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In – Store Search, the new rage in the United States. Not impressed. Not applicable to India.
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This comes in via c|net news. A startup based in the US is looking at refining in – store search. The startup is called Envincii and its business model revolves around finding products for consumers within crowded stores through in store computer kiosks.
The kiosks present choices to the customer, gradually refining search results and displaying ads of relevant products. The kiosks are installed in 135 Longs Drugs stores with the plan to expand to 200 by the end of the year. Major national retailers “will sign up soon,” the company said.
Installing the kiosks is free to the stores. Evincii charges advertisers to show off their products–the kiosk screens can show videos as well as a full view of the box, including the fine print–and splits revenue with the retailers. Keeping in mind the power of retailers in the US Market I wonder if Envicii will be able to hold on to all the revenues they earn in a retail environment owned by another chain.
In India, I doubt such a technology would work atleast as of now (and probably not even in the future) because:
- We have relatively few brands in the Indian Market
- Indian Retail is ‘labour intensive’ i.e. there is always a friendly neighbourhood Big Bazaar executive around to help
- For many Indians, the local kirana store is the chief source of supply and in a 100 sq. feet store I doubt such a mechanism would be of any use at all
- For Indians getting into a retail environment is an experience in itself. Its almost like entertainment. They don’t like to hurry things up.
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that was really well written….the take on the indian retail mindset and likening it to entertainment…..its true in so many ways…..As a country we are still first level consumers of content because we are so much content starved as a nation…(thanks to the socialist brigade that painted us pink in the first 50 years of our republic)…that we need to be satiated in quantity parametric model initially before a quality parametric model develops and retail is a a great understudy for this phenomena…hence words like web 2.0 , semantic web , in store search optimization,kiosk based business models are not within an embrace…..it will fall into deaf ears….In a nutshell we are an economy feeding of technology but a society who technology cant feed of…..i.e a country with a million coders who will not use a in store search engine…..
Similar kind of solution has been done by company in Chennai, about 3 years back and was demoed with a local book seller for customers to find the book, available in which rack, which shelf and so on. Been a bit old news, but would definitely love, if seeing this, some retail guys are interested to take the solution in India, with us
you should track the performance of this company to see the success rate.
If you have such a product and are interested in pitching it to the right prospects and positioning it in a manner that is applicable for a business to utilize or an investor to pour his funds into then do get in touch with our sister concern watconsult. You can ping me an email on harshil(at)watconsult(dot)com .
One of our businesses is that of consulting and hand holding startups and giving them a holistic platform for mushrooming into their potential. This involves marketing relations, business relations, and investor relations.
@ Rajesh: Love your last line!