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Tag: Retailers

  • Vingroup buys Vietnam c-store chain Shop&Go

    Vingroup buys Vietnam c-store chain Shop&Go

    Vingroup has acquired 87 Vietnamese Shop&Go convenience stores for just US$1.

    Vingroup’s retail arm VinCommerce, which manages Vinmart supermarkets and Vinmart+ convenience stores, will upgrade infrastructure, staff and goods at the acquired stores by the end of next month.

    According to a VinCommerce statement, Shop&Go made the approach and offered to sell itself.

    “The competition is more intense than we imagined; that is why we’ve decided to leave,” a Shop&Go spokesperson said, admitting Vietnamese retail market still has potential for growth.

    “We have sold our stores to Vingroup so it can continue to develop them.”

    Opened in 2006, Shop&Go was one of the earliest convenience store chains in Vietnam.

    By 2016, it had aggregated losses of almost VND205 billion (US$8.81 million).

    VinCommerce runs 108 VinMart supermarkets and 1900 VinMart+ convenience stores.

    Last year, it acquired supermarket chain Fivimart with 23 outlets.

    In a report last year, Nielsen Vietnam observed a rise in visits by Vietnamese to convenience stores. The average shopper uses a convenience store 4.5 times per month – three times the frequency of 2010.

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  • Drop in Hong Kong retail sales

    Drop in Hong Kong retail sales

    Hong Kong retail sales fell 1.6 per cent in the first two months of this year.

    February’s sales were always expected to be down on last year due to the timing of Lunar New Year. They fell 10.1 per cent, while the revised figure for January was an increase of 7 per cent.

    As always, the Census and Statistics Department (C&SD) warned not to read too much into either month’s performance alone, asserting the combined January-February figures for each year provide a more accurate assessment of the state of retail sales growth.

    A government spokesman said the weak performance of retail sales in recent months reflected that consumer sentiment remained cautious amid “various external uncertainties”.

    “The near-term outlook for retail sales should continue to be affected by moderating global economic growth and various external uncertainties, but the full-employment situation and the sustained growth in inbound tourism should provide some support.”

    After netting out the effect of price changes over the same period, Hong Kong retail sales for the first two months of the year decreased by 1.8 per cent year on year.

    Combining the two months, sales of jewellery, watches and clocks decreased by 2.8 per cent. Other categories to fall included apparel down 3.7 per cent; food, alcoholic drinks and tobacco down 1 per cent; electrical goods and other consumer durable goods down 18.3 per cent; Chinese drugs and herbs down 1.7 per cent; and optical shops, down 2 per cent.

    However sales of medicines and cosmetics increased by 2.3 per cent; department store sales rose 4.2 per cent; supermarket sales by 1.5 per cent; footwear and accessories by 1.3 per cent; furniture and fixtures by 3.4 per cent; and books, newspapers, stationery and gifts by 1.7 per cent.

    The C&SD estimated the value of retail sales decreased by 0.6 per cent during the three months to February compared with the preceding three months, while the volume declined by 1.2 per cent.

  • Six great marketing lessons Learned from MarketingPulse

    Six great marketing lessons Learned from MarketingPulse

    “Great ideas should be scary,” advocates Marcelo Pascoa, head of global brand marketing at Burger King, one of the keynote speakers at the recent MarketingPulse event in Wanchai. “When new things come to be, it is often associated with fear. So, my advice to marketers is: be very afraid! If you sleep well the night before your project launches, then the promotion wouldn’t be too spectacular.”

    Pascoa’s projects are known to be bold and daring, even making fun of competitors in the market. One example was a marketing stunt in which people were asked to open the Burger King app at a McDonald’s to win a free burger. As a result, there was a huge leap in interest in the Burger King app and it became the most downloaded app on the store. He said that knowing your work aligns with the brand value is key when facing challenges and criticism. “My biggest fear is being irrelevant. Marketers live in fantasies where they control everything, but social media has proved that we cannot control everything.”

    MarketingPulse second edition

    Pascoa was one of many speakers at the second edition of MarketingPulse, Asia’s premier conference for marketers and brands, held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), the key morning session at the event, “Dear Brands, Let’s Sail to the Future!”, featured a heavyweight line-up of industry experts who shared their tricks and tips on how to keep ahead of marketing trends to develop successful brand stories.

    Respect cultural differences

    Endeavor is a brand focusing on entertainment, sports and marketing services. Bozoma Saint John, the company’s chief marketing officer, shared her success stories at Endeavor and in previous high-profile marketing roles at Uber and Apple Music.

    St John recounted some of the marketing stunts that helped to push her brands, from inviting Beyonce to perform at the Super Bowl and promoting Apple Music’s breakup song services through private chat messages between three famous black actresses, to featuring two superstar athletes sharing their thoughts on cultural differences during an Uber ride. These stunts were not only successful in capturing the attention of consumers, but also raised discussions on cultural issues relevant to society as a whole.

    “I am addicted to popular culture,” she declared. “I am always fascinated by the latest and most trendy things and would like to know how they come to be and how they connect with history. People working in the marketing sector represent various cultural differences between different places. We have to know its meaning, why it comes to be, and how cultures interact in order to use popular culture as a marketing tool.”

    Saint John pointed out that there are currently tensions in society which make it important for marketers to understand different communities well and build connections through various emotions in order to avoid controversies such as cultural appropriation.

    Think before you speak

    One of Hong Kong’s best-known creative talents, Juno Mak, creator at Kudos Films, began his presentation by sharing his experience in the entertainment industry and explaining how marketing became part of his everyday life.

    “We do not need to be a businessman to do marketing, as we are already marketing ourselves in our daily lives − our sitting posture, our favourite colours, and our watches, these are all making a promotion out of a life. When you know yourself better, you will know how to do marketing,” he said.

    Mak also made the bold suggestion that we should abandon two things: our resumes, and thoughts that come from the mouth, not the head.

    “Things you write in your resume are tasks completed in the past. But we have to think: what’s next? We should also give up on thoughts that come from our mouths, as they might be copies of other people’s ideas. Thoughts should come from your head − a creation that you agree with.”

    Storytelling techniques

    Jonathan Mildenhall, co-founder and CEO of TwentyFirstCenturyBrand and former chief marketing officer at Airbnb, offered the audience a whole new definition of marketing in the 21st century. “Marketers create assets for the company, including its finance, consumers, employees and cultural assets. Marketing with a clear focus creates unparalleled value,” he said.

    Mildenhall emphasised that storytelling techniques are key to any marketing campaign.

    “I am 100 per cent a supporter of emotional storytelling. If a marketing campaign does not contain a story behind it, it is only market pollution. Stories help us build a signature super-brand that people care about.”

    He shared his experience at Airbnb to illustrate how consumption begins with emotion − for example, bringing the room in a Van Gogh painting to life, or sharing true stories from the community to bring out cultural values.

    “We rationalise our choice of consumption after we create the emotion,” he explained.

    Understanding local tastes

    Keiei Sho, executive officer, GM of overseas business division at Calbee, distributed his company’s popular grilled corn sticks to conference visitors to demonstrate how market tastes can change.

    “People used to say that the corn sticks were too hard and that consumers would not like them,” he said, before revealing that sales were now in the region of US$300-400 million. Sho recounted Calbee’s history, explaining that after the Second World War, Japan was left with devastated industries and faced food shortages. Calbee stepped in to manufacture prawn crackers using the flour left behind by the US Army and shrimps from the Seto Inland Sea, which proved to be a hit.

    The company continues its creative legacy, recently working with 47 Japanese prefectures to create a successful campaign by developing 47 different flavours of chips.

    “We collaborated with local governments to learn about local tastes, hoping to know what would resonate with consumers, while showcasing promotions from various prefectural governments on the back of the bag,” he explained.

    Using its advantages in the areas of food safety and convenient packaging, the brand has continued to push the envelope by launching breakfast food items to attract Chinese visitors and promoting Kyoto’s breakfast culture using online celebrities.

    Embracing consumer insights

    The lingerie brand created by Michelle Cordeiro Grant, founder and CEO of Lively, has embraced the concepts of female empowerment and body acceptance. The company created a new definition of what sexiness means, building a brand that brings community, experience and products together.

     

    Advocating “high style and comfort”, the brand has been communicating with 100 brand ambassadors right from the start to learn about consumers’ needs and elicit useful feedback. Many of Lively’s new underwear lines are launched in accordance with customer preferences.

    Grant said Lively is an experience-focused brand, with its retail stores devoting only 30 per cent of the space to products while the rest is used for events such as hip-hop experiences and movie nights.

    “Lively is an organism with a human soul,” she said. “Normally, females purchase underwear once or twice a year, while our consumers purchase underwear on average four to five times per year. This shows that they are purchasing not out of their ‘needs’, but their ‘desires’.

    “This is key to how we create our market share.”

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  • Paragon mall adds more Retail brands On Level 3

    Paragon mall adds more Retail brands On Level 3

    Paragon mall has added a new retail and lifestyle concept on level 3, bringing together curated fashion brands.

    Launched in phases from last June, the refreshed 15,000sqft concept offers new names from fashion, beauty, bags and accessories, dining and lifestyle brands.

    In fashion, there are French-based women fashion Anne Fontaine, Indonsia label D2-i, European-made shoes Hue, European fabric Moiselle, Asia’s esteemed multi-brand fashion Pois, home-grown fashion designer Sabrinagoh, first concept store for ladies by Samsonite Samsonite for Her, Norwegian fashionable shoe brand with a bold personality Swims, and bespoke collection of jewelry Sulin Serio.

    For skincare and fragrances, there are Scandinavia’s leading cosmetic brand Make Up Store, beauty products from Escentials, and home scenting Flaming Queen, niche fragrances boutique Amaris.

    Western-meets-Sichuan café style dining Halcyon & Crane adds to dining options.

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  • February Down for Hong Kong retail spending

    February Down for Hong Kong retail spending

    Hong Kong retail spending shrank in February according to data from Mastercard.

    While the official figures will not be released  by the Census and Statistics Department (C&SD) until next week, Mastercard SpendingPulse, which measures consumer spending across all payment types, including cash, found that retail sales contracted by 3.2 per cent year on year in February.

    However, Hong Kong retail spending data is always affected in January and February by the changing timing of Lunar New Year, which is why C&SD advises both January and February figures should be counted together before comparing with previous years.

    According to Mastercard, which did not amalgamate January and February data for a fair comparison with last year, the drop in February retail sales was seen across the board, with clothing, grocery, health & beauty, jewellery and furniture all experiencing a year-on-year decrease.

    “After an impressive 21-month growth trend, we have seen a decline in retail sales in Hong Kong, particularly around Chinese New Year, due to various reasons ranging from the unusually warm winter to consumer confidence,” said Sasha Krstic, executive VP, services – Asia Pacific at Mastercard.

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  • Newly revamped Sunshine Plaza To Welcome Retailers Again

    Newly revamped Sunshine Plaza To Welcome Retailers Again

    A number of retailers have opened their first stores in Queensland at the newly revamped Sunshine Plaza, which this week celebrated the completion of its $440 million redevelopment.

    The centre’s redevelopment has added over 34,000sqm of additional retail space, expanding it from 73,000sqm to over 107,000sqm.

    The redeveloped shopping centre has welcomed the region’s first David Jones store with over 8000sqm floor space, a 6500sqm Big W, H&M, Sephora, Lululemon, Kathmandu, JB Hi-Fi, Mecca, Seed Heritage, Sheike and approximately 60 other specialty stores.

    The shopping centre’s new high ropes course, outdoor children’s play areas and Cornmeal Promenade dining options are scheduled to open by mid 2019.

    Sunshine Plaza is owned jointly by the GPT Group and Australian Prime Property Fund Retail and is managed by Lendlease. GPT and Lendlease commenced with the expansion of the centre in 2016 and was initially scheduled to be completed before Christmas 2018. But, according to GPT, it has been delayed stating it has been impacted by significant wet weather during the third period.

    “Locals and Queenslanders living further north will no longer need to travel to Brisbane for all their shopping and lifestyle needs — it’s all here, located in one of Australia’s most desirable tourism destinations; the Sunshine Coast,” said Gary Horwitz, Lendlease managing director.

    Sunshine Coast Mayor, Councillor Mark Jamieson said the expansion of Sunshine Plaza represents a significant capital investment in the region and for the retail industry.

    “The calibre of retail outlets will encourage our residents to shop within our region and spend locally,” Jamieson said.

    “Our residents and visitors now have more retail options locally, as well as access to a substantial number of new employment opportunities. This is great news for our economy and great news for our community.”

  • Walmart is taking on Amazon with its upcoming tablet

    Walmart is taking on Amazon with its upcoming tablet

    Soon, those searching for a cheap Android tablet won’t have to deal with the lack of Google Play Services found on the low-priced Amazon Fire Tablets. The line, powered by a forked version of Android, does not come with core Google apps including the Play Store. Instead, Amazon’s own app storefront is included. A tweet disseminated by XDA’s Mishall Rahman reveals that discount retailer Walmart is prepping an 8-inch Android slate that has Android 9 Pie pre-installed. The device will offer the usual bevy of Google apps and will feature the Google Play Store. Made in China, the tablet will carry Walmart’s own ONN brand, which it uses on low-priced tech accessories like headphones and cables.

    The new tablet, model number ONA19TB002, is expected to be “kid-friendly” according to a subsequent Bloomberg report. The 8-inch display will carry a resolution of 1200 x 800. Other specs included in Rahman’s tweet mention that the tablet will have a quad-core MediaTek MT8163 chipset under the hood, along with 2GB of memory and 16GB of expandable storage. The slate will have a microUSB port, and carry a 3500mAh battery.

    Walmart’s tablet has already received certification from the FCC, and could be priced under $200. A low priced tablet like this will probably not to do much to reverse the decline in shipments of the device. Strategy Analytics says that tablet shipments declined 6.2% last year. The Apple iPad remains the market share leader followed by Samsung and Amazon.

  • Octopus inks partnership with JD.com providing retail innovations

    Octopus inks partnership with JD.com providing retail innovations

    Octopus Retail Management (Octopus), a Singapore-based company and a pioneer in offering a holistic suite of retail management solutions, today announced that it has partnered with JD.com for its cutting-edge Point of Sales (POS) suite of solutions which has benefitted a variety of businesses spanning the retail, F&B and ecommerce sectors.

    With Octopus’ partnership with China’s largest retailer, JD.com, Octopus will be the first B2B software provider for the retail industry and will have access to more than 300 million active customers that shop on JD.com. This strategic alliance is in light of Octopus’ vision to digitally transform the retail industry.

    Octopus is a Cloud-Based Retail Management Company that offers a comprehensive Point of Sale solution to brick and mortar SMEs. With a presence across 7 countries — Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, China, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the USA, Octopus generates around $2 billion of GMV on their platform from over 20,000 retail points across 3000 customers.

    Ong Whee Shiong, Founder and Managing Director, Octopus said, “The digital age has thrown several challenges at businesses today. It has become critical for retailers to have an efficient retail management system to enhance their business productivity. Our products aim to empower the retailers to embrace digitalisation and streamline their online business.”

    The company’s cloud-based retail management solution helps firms to leverage social media interactions to curate personalised offerings based on consumer’s shopping and dining behaviours. The solutions can also synchronise inventory, support customer promotions, and offer loyalty points to add more value propositions to their customers. The solutions also allow its customers to onboard a mobile platform through its cloud offering. This enables real-time visibility over the network to monitor sales, the performance of staff, and inventory which leads to efficiency and better decision-making.

    According to an article citing joint research by Google and Temasek in 2017, more than half of Southeast Asia’s population is a millennial and of that, 70 per cent are under the age of 40. The retail space per capita remains low, indicating limited access to offline stores and products. Whilst the report shows that consumers in the region show the interest and willingness to shop online, there have been emerging trends focussing on omnichannel and online-to-offline solutions.

    “We believe online and offline need to go hand in hand today. Through our integrated solutions, our clients are able to offer their customers enhanced seamless shopping experience and create more value,” he added.

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  • Athleisure trend boosts Yue Yuen sales in 2018

    Athleisure trend boosts Yue Yuen sales in 2018

    Yue Yuen Industrial, the world’s largest manufacturer of athletic, athleisure, casual and outdoor footwear, boosted revenue by 6.3 per cent last year.

    Yue Yuen makes shoes for a raft of brands, including Geox, Levi’s, Rockport, Carters and Pony. Its subsidiary Pou Sheng operates a network of some 5500 directly operated stores and 3000+ sub-distributor stores, predominantly on the mainland.

    For the year to December, the Group recorded revenue of US$9.695 billion, with gross profit up by 4 per cent to $2.446 billion. However, profit attributable to shareholders fell 40.9 per cent to $307.1 million, mainly due to operating deleverage within the manufacturing business, a reduction of the non-recurring gain for the year, and higher finance costs.

    Yue Yuen said revenue attributed to footwear manufacturing (including athletic shoes, casual/outdoor shoes and sports sandals) declined by 1.5 per cent to $5.39 billion, whereas the volume of shoes produced increased by 0.4 per cent to 326 million pairs. The average selling price decreased by 2 per cent to $16.53 per pair, compared with the previous year.

    The group’s athletic footwear category outperformed all other categories as a result of the global athleisure trend, accounting for 79.2 per cent of footwear manufacturing revenue last year. Casual and outdoor shoes accounted for 19.1 per cent of footwear manufacturing revenue.

    The group’s distribution sales are derived primarily from Pou Sheng, involving in retail operations for international sporting goods brands in the Greater China region. Last year, the revenue attributable to Pou Sheng grew by 23.3 per cent to $3.422 billion.

  • Strong potential’ for sharing economy in China

    Strong potential’ for sharing economy in China

    New research suggests strong potential for the sharing economy in China, with just 30 per cent of consumers there saying they only want to use brand-new products.

    Mintel says the figures highlight the significant market for selling second-hand products and targeting consumers who will rent out rather than buy.

    Mintel says 91 per cent of Chinese consumers said they have rented or bought second-hand bicycles/electric bicycles in the past year. This was followed by cars (61 per cent), books/audio-visual products (25 per cent), digital products such as mobile phones and cameras (25 per cent), furniture (18 per cent) and home appliances such as fridges (12 per cent). While the clothes and accessories sharing category has been making headlines, just 9 per cent of urban Chinese consumers have rented or bought them second-hand.

    “The current consumer landscape in China shows great potential for the sharing economy to develop further,” said Mintel China associate research analyst Scarlett Zhao. “Largely driven by substantial promotions and subsidies, high penetration in rental and second-hand businesses is more focused on the transportation industry; including cars and bicycles. But while the sharing economy in China is dominated by transportation, we see this trend slowly extending to knowledge sharing through books or audio-visual products.

    “At the moment, consumers are not as open to other product categories in the sharing economy space such as clothes and accessories, probably because consumers have not yet cultivated the habit to rent or buy second-hand products. China’s sharing economy still stands in an emerging to growth stage, where market rules and regulations need to be further improved. As a result, this has caused many to remain on the sidelines just like when e-commerce was first introduced.”

    Mintel research reveals that the majority of consumers in China acknowledge the benefits of the sharing economy, with as many as 86 per cent of them appreciating the convenience that sharing products and services bring. Meanwhile, 59 per cent of Chinese consumers cite affordability as a reason to participate in the sharing economy, making it the greatest motivation for them to choose renting or buying second-hand products.

    Environmental factors are also proving important to consumers. Fifty-one per cent of urban Chinese consumers say that they will rent or buy second-hand products as it is good for the environment.

    “Under the healthy wave, consumers today not only look inward to their body health, but are also paying more attention to the whole ecosystem they are interacting with,” added Zhao. “When communicating with and marketing to consumers, companies in the sharing economy space can make consumers feel good about themselves by emphasising how this concept can help reduce the carbon footprint – benefiting the public and the environment.”

  • Nearly half of Vietnamese shoppers buy premium products online

    Nearly half of Vietnamese shoppers buy premium products online

    Forty-eight percent of Vietnamese consumers buy premium products online from local retailers, with cosmetics the top category, a report says. Although the majority of survey respondents, 69 percent, said that they still purchase their premium products at local physical stores, the online ratio was higher than the global rate of 45 percent, says a global report by market research firm Nielsen.

    Nielsen’s Changing Consumer Prosperity study also found over a quarter of Vietnamese respondents, 27 percent, were inclined to buy online from overseas e-retailers, and 23 percent even travel overseas for these premium goods.

    Cosmetics are the top premium products that Vietnamese consumers spend their money on, according to 46 percent of respondents, following by clothing/shoes (44 percent), electronics (43 percent), body care (41 percent) and meat or seafood (38 percent).

    What Vietnamese people care most about a premium product is its high quality, according to 65 percent of respondents, and superior performance, 58 percent. Over half the respondents also seek premium products that contain environmentally friendly materials or natural/organic ingredients.

    When it comes to trying new premium products, Vietnamese rated peer recommendations as the most influential factor.Half of the respondents said that recommendations and encouragement by friends and family influenced their decision, followed by product research (46 percent), online advertising (42 percent), television advertising (39 percent) and in-store advertising (39 percent).

    In another survey released recently, Nielsen said that Vietnamese people remain among the most optimistic consumers even as global confidence fell in Q4 2018. Despite considerable increase in savings, Vietnamese consumers are still willing to fork out just as much or possibly even more money on big-ticket items such as new clothes, holidays or out-of-home entertainment, it said.

    Vietnam’s e-commerce sector has been booming in recent years. E-commerce revenue reached $2.26 billion last year, a growth of 30 percent over 2017, according to Germany-based data portal Statista. It estimated that this figure will reach $2.7 billion this year.

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  • The tech advancements transforming the Hong Kong retail environment

    The tech advancements transforming the Hong Kong retail environment

    Ever-changing market dynamics and audience preferences are pushing retailers into a digital-driven world to respond promptly to consumer needs. Though e-payment machines are an increasingly common in-store sight, there are other retail tech trends that will have a longer lasting impact and help businesses stay one step ahead.

    Despite the rise of eCommerce, physical stores are not going anywhere. Customers will always want the option of visiting a physical store to try on jeans and dresses rather than buying three different sizes online. Sue Temple, vice president of global consumer insights at Nielsen, sees the trend of shoppers doing smaller, but more shopping trips in general, including online and physical stores. Connecting online and physical store experiences remains a major focus this year.

    Shops without shopkeepers

    When Amazon launched its Amazon Go to the public last year, the cashier-free store concept was seen as a revolutionary model for the future of retail, enticing the rest of the industry worldwide to play catch up. This year we are likely to witness more movements on smart, automated and cashier-less checkout schemes. Unmanned stores will eventually become ubiquitous in retail.

    Hong Kong shoppers had a taste of this kind of smart retail experience during the Chinese New Year. Tencent’s WeChat Pay HK and JOOX collaborated with Sun Hung Kai Properties to open an unmanned shop at the apm mall in January. The 1,000 square foot unmanned shop featured five themed zones offering trendy gaming, Chinese New Year merchandise, limited edition souvenirs, a self-service karaoke station and an AI mechanical arm interactive experience zone.

    The highlight of the unmanned store was a digitised consumer journey with more than 1,000 assorted goods in the store embedded with RFID chips. Customers could pick out items they wanted to purchase and then scan the QR code. The RFID system would automatically detect their chosen goods at the store exit, at which point, customers could use the Wechat Pay HK system to settle their transactions and leave.

    Tencent’s International Business Group (Tencent IBG) tells Marketing: “The unmanned store has been well-received by shoppers. It is a real-life demonstration for consumers to experience smart retail through a seamless and secure mobile payment solution. We aim to enhance the overall consumer journey, and empower consumers through greater flexibility and convenience as they go about their daily lives.”

    In the unmanned store, Tencent’s technologies not only enhanced the consumer experience, but also reduced operation costs for the retailer. It also provided analysable data to allow businesses and marketers to better understand consumer traffic, preferences and behaviour.

    Tencent IBG has noticed a number of challenges that traditional retailers are currently face: rising offline operating costs, declining revenue as shoppers move online, and increased consumer demand. At the same time, there are visible opportunities for retailers to drive business efficiency by disrupting old channels, gaining a better understanding of consumers, and exploring new technological possibilities such as facial recognition and voice recognition.

    Unmanned stores are all about removing friction and increasing productivity. While the minimisation of time in store has proven particularly effective for some retail categories (such as convenience and groceries) they are not suitable for other categories. Luxury, for instance, relies on the experience and time spent in-store, along with a high-touch service, as part of its value proposition.

    Reality bytes

    Great customer experiences will come from blending technology with a personal touch. Retailers are continuing to strive towards more personalised experiences with the use of AR and VR tech in their marketing campaigns and consumer journeys.

    Recently, L’Oréal Group brand Lancôme partnered with Alibaba Cloud to introduce an AR game to Hong Kong customers. The launch of a seasonal mobile app coincided with the opening of a Lancôme pop-up store in Harbour City. The partnership leveraged Alibaba Cloud’s data, image search and AR technologies with Lancôme’s beauty product lines to create a holistic online-to-offline experience.

    Customers could activate and play the AR game on their smartphones from anywhere in the city. Moving their cameras around, they were able to find and capture AR images of Lancôme’s signature beauty products.

    “The retail store is no longer simply a place for making a purchase, it is also an entertainment destination.”

    Larry Luk, CMO at L’Oréal Group, says, “As a beauty-tech company, L’Oréal combines beauty-tech with integrated marketing plans to drive the ‘retailtainment’ trend. This adds an entertainment element into the traditional retail approach, providing consumers with better interactive experiences.”

    Alibaba aims to demonstrate that cloud technology can also be used in offline retail shops, by not only offering innovative ways of engaging consumers, but also showing how Lancôme will better understand customers’ needs by using data analytic tools.

    “Lancôme began the Year of the Pig by breaking its daily sales record and achieving double-digit growth in Hong Kong by leveraging AR, Alibaba Cloud’s image search technology and cloud services,” Luk says. “Employing Lancôme as the pilot brand, the Chinese New Year campaign succeeded in creating unique and fun experiences and establishing personalised relationships with consumers.”

    The ultimate goal of all these types of innovative and interactive campaigns is to stimulate customers’ interest in the products and drive business growth. Nevertheless, in 2019, retailers may go a step further from AR and VR to the  world of IR (immersive reality).

    The potential of IR could be immense. While AR overlays digital content onto an existing physical space and VR transports users into a synthesised 3D world through sight and sound input, IR is a dramatic advancement. It provides an immersion of all five senses (sight, sound, touch, smell and taste) and far more interactivity. Which could, of course, result in far more data.

    Consumer soothsayers

    While marketers believe collecting big data is enough to understand current consumer behaviour for planning campaigns or business strategies, building accurate predictions of future consumer behaviour may be the game changer.

    “A lot of big data looks backwards. It is what happened five minutes ago, an hour ago or last week. Now we are trying to predict what happens next,” Nielsen’s Temple explains.

    Shopper behaviour is changing rapidly; a tool that enables retailers to keep up with the speed of change, or even stay ahead of it, will be the key to winning. Temple says: “If we can get quicker at research, we can model more things, more quickly, and we can look forwards not backwards, then the retailers have a real chance to win, to differentiate themselves from competitors, to deliver something the shopper wants.”

    After rolling out in 12 markets in 2018, in February 2019, Nielsen’s Smartstore launched in Hong Kong. Smartstore is a digital solution that captures shopper insights in a 3D virtual immersive environment. Respondents will be tested in multiple live scenarios in a variety of custom store formats to gather predictive information. Their shopper experience will provide tracked head, eye and feet movements, alongside 3D heat maps for analysis. The turnaround for results can be as fast as one week.

    This solution combines store planning, merchandising and marketing research. Retailers can measure, evaluate and optimise a range of retail concepts on sales and profit, based on how target shoppers react at the moment of truth. The solution allows retailers to measure the effectiveness of point of sale merchandise based on what shoppers “see, think and do”.

    Technological advancements help businesses to create better marketing strategies with a better understanding of consumer behaviour, and ultimately, achieve greater business uplift with higher conversion. However, Temple thinks Hong Kong is lagging behind adopting retail tech.

    “Digital is not an option anymore, it is not about being a digital marketeer, it is about being a marketeer that embraces all of that, the traditional and the digital, and getting the right mix for your brand, your category and your store.”

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  • Two-hour on-demand delivery platform has Arrived in Australia

    Two-hour on-demand delivery platform has Arrived in Australia

    Think two-hour delivery is years away for Australian retailers? Wrong. It’s already on offer and customers are ready and willing to pay extra for the service.

    Despite some reports suggesting the service won’t be widely available for another decade, eDelivery just launched its on-demand two-hour delivery platform this year, using cutting-edge technology and Uber-style crowdsourcing.

    “The technology is a world-first. It’s super fast, it costs under $8 an order and from the moment the customer places the order online, it takes two hours to have it delivered to them with our 24/7 delivery service,” says eDelivery CEO Carl Popovic.

    Here’s how it works

    1. Customer makes an order online.
    2. The order is directed to the closest location to be picked, packed and labelled within 45 minutes.
    3. Once the order is ready for delivery, it’s directed to eDelivery for collection through its IT platform that is integrated with the retailer’s.
    4. The order is then directed to the private driver network, a crowdsourced network of self-employed drivers who are fully compliant and trained.
    5. The app technology selects the most suitable delivery vehicle of the order. Orders are batched for delivery every 15 or 30 minutes, depending on their size.
    6. A notification is issued to the closest driver. Driver accepts the order via the app and is directed to the store, where he/she scans each parcel and confirms delivery.
    7. With delivery underway, drivers are given the most direct and quickest path for multiple collections and deliveries.
    8. Customers are given a 10-minute advance SMS delivery notice.
    9. At each delivery point, the driver obtains proof of delivery signature, then goes onto the next delivery.

    What customers want

    Even in the past couple of years, consumer expectations have skyrocketed, particularly in terms of delivery, according to PwC’s 2018 Global Consumer Insights Survey. Nearly a quarter of respondents said they would be influenced to buy from a particular retailer if they offered fast or reliable delivery. More than 40 per cent of online shoppers said they would pay extra for same day delivery or for the option to receive their packages within a one or two-hour window of their choosing.

    “When retailers are up against the likes of Amazon who have excellent delivery services, it’s essential that they can compete with a similar offering,” Popovic says. “Customers don’t want to wait for their purchases for a week or two anymore. It’s just not good enough.”

    Two-hour delivery is particularly useful for retailers in the liquor, chemist, grocery, office supplies, hardware, telco or fast fashion categories. Shoppers who go online to fulfil a prescription don’t want to wait for antibiotics in two or three days’ time, neither do those planning to stock up on bubbly for a party they’re hosting tonight.

    At the moment, eDelivery is in talks with department stores, major electronics retailers and chemists to roll out the service.

    “In today’s world, it’s extremely important to be able to use a crowdsourced environment to complete the delivery process. It’s on-demand, it’s cost-effective, it’s efficient, it’s compliant – it basically ticks all the boxes in order for us to fulfil a two-hour delivery service,” says Popovic.

    “It’s time that Aussie retailers step up their game and give customers what they want.”

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  • Singapore retail sales up with 5.3 per cent

    Singapore retail sales up with 5.3 per cent

    Singapore retail sales rose by 5.3 per cent in January, underpinned by consumers stocking up ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday.

    When motor vehicles are included in the data, the official topline figure was a 7.6 per cent increase.

    Lunar New Year fell two weeks earlier this year compared with last year, which means some volume of pre-holiday stocking up was completed in January rather than the first half of February.

    According to Statistics Singapore, the total retail sales value in January was about S$4.2 billion. Online retail sales accounted for a solid 4.8 per cent of sales.

    Most retail industries recorded higher sales in January this year compared to last. Sales of apparel & footwear, medical goods & toiletries and by department stores, supermarkets & hypermarkets and food retailers registered growth rates of between 8 per cent and 10.5 per cent, as a result of higher demand during the Lunar New Year lead up.

    In contrast, sales of computer & telecommunications equipment declined 11.5 per cent, due in part to lower demand for mobile phones during this period.

    Sales of food & beverage services increased 5.9 per cent in January, reaching $862 million, compared to $814 million in January last year.

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  • H&M announces opening date of new Botany store

    H&M announces opening date of new Botany store

    H&M has announced the opening date of another bricks-and-mortar store in New Zealand, with the launch of Botany Town Centre location set for 2 May 2019.

    The retailer currently operates four stores in the country, with plans to open a 5th location at Tauranga Crossing on 4 April 2019, making the Botany store its 6th location.

    Last week, the fast fashion giant revealed there is already a 7th store in the works. It is set to open at Chartwell Shopping Centre this winter.

    The Botany Town Centre shop marks H&M’s third location in Auckland, following the opening of H&M at Sylvia Park Shopping Centre in October 2016 and Commercial Bay in 2018.

    Spanning approximately 2000sqm, the single-level store will showcase apparel and accessories for men, women, kids and baby.

    “We are thrilled to finally announce the opening date for our third Auckland store, and look forward to greeting our customers with an incredible fashion destination within a superb shopping centre” said Daniel Lattemann, country sales manager for H&M New Zealand.

    H&M entered the New Zealand market in 2016.

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