A few years ago my wife and I hit a bit of a milestone. We managed to do all of our holiday shopping without stepping into a store. We did it all online. And we did it... because we could.
What can't you buy online? My son bought a muffler for his car (a real loud muffler) from Amazon. I bought live fish and corral for my aquarium online. My wife buys all of her clothes, mine as well, online. We have sent steaks and seafood to relatives around the country through online sites. I don't have to go on. You know my point.
While online shopping is a whole lot more convenient, sometimes cheaper, the same fundamentals of branding to move product whether it's through a store or a site: differentiation, high levels of satisfaction, loyalty-building, etc.
Now clever companies are launching websites that further change the shopping experience. The one that caught my eye today is called Hoseanna.com. With Hoseanna, a woman (it is mostly female products) can choose which health and beauty products, panty-hose, pads, etc they like, and schedule a regular shipment to their homes. "Monthly Must-Haves Delivered to your Door," that's what they say on the site.
Maybe it's because I'm guy, but I don't see how this saves a woman much time. I mean, they'll have to go to the grocery store for other things. How much more effort is it to pick these items up as well? But what do I know? Hoseanna is reported to have doubled it's sales every single month since August, 2011. That's a pretty nice trajectory.
So if this type of shopping, basically a subscription for household products, catches on, where does that leave marketers and branding folks? It seems to me that brand selection would happen at the beginning of the subscription, then be an after-thought for quite a while. The First Moment of Trutth (FMOT), a Proctor and Gamble term for the moment a consumer who wants to product has to decide which brand to select, will occur far less frequently. The decision is made once and the products keep arriving at the front door. New brands will have a difficult time generating sampling. Competing brands will have a much more difficult battle while trying to pull business away from one another. Brand loyalty will occur almost by default.
Do you think the introduction of Hoseanna complicates the branding process? Just wait.
Hoseanna has online competition and they all do business a little differently. Check out soap.com which is basically an online health and beauty aisle. There is no subscription feature and therefore presents an FMOT with every purchase. Check out Birchbox.com, where you sign up to receive a different collection of health and beauty product samples each month. There is no FMOT what-so-ever.
So let's review: Soap.com presents a critical moment of decision with each purchase. Hoseanna.com offers it initially and then lets the consumer off the hook. Birchbox.com pretty much makes the decision for the consumer. All of this is for the same products.
So how does this change how we do our jobs? I think one of the strategic answers lies in paying a lot of attention to where and how often people are faced with the purchasing decision, the FMOT. I defined three of them in this article. Perhaps planning for these three different "approaches" is more feasible than focusing on all the different channels of distribution because there may be just too many of those. This is all open to discussion and change. I'm just thinking out loud here (sort of).
This is something we all have to think about, think about it now, and often. I have come to believe that the first priority for marketers and branding pros today is to keep your eyes open and pay attention. Our jobs are changing daily. It doesn't take long to fall behind. I find time every day to surf the web, read some email-newsletters, follow some blogs. You can't let this stuff catch you by surprise.
What can't you buy online? My son bought a muffler for his car (a real loud muffler) from Amazon. I bought live fish and corral for my aquarium online. My wife buys all of her clothes, mine as well, online. We have sent steaks and seafood to relatives around the country through online sites. I don't have to go on. You know my point.
While online shopping is a whole lot more convenient, sometimes cheaper, the same fundamentals of branding to move product whether it's through a store or a site: differentiation, high levels of satisfaction, loyalty-building, etc.
Now clever companies are launching websites that further change the shopping experience. The one that caught my eye today is called Hoseanna.com. With Hoseanna, a woman (it is mostly female products) can choose which health and beauty products, panty-hose, pads, etc they like, and schedule a regular shipment to their homes. "Monthly Must-Haves Delivered to your Door," that's what they say on the site.
Maybe it's because I'm guy, but I don't see how this saves a woman much time. I mean, they'll have to go to the grocery store for other things. How much more effort is it to pick these items up as well? But what do I know? Hoseanna is reported to have doubled it's sales every single month since August, 2011. That's a pretty nice trajectory.
So if this type of shopping, basically a subscription for household products, catches on, where does that leave marketers and branding folks? It seems to me that brand selection would happen at the beginning of the subscription, then be an after-thought for quite a while. The First Moment of Trutth (FMOT), a Proctor and Gamble term for the moment a consumer who wants to product has to decide which brand to select, will occur far less frequently. The decision is made once and the products keep arriving at the front door. New brands will have a difficult time generating sampling. Competing brands will have a much more difficult battle while trying to pull business away from one another. Brand loyalty will occur almost by default.
Do you think the introduction of Hoseanna complicates the branding process? Just wait.
Hoseanna has online competition and they all do business a little differently. Check out soap.com which is basically an online health and beauty aisle. There is no subscription feature and therefore presents an FMOT with every purchase. Check out Birchbox.com, where you sign up to receive a different collection of health and beauty product samples each month. There is no FMOT what-so-ever.
So let's review: Soap.com presents a critical moment of decision with each purchase. Hoseanna.com offers it initially and then lets the consumer off the hook. Birchbox.com pretty much makes the decision for the consumer. All of this is for the same products.
So how does this change how we do our jobs? I think one of the strategic answers lies in paying a lot of attention to where and how often people are faced with the purchasing decision, the FMOT. I defined three of them in this article. Perhaps planning for these three different "approaches" is more feasible than focusing on all the different channels of distribution because there may be just too many of those. This is all open to discussion and change. I'm just thinking out loud here (sort of).
This is something we all have to think about, think about it now, and often. I have come to believe that the first priority for marketers and branding pros today is to keep your eyes open and pay attention. Our jobs are changing daily. It doesn't take long to fall behind. I find time every day to surf the web, read some email-newsletters, follow some blogs. You can't let this stuff catch you by surprise.
No comments:
Post a Comment