Dive Brief:
- Cheese shop Kaan’s Kaashandel, which has two stores in the Netherlands, is livestreaming footage of its store, allowing customers to interact with the staff they’re watching on-screen, reports Pop Up City. Online viewers can ask questions by sending chat messages to the on-screen employees. In turn, staff can show viewers the product and fulfill an order as if the shopper were actually there in-store.
- Livestreaming gives small brick-and-mortar specialty shops like Kaan’s a way to expand their business online while maintaining the authenticity of a traditional store. Some Retail Wire experts think potential exists for this or other types of innovative digital technologies to bridge the gap between online and physical retail models.
- Kaan’s Stream Store was up and running for five days in late September. According to Pop Up City, the shop sold out of all its cheese within a couple of days.
Dive Insight:
A lot of grocery discussions stem around improving the in-store shopping experience in order to stay relevant in a retailing world that’s increasingly moving online. Digital technology — whether live streaming, augmented or virtual reality — has viable applications for retailers and brands.
For example, Guinness teamed with UK grocer Tesco to give shoppers a VR experience that features shapes, colors and sounds to make its lagers "taste better." Post created a VR ad for its Pebbles cereal brand that allowed users to paint a mural or to be virtually sprayed with water guns. Coca-Cola also created a virtual reality campaign by distributing cardboard packaging consumers could fold into virtual reality headsets. The packaging holds consumer's smartphones, and allows them to play VR games or watch immersive videos.
The common thread across these various campaigns is creating an engaging and interactive consumer experience. Kaan's is bringing this tactic into the retail world, and its model could easily be emulated by both online and brick-and-mortar grocers.
Through video technology like livestreaming, online grocers could — as Retail Wire suggested — "introduce a human element" to an often impersonal shopping experience. A livestreaming component could help bring a retail site to life by addressing how-to questions about product use, proper handling and storing, or recipe ideas.
But incorporating this kind of tech in the online grocery experience could run counter to what shoppers like about digital shopping in the first place: it's a quick-and-easy, convenient and automated experience. Some Retail Wire experts felt that most grocery products — particularly many commodity-type items that consumers seek online — probably don’t require this level of immersiveness.
Physical grocery chains could also use streaming services in their stores. They would be particularly useful in high-service specialty departments like the deli, bakery or fresh meat counter. By sharing video of in-store butchers, bakers and produce pickers with online shoppers, retailers could eliminate some of the hesitation consumers feel about buying fresh and perishable products online.
“This is a beautiful extension of omnichannel on the digital side. This is a great way for retailers to extend the impact of their digital offering,” Charles Dimov, director of marketing for OrderDynamics commented to Retail Wire. “It makes for a much richer experience. It allows for the human interaction element that so many shoppers want. It lets customers ask questions. It also lets associates make recommendations, better inform the customer and upsell the products.”
But livestreaming can't solve all of the drawbacks of online shopping. This technology can let shoppers jump online and tell the local butcher which steak they want from the counter, but it still doesn't get around issues associated with buying produce online — fundamentally the smell, taste and squeeze test. Grocery stores would also have to require additional criteria for staffing various service departments, such as hiring personable and entertaining characters to bring this sort of “retail as entertainment” to life.
Customer traffic needs to be considered, too. Bob Phibbs, president and CEO of The Retail Doctor, posed the following questions in a comment on Retail Wire, “With a fully functional brick-and-mortar store, what happens when it is busy in the store to those on the web? And what happens during the inevitable crush of online prior to holidays impacting the physical store?”
Retailers would have to weigh the potential costs of these obstacles with the benefit of bringing the human interaction of brick-and-mortar to the online space. It will be interesting to see if other retailers make livestreaming a permanent aspect of their store experience, rather than a specialty promotion.