DMM Retail Industry e-News Issue #196

It’s the Ultimate Concert for the Eyes: Pandora Serenades Ulta Beauty

We’ve heard a lot about using technology to drive customers to stores and to make purchases. Now a beauty retailer is teaming up with a music streaming service to sell make-up and other beauty products. You heard that right. According to a recent post from Pandora on MyTotalRetail.com, Ulta Beauty, the largest beauty retailer in the U.S., is using a unique, hyper-personalized intelligent ad technology from Pandora to increase sales among specific demographics. “Ulta Beauty opted to leverage location, date, and time of day data to engage listeners at relevant moments before the holidays. It also used Pandora’s multicultural demo as a data signal to reach its audiences with an added layer of personalization. The technology…[gets] get a particular message just right for each listener,” writes Pandora’s Claire Fanning, VP of Ad Innovation Strategy. It’s music for the eyes.

Distribution Centers Found at the Core of Apple Retail Stores

We all want to know the future…and we can try, but it’ll certainly be interesting how 2021 fares compared to 2020. Grocery stores could be different. Very different. In a recent post on DigitalCommerce360.com, Peter Sheldon, the senior director of strategy at Adobe, a web analytics technology provider, suggested that delivery is becoming the new normal, and fulfillment hubs will eclipse storefronts. “Apple is another retailer that recently started taking advantage of its retail stores, turning them into distribution centers for faster shipping of products to consumers. Although this trend predates the pandemic and is a part of a broader shift, it’s clear that COVID-19 and the resulting uptick in ecommerce are accelerating the move,” Sheldon said. Sheldon also suggests that in 2021, new store designs will take advantage of new shopping patterns, and online shopping and pre-shopping will become even more personalized.

If You’re Checking Out Smoked Meat Scented Play-Doh, You Probably Miss the Mall

Your humble e-newsletter editor can remember a day when the only entertainment at a mall was either a rocking horse or car ride for a quarter, a video arcade, or his own imagination. He’d hide under racks of clothing and pretend there were evil henchmen afoot, and sometimes just a plastic hangar was one’s only defense. So, it was with some curiosity that (it smells not like kid Play-Doh, but like adult stuff…lattes, fresh-cut grass and smoked meats – he kids you not (in that same article, scroll down a little to read about “Stores as Shipping Hubs”). Malls are doing the same, in their attempts to lure Americans out of their homes (safely), as many of them are just plain bored and can’t watch Netflix for another five hours tonight…they just CAN’T! And though he’s an avid skier, and doesn’t live too far, he hasn’t yet tried the indoor ski “resort” at (no, it’s not real snow) in East Rutherford, NJ, but he applauds the effort being made to get us off our duffs.