hello delight

The NYT have a great article in yesterday's paper about the expanding role of data in retailing.  The majority of the article is focused on using analytics to infer trends and make merchandising decisions, or at least get a read on them.  My favorite quote, however, is rather contrary to the theme of the article and is this:

"Even computing enthusiasts acknowledge that the technology is far better at fine-tuning decisions on pricing, product assortments and shipments than the basic merchandising judgments about what goods to make and buy from suppliers."

That's precisely correct.  It's also, one of the major insights that brands overlook when they enter the retal+digital space.  So much of shopping behavior is based on what we can see that other people are doing.  Often, those people aren't your friends that you'd find on your social networks.  Instead, they're very loose acquaintences or more likely strangers.

What they are is popular in your mind, even if only for a split second.

Popularity in the digital space, via an iPhone, socnet, etc, is different than popularity in real life.  In a lot of ways, popularity in the digital space is a function of credibility over time whereas in real life, it's a funciton of instant admiration.  That's a very different thing and something many brands haven't tried to model differently.

That could be very interesting to brands because this different approach to digital+retail could abruptly shift digital investment.  The trend over the past decade has been on trying to figure out "other things you might like".  That's an impossibly difficult thing to determine in lots of categories.  What might be more simple, and ultimiately more engaging, is "people you might admire, are buying" digital tools.  It's a lot easier to get a read on one's aspirational models, in my experience, and tying those models into existing ex post data is a genuine possibility.