactive and contextual ads. A marketing strategy that highlights the interactive and contextual aspects of ZipThru ads would be useful.

2. Voice activated search

A CFO we met said that he would use a retail store navigation service if it supported voice commands. It would be inconvenient to type on a touchscreen phone while holding a shopping basket.

3. It might be useful to learn more about how slotting fees are determined. Slotting fee is the fee that a product vendor pays the retailer to shelve a particular product at a location. A similar model could be used for determining the ads that are to be displayed in the store shelf-view of ZipThru.

While waiting to hear back from the business team at Overwaitea, we have been trying to reach out to other grocery chains such as London Drugs. I spoke to Annette Stark, Retail Operations Supervisor on Friday. The conversation was brief and she asked me to send a product/ concept presentation to her e-mail address. We have sent the information and will be following up with her early next week.

I also visited with the Administrative Manager at Costco, Richmond. She appeared impressed with the MVP, but directed me to the head office. I will be calling the head office on Monday morning.

Another item on the agenda for next week is the Branding and Advertising event at Vancity Theater on Tuesday evening. This was an event we registered for a couple of weeks ago. We have drawn up a list of 8 attendees from the advertising space who we would like to meet and discuss the concept with.

A. Retail stores with an existing  mobile application

After our discussions with Overwaitea, we have recognized that retail stores such as SaveOn Foods that already have existing mobile applications are unlikely to support an independent navigation mobile app for their store. Overwaitea is more interested in incorporating the navigation aspect into their existing mobile app in such a way that there is a consistent look and feel.

Based on the feedback, we think that potential customers such as Overwaitea are more likely to pay for the product, i.e. a navigation module (with indoor positioning). They were not keen on using a cloud-based ZThru service. The deliverables would then include:

1. Network deployment in the store to make it indoor positioning-enabled. This would most likely involve an installation fee.

2.Navigation module that could be integrated with the existing store-specific mobile application.A service fee could be charged per app download. This is a hypothesis that will need to be tested during further discussions with Overwaitea.

B. Retail stores without a mobile application

Retail stores that do not have an existing mobile application might be interested in retail store navigation delivered as a cloud-based service. It was Mike, Director of IT at Overwaitea, who mentioned this to us. He said that potential customers such as Home Depot and IKEA would be more likely to use a cloud-based service. For retail stores without existing mobile apps, the deliverables would be:

1. Network deployment in the store to make it indoor positioning-enabled. This would most likely involve an installation fee.

2. Retail navigation service provided to shoppers in the store through a cloud-based ZThru server. An annual service fee could be charged. Advertising would be a possible source of revenue in the long-term.