As I recently entered the American Airlines terminal at O'Hare, the standard 15 minute screening process was clearly a thing of the past. Pat downs were causing delays and the controversy surrounding the imminent installation of full body scans was heating up.
Now comes word from today's Wall Street Journal that body scan technology may eventually be found in the Wal-Mart near you. Not for security reasons - this technology is being developed to use features such as gender, age and height to personalize marketing messages. The primary motivation seems to be competing more effectively with online retailers - stating that this capability could help "traditional retailers develop marketing approaches that better counter Web-based competitors".
Indeed, online retailers have (or are building) all the tools and capabilities to personalize their merchandising efforts based on any number of factors - how you got to their web store, whether this is your first or second visit, how you shopped last visit, whether you're a loyal customer, your sensitivity to offers (and even the types of offers), your likely purchase pattern, etc. This certainly has the potential for creating a better shopping experience and is at least one of the big reasons Amazon has become such a juggernaut - hook the consumer on books, get to know their shopping and buying preferences then expand into other categories by targeting offers to these same consumers. For today's online retailer, investing in these personalization platforms is becoming more essential to maintaining a competitive edge.
But this us v. them thinking misses an important point. Multi-channel retailers should be thinking of less intrusive - but sill powerful - ways to personalizing the retail experience. One step is to fully use mobile technology to get information in the hands of the consumer while they are able to touch, see and feel the product. Unleashing valuable and authoritative content empowers the consumer with knowledge they need, differentiates the brand and potentially compresses the shopping cycle.
Using cell phones to look up product details, review personalized offers and read product reviews is low hanging fruit. Now that smart phone penetration is at critical mass, developing tailored versions of web sites, delivering full video product demonstrations, creating specialized applications for the iPhone and other devices, and exploiting the GPS location capabilities gives multi-channel retailers new ways to drive store traffic and convert this traffic while the consumer is in the aisle. Surrounding a solid mobile strategy with social media accelerates the content distribution, provides an avenue for user generated content to become part of this ecosystem and gives the marketer a powerful word-of-mouth tool that accelerates payback from any mobile investments.
So let's leave the body scans for the airport. There's other practical, low-cost and non-controversial ways to level the playing field between multi-channel retailers and online retailers.
