Future of shopping
Imagine your girlfriend is in Pittsburgh chasing her art house dream,
and you are in urban slums in India trying to uplift the grassroots. And still
you want to stay connected, have dates with fine dine, together. Online dines
could be the way possible. You could fix up a date and time, register in e-dine’s
portal and hopefully show up on time, before your PC.
You start together, see the menu together, and order for each other…
and get served (actually delivered) on the same time (almost). Online dines
could be the remedy for long distance relationships that long for that one
personal touch.
Following are some ideas that
came to my mind about shopping in 2030. Actually I have ventured not just into
shopping, but a large collage of consumer experience. But there is one common
theme that runs through all these concepts; catering to convenience of
purchase; or in my terms ‘laziness of the user’
Like a size 41 for shirts, or 35
for pants… we can also have much wider variety of size fits for apple, banana,
pear shapes… or ideally a web scanner that’d customize the clothing to fit you,
and show you how it’d look on you.
The future I imagine will have
clothing stores with size matching stations where one could alter the clothing
to your fit. No longer you’d have to forego a good design just because the shop
doesn’t have your size
Big bang theory fans would
recollect Penny using Sheldon’s app to create a database for different shoes so
that anyone who captures a picture of a shoe could get the entire details of it
like shop, price, design history, it’s availability etc.
Image based
search would make searching for that one distinct shaped watch or that unique
coloured paint much easier. And with it you get a more satisfied consumer.
There can be
features like when you see a product which you feel is overpriced, you can just
capture it and see what’s the best price you could get for it in the locality.
This happened to me recently. I
got a discount coupon for purchases above 2000 bucks and it so happened that
the one clothing I wanted to buy was in a different website that I had to
settle for less than optimal purchase. Why not combine purchases from different
shops, like an e-hypermarket so that I could get bulk discounts and still leave
home (I meant logout) happily
Future I imagine will have a
single platform, so that the benefits are availed even for products from different
shops, by aggregating the purchases, like an online mega mall.
Get the touch
to get an idea of how it feels in my
hand. Like that mattress I wanted to buy, or the material of leather wallet I
desired.
Online retailers nowadays address this to an extent by
having a few physical outlets so that the one exacting customer gets a feel of
what he actually purchases. But it is still sub-optimal, since the money that
could have spent in better products have been wasted in floor cost of the shops
and to maintain its work force.
Like you have voice and visuals, the future of online
shopping would definitely benefit from the ability to convey the touch and
scent of their product. Hope the days are not so long from now.
i-Style
Fashion designers or makeover consultants need not be only for TV
stars and sportsmen.
You can have the help of online fashion consultants,
who’d always be there to help you get that one look that’d make you feel ten times
better.
It’d be just like cars and two wheelers, once a luxury, now
a regular consumer product. All of us can have our own fashion consultant, like
our doctor, dentist or shrink.
Or you can mix and match, make your own style quotient,
share it with friends, or if you are really good, sell it to spread your idea
of what fashion is.
Internet of things
Consumer product companies or retailers can be like the hutch dog
that always follows you, not in the creepy way, but in a more sophisticated
elegant manner.
User specific products viz. chip in shoe collecting usage of
the customer, which can suggest modifications for better shoe fit when you buy next time,
will be the thing in vogue, and after sometime a basic minimum.
Or that couch that senses your sleeping pattern and suggest you
a more suitable one when you search for a new one next time. All you have to do
is stay connected, with your things.
Farmville
Farmville (I am not going into detail of when
it started getting weird).
Imagine if you could get updates of fresh farm
produce, that one differently coloured turnip you always wanted or information
about what your friend has got in his backyard orchard, and you can actually
get or buy from them.
Farm fresh will not be just a word, but reality
In short I believe shopping in 2030 will be more about the product
and user convenience than about marketing and retail space.
This blog is submitted
for the contest FUTURE OF SHOPPING conducted by e-bay and Indiblogger. Please visit
bit.ly/eBayCheck_Extention
1 comments:
Nice ideas! Best of luck for the contest! :)
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