Marketing

Have you ever seen something you wanted in a store, I've tried it, have you checked the price online using your smartphone and found that it was cheaper, and ended up buying it online? Welcome to the world of "showrooming".

The 'Showrooming' is something that is having a major impact on the photographic industry and is something that physical stores are trying to solve. Some consumers do not come to the store with the real intention of buying a camera or lens, but want to play with it and evaluate it in person before making the purchase at a lower price by Internet . "Jessops staff thanks you purchased on Amazon" read the sign in the store window shortly after British photography chain went into bankruptcy. Jessops is one of many high-profile brands and HMV and Comet, which drastically decreased sales Showrooming effects. Stores gadgets, appliances, cosmetics, furniture and bookstores are losing a large number of sales due to showroomers, but finding a solution to this problem is not to be easy for them. Sara Martinez, Madrid 24 years, sometimes spending more than € 200 in one day of shopping, but never actually reaches the box.

I can walk into a store and smell a perfume and then find it online for 30 € less.

Research by design agency Foolproof, shows that 24% of people did "showroom" for Christmas shopping and 40% of them ended up buying elsewhere.'s Showroomers are not doing anything illegal. But the process can be very annoying to the physical establishment.

I feel bad for them, especially when the staff was attentive and helpful, but it is my money

Martinez says.

The physical stores have to pay rent, bills and staff salaries. In contrast, online companies can offer cheaper prices because they do not. Internet giants benefit from the existence of traditional establishments, caused a dilemma for them. A shop Australian food recently included a $ 5 fee (3.93 €) if the Internet were sailing in the store. Some shoes and clothing stores in the United States and Australia have also added a fee for test garments. In all cases, the tariff is removed in case you ended up buying. Matt Brownell wrote for Daily Finance that is "the wrong strategy we've seen to deal showrooming" saying:

Although it is frustrating to have people using their store as a showroom just so they can buy the same products online, the imposition of a fee is not the best solution. The goal of any retail should be impress customers with competitive prices and excellent customer service, in any case treat their customers with suspicion and hostility from the moment they enter the door.

This attitude not only keep the remote showroomers but will inevitably be lost a lot of potential customers who had no intention of showrooming but are not willing to walk into a store that forces them to pay a fee if they find nothing you like it. Victoria Barnsley, CEO of HarperCollins Publishers, recently suggested the idea of charging a fee for Internet browsing in a bookstore "was not so outrageous." Steve Pritchard, 61, who runs an independent bookstore in Crosby, Merseyside, and has worked in the business for over 36 years, is not convinced about it.

We see them in the corner with their mobile phones, scanning the bar code of a book because in this way it is cheaper. I I can not blame them. I see no way to stop it. Charge a fee to connect to the internet as has been suggested, is not a good life, because we still want to come to the library.

"Convincing the client to be willing to pay more through a better experience is the way," says retail consultant Martin Philpott.

Jessops Stores as needed to become centers of excellence, with a limited number of stores in high-profile areas, selling high-end products. I I'm an avid cyclist, I'd rather go to a store that is much more expensive than others on the Internet but they build a cycle for you, look at how you ride up and down the street or even ride with you. By the time you've been there for an hour, his excitement is so overwhelming that I really do not want to go anywhere else.

Usually online stores have no interest in the survival of traditional establishments. If they attract so many showroomers, what will you do if one day run out of local exhibitions? Philip Beeching, 53, confessed showroomer web consultant, thinks these online stores can end up becoming physical stores - but without having to pay staff and boxes -. Will they become the malls in one place to navigate and not to buy?

Online stores are doing well with showrooming and companies like Amazon may be thinking that they need to open showrooms.

Beeching says.

But for many people the most important factor remains the price.

My mother asked me to get him a new cookbook on what I found in El Corte Ingles for 27 €. Using my smartphone I could find on Amazon for 15 €.

If the price had been closer, I might have done the right thing, but especially in times like these, what do you expect people to do?

Martinez says.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to traditional trade to recover what they have lost in favor of online shops. Glen Richardson, CEO of Justbought.it, present new ideas on how to 'fight with Showrooming Showrooming' in SoLoMo Summit to be held on May 29 in Madrid.

The digital consumer wants to interact with brands in a way differently than the consumer has done analog. Is not content with a casual encounter at the point of purchase or contact through common platforms customer. Want more and better: also wants access to brands through social media and make the most of their smartphones (eg, through the popular apps that are downloaded every day by millions).

This implies an extraordinary challenge for organizations because it is radically changing the paradigm of corporate communication management and customer care to stop being the responsibility of a few people and spread to the entire team of the brand. Already said Tristan Elósegui recently in collaborative document Importance of Social Business in companies : "The Social Business is the culmination of Social Media: how a communication strategy out of a department and throughout the company capillarization passing be a way of understanding things. "

I can not agree more with this approach and, therefore, it is essential that the sooner the companies and their employees assume that it must evolve into a context culturally 2.0. I mean, this is not just about having a presence on social networks. It goes much further: this entails a change of model and management relationship has profound implications. Like any cultural change process is complex and requires a great deal of strategic vision on the one hand and pragmatism on the other.

The first is to help employees go assuming an increasingly important role to be 2.0 and the understanding that they will have a greater role in communicating their organizations and, above all, in discussions with external audiences.

At Telefónica we have been working for some time on various initiatives that are staged directly by employees. We started promoting participation in social media own with "A One Click delas ICT" of a small group - but very committed - of people from different areas of the Business division. The results have been so positive that we are encouraged to go beyond 2.0 launching the Ambassadors program. We have proposed that more than 4,000 employees dedicated to our business customers become true ambassadors of our brand. We want to be active participants in our social media strategy. To do this we are training and helping those who want to join this initiative so they can make - personally and professionally - the world of social networks (both external and corporate).

We assume, because that is what we have seen with previous experiences, that gradually these employees will feel increasingly comfortable in this environment and will help us create relevant content and conversations and, of course, to energize and amplify.

Although currently very encouraging results we are aware that we have just started and the enormous path left by advancing. As I said before: this is a profound cultural change process that is difficult to even predict the consequences. We all know that the management model 2.0 is by definition very innovative, creative and transparent but also know that has little history behind it and, therefore, few references to fall back on. Yet I am convinced that this is the way to go.

The communities are a natural context in which we join with others who share the same interests, needs and goals as us, where we collaborate and talk about issues that move us. We like to be part of them, in one way or another we need as social beings we are.

Now in the online version of the communities we are just a click to be part of them, but also to a simple click to leave them when they cease to give us courage.

The features that brands can develop in the context of the relationship of customers with other like minded people are many. Two examples are very different but very complementary to understand the various aspects of the brands and the communities online can travel together, achieving a mutual benefit.

The first is the case of Bankinter Labs .'s a community where they propose and vote on ideas for improving banking products, all taken into account. The page includes medals, ranking of ideas, ranking of most active users of the month, etc.. The Quirky case is another case in point. Offers a complementary view to the above. Quirky is an industrial design company that asks for ideas for new products through its website. Ideas are voted by users of the community and the company's own designers. Finally chosen products are manufactured and marketed by Quirky and it undertakes to transfer the user who contributed to the winning with 30% of the profits made ​​from the sale of the product.

And what are the levers of success to foster an online community?

Justin Fogarty - the community manager of Ariba - a leading company providing Ecommerce software based in the cloud, says five levers of success for the implementation of a community:

1. Designing a community whose main purpose is to give your customer a vehicle to do what you really want. Customers will return to a place, only for a compelling reason to motivate them to return there before many other places. Think about the type of user you want to attract and that is it determines the model of community design. And remember that it is a matter of ROI at first.
2. Think of designing an "extension" 2.0 key to your success. Your online community should mimic your customer interactions that have worked well so far.
3. Design a simple and clear interface. Idea is to design the interface of the online community taking into account the principles of usability. When you start from scratch with this community becomes more important still.
4. Consider the engagement as a background job. contributions The content should be short, frequently updated and engage your customer. This will make palatable the back. And over time will allow you to add functionality to your community, to replace others that your client was elsewhere.
5. Make easy engagement and interactions. Most community users are "lurkers" (lurkers) and engagement that implements buttons with a single click, as is the "Like".

On the other hand, it is also important to differentiate between online communities and social networks in terms of their potential for business. Michael Wu, analytical models of customer engagement in L ithium Technologies , explains the difference in these two contexts. This can be summarized as follows:

Communities play a key role in building lasting bonds between people. And social networks help maintain those ties between people, that have already been forged in other contexts.

That is, the engagement is based on a support on the other. We do not know which of the two formats will survive the year, or probably is a combination of both.

What we find most interesting is the magnifying effect that online interactions cause the individual's ability to innovate. They are able to engrandar these capabilities and direct them to the use of a trademark.

Although the number of communities of innovators is low, brands can access and use of existing or create new communities. It has been shown that online communities of innovation is composed mostly of young people - a generation used to share ideas and discuss them on Facebook and Google+ brackets, for example -. Finally, it is expected that the number of online communities and social networks grow innovation in 2013 by opening new opportunities for brands seeking new ideas or ways of working with your client.

We will monitor this issue and we will be sharing with you the contributions we find. Not hesitate to tell us your experience in online innovation communities. We want to know experiences of our community.

Prejudices are the main enemies of creativity

Philippe Delespesse , CEO of Creative Intelligence

Today creativity is postulated as one of the key elements when it comes to making the best of a company. On April 19, Philippe Delespesse shared our # TcDesayunos in which we showed some of the procedures used by companies in the field of strategy and creativity.