Macy’s New Approach to Retail, Data Knows You Want that Big Mac, Google Gets into Retail

DMM Retail Industry e-News Issue #156

Instagram: the Story is a Picture; Macy’s: STORY is a new Approach to Retail

The pictures change every hour, every minute, every second – each with a new story to tell via Instagram, the mobile image application popular around the world. Now Macy’s, world-famous retailer, is using images in-store to tell a story, and sell products in the real world. Story is the New York City-based concept store, acquired last year by Macy’s, that changes its store-within-a-store design and products every few weeks. With each change comes a new theme and new assortment of products for customers to discover. Macy’s recently launched the concept at its Center City location in Philadelphia. “The Story at Macy’s experience feels a lot like a real-life version of scrolling through Instagram,” said Rachel Shechtman, founder of Story and now Macy’s brand experience officer. The space at Macy’s will bring in “a more hip, edgy East Market,” said Drexel University design and merchandising professor, Alphonso McClendon.

Data Knows You Want that Big Mac and the Price You’d Pay for It

One of your humble e-newsletter editor’s favorite movies is the Mel Brooks classic, Spaceballs. A particularly favorite scene is when Lord Helmet determines that Light Speed is too slow to catch up to his nemesis, they’ll need to use Ludicrous Speed (the preparations for which include closing “all shops in the mall”). QSR magazine, a quick-service and fast-casual restaurant industry publication, recently reported that McDonald’s, which pioneered the very definition of fast food, recently acquired a data company, Dynamic Yield, that will allow them to predict what customers want before they even order their food. “One dramatic example of McDonald’s new predictive abilities through Dynamic Yield will be the ability to customize drive-thru menus instantly on any number of factors—from the make and model of your car, to the time of day, to the weather outside. Through its machine learning model, the menu and offers you see driving your pickup truck during a hot work week (Big Macs and cold sodas) may be dramatically different than the menu seen when you’re driving a station wagon on a cold weekend likely filled with a family (Happy Meals, hot coffee and cocoa),” writes Shyam Rao, co-founder of Punchh, a digital marketing company for brick and mortar retailers, for QSR magazine.

Google Gets into Retail – Behind-the-Scenes

How many of you remember Froogle? That was an early entry by Google into the world of online retail comparison shopping. It’s now known as Google Shopping but Amazon probably isn’t losing sleep over it. But Google hasn’t given up on retail the way it gave up on Google Plus, aka Google+ or G+. Instead of being on the front end, the search engine giant wants to be on the back end, and they have ways to help streamline and make retail smarter. For example, according to TechRepublic.com, Google Cloud for Retail uses data analytics and AI (artificial intelligence) to “expedite retail business processes, making time-consuming tasks more efficient and opening employees up for more complicated tasks.” Tools include Visual Product Search, Recommendations AI, and Real Time Inventory Management and Analytics.

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