A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. Episode 132 is a recap of the NPD Idea conference held in Austin Texas on May 16th and 17th.
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NPD held it’s semi-annual customer conference, Idea in Austin Texas on May 16th and 17th. Jason and Scot both presented content at the show. This weeks episode is a recap of the show.
- Target CEO Brian Cornell Keynote
- Google X, Captain of Moonshots, Astro Teller Keynote
- Author Michael Dart Keynote (Retail’s Seismic Shift: How to Shift Faster, Respond Better, and Win Customer Loyalty)
- Scot Wingo “MarketPlace Madness” (PDF)
- NPD Retail Trends
- Don Unser, Group President at The NPD Group
- Steve Baker, Vice President, Industry Analysis at NPD Group
- Jason Goldberg “Last Mile In The Customer Experience” (PDF)
- Oren Shauble, Partner Guinn Partners
- Jamie Sohosky, Walmart VP Marketing, Customer Experience
- Jaron Waldman, Co-Founder, Curbside
- Generation Z Panel
- Connor Blackley Youth Logic
- Madison Bregman Youth Logic
- Jonah Stillman – Genz Guru
- Alexandra Levit (moderator)
Entertianment by Runaway June and The Doobie Brothers
Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.
Episode 132 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Monday, May 21st 2018.
Join your hosts Jason “Retailgeek” Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at SapientRazorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
Transcript
Jason:
[0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 132 being recorded on Monday May 21st 2018 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your Coho Scot Wingo.
Scot:
[0:39] Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners will Jason we’re both back in our local areas here I think your local are you okay.
Jason:
[0:50] I am I am your correct.
Scot:
[0:52] I never know where you are these days we were both in Austin recently and we had a real fun trip down there it’s rare were in the same city much less at the same conference and we both spoke on separate topics at the NPD idea conference.
[1:08] Did you have fun.
Jason:
[1:09] I did it was a great conference I enjoyed the conference and of course it’s always fun to get to spend some time with you in person I feel like we we talk all the time via VIA the microphone but it’s it’s fun to actually see you making funny faces when I say stuff.
Scot:
[1:24] Absolutely yeah it doesn’t come over to the the podcast quite as much as in person.
Jason:
[1:29] No we might have to start doing this as a video Call Me Maybe.
Scot:
[1:32] Okay so tonight we thought we would there.
[1:39] Wanted to share some of the insights from the show this is a pretty interesting show that we attend and let me kick it off by explaining who is NPD the provides data 2 / 20,
and how this works is because I like Nielsen Nielsen I think does this for cpgs and NPD does it for non CP Jesus how I can I think about it.
Large scale systems across.
Over a thousand retailers that opted into this program that data is all swirled together anonymized and then also mixed in with over 12 million consumer.
For surveys and output of that is really interesting data that they Brands license and retailers to understand things so for example.
Let’s say you sell.
[2:31] I don’t know what’s a good idea if a GoPro style cameras or anything like that action cameras you can use in PD data to see how is your model doing versus the competition.
How you know how much is the number one doing the number to cross different retailers things like that.
Every year they every other year they get some of their top customers together and categories like apparel Automotive Beauty.
Construct Tronics jewelry I sent you everything but cpg and they look at the trends that are shaping the industry.
[3:06] And I’ve spoken of this a couple times and it was exciting to have you there this year the theme was Under Fire On Fire.
And it’s got a clever theme so what are trying to articulate there is.
Retail is under Fire everyone’s feeling that but then there are certain segments that are doing really well so there’s certain segments that are on fire.
[3:31] Unfortunately had a conflict and I was not able to get down there for the first part of day one but you were there and we’re able to attend some really good session you told me about so let’s start the recap there on the morning of day 1.
Jason:
[3:46] So there they kick things off with a bang,
you mention a lot of great brands that end it also tends to be really seen your stakeholders from a lot of the brands and retailers which is kind of cool so it’s pretty,
impressive intimate Gathering into the first keynote was actually the CEO of Target Brian Cornell so that’s a pretty good gift as we would say in the industry and I’m always.
[4:13] Like obviously I always want to hear what brand has to say it’s always it’s always great when these guys coming events are willing to share,
[4:21] The CEOs of major retail organizations are super polished and their they certainly don’t come here with the intention of giving away any Trade Secrets and they never do so.
You know you got a kind of moderate your expectations you’re not likely going to get some.
Revolutionary new announcement from from Brian at a show like this but you know I think it’s interesting to hear his his take on on a lot of the things that targets going through in trying to do.
And he spent a lot of his talk.
[4:51] Really talking about the sort of changing role of the store and you know he was pretty damn that he’s like hey you know these stories today have all these super important roles we.
Yeah we have customers that come to the store to pick up orders that they placed online we have a lot of curbside pickup now we’re using the stores as an inventory location to do same-day deliveries to customers home.
We ship over half our e-commerce orders from the stores to the customer’s home you know customers use.
tattoo sort of exploring evaluate products and now many customers want to check to make sure the products are in stock before they come to the store you know all these different use cases of how the target guest wants to use the store.
That are very different than the use cases the guest had.
Even seven years ago when you know most of the newest Target stores were built and so you know he spent a lot of the time talking about the challenges and opportunities of.
You know taking a test or if it was designed to solve one particular set of problems and leveraging it to solve.
A lot of newer very different problems and so I found that interesting.
And then he did Chef to talk a little bit about their their acquisition last year or this year rather for shipped and shipped is.
A delivery service so they are so you can think of the Minnesota personal shoppers before the target acquisition they supported a number of retailers.
[6:26] You could order products from their website they would go to a retail store pick up those products for you and deliver them to your home.
And in so you know I think most of us talk about them is primarily being a same-day delivery option.
And you know Brian to mention that I think that they have curbside pickup.
And over a thousand stores now and then they’re quickly moving to same day delivery in a thousand stores leveraging these the shift employees that they have.
They’ve hired but he is real Focus was.
Did the delivery is the least important part of the the shipped experience that these are the magic of a shift in the reason at Target was particularly interested in and then versus some of the other vendors that into space was.
That ship that had this intimate personal shopper model where they.
They did that try to maintain full-time employees and they would try to send the same employee to the same customer so that all I read them you know I always tried to match up the same shop or with a customer so that that Chopper will get to know the customer overtime.
That communication tools built in the platforms or the Shopper has questions are asked to make substitutions.
They can communicate in real-time and apparently a high percentage of the the shipt personal shoppers are moms and so Brian kind of talked about it being,
a moms to moms service and that the the target gas really value this personal relationship that they were starting to develop with this.
This formerly shipped person personal shopper that’s now a core part of the new Target experience.
Scot:
[8:02] Wrinkled so then after that they followed up with another strong keynote this one was from Google.
Jason:
[8:10] Answer this is a dude I’m pretty sure this is not the name his mother gave him but he goes by Astro Teller,
and I was familiar with that sir I haven’t seen him speak before though and he was I thought he was awesome so she is responsible for the moonshot program at Google,
and you may know more about this than I do but like in general I think of the moonshot program is the portfolio of,
initiatives at Google that are all intended to develop new billion-dollar plus Revenue businesses so like the autonomous vehicles would be.
The the big Marquee thing in the in the moonshot program.
Scot:
[8:51] Yeah they would they transition to alphabets I think they call it X and then the self-driving is spun out as,
waymo there’s a couple other things they’ve done but inside of their.
[9:08] I think this drones the balloon internet’s flying cars that you’re so a lot of really wacky stuff in there so.
Plenty of interesting things going on in that that group.
Jason:
[9:19] And will come back to Wacky but as you can imagine a guy named Astro is pretty good at talking wacky so,
he he he was mainly talking about,
Innovation and he started out by defining this thing that he called level 1 versus level 2 Innovation right and so level 1 Innovation that are like those things that could make your business 10% more successful and the level to Innovation are those things that could make you you know 10 x more successful.
And so you know he’s not the only guy talking about 10% versus 10x but his point was.
[9:57] The first time you can’t you hear any good 10x idea it’s going to sound crazy,
and so like by definition to be successful at these kind of 10x Innovations in any organization you have to be comfortable sounding crazy and you and you have to cultivate environment that safe enough that,
the people are comfortable enough proposing things that sound crazy because he’s like you know his is premises fundamentally.
These things that are so disruptive to the business that they could you know Drive 10x growth for the business.
[10:32] Like just are so disruptive that they that they don’t sound rational or safe.
Upon you know first consideration and so kind of funny line.
He is a no-show hands in the audience imma give you a choice between two options and you raise your hands and tell me which one you would rather do.
Would you rather do an initiative that has the potential to generate a billion dollars in new revenue for your company but only has a 10% chance of success.
Or would you rather do something that will generate a million dollars but has a guaranteed success and.
Not surprisingly that you know basically everyone in the audience raised her hand and said hey we would rather do the billion dollars with a 10% chance.
Mathematicians on their listen to podcast with quickly note that like the.
The weighted value of a 10 billion dollar opportunity with the 10% chance is still a hundred million dollar opportunity versus a $1000000 opportunity so.
So statistically speaking that that’s the.
The better risk but then he asked the funny frog question how many of you fundamentally believe that your boss always supports the billion-dollar opportunity versus the million dollars guarantee.
And way less hands went up and so he’s like Alright so.
[11:55] Here here here’s my Innovation solution for you you don’t need a new innovation strategy you need a new boss.
And so he you know you kind of went into this this whole premise about how organizations are just.
Young wired to avoid risk and that you know even though it’s irrational you know most most organizations are are built to reward.
In a biased towards the $1000000 in guaranteed Revenue versus the the 10% chance at a billion dollars shot and how companies that want to be successful you don’t have to think differently.
He even kind of went into even some of the things that you you should do to be a successful level to Innovation company.
And you know one of the big points he had there was that you should always tackle the hardest part first.
Any he talked about how that’s kind of counterintuitive that a lot of people that you don’t want to get a quick success under their belt so you know the tackle the part that seems.
Easiest to do and you know you talked about how when you explain to someone rationally why they should do the hard part first.
They say they kind of get it but it doesn’t really change behavior and so he has come up with this kind of silly metaphor.
To make it more apparent he’s like if your boss assigned you to get a monkey teach it to recite Shakespeare standing on a pillar.
[13:22] Should you start by teaching the monkey how to recite Shakespeare or should you start by building the pillar.
[13:29] And his his point being like sure you could start by building the pillar and you get a early way in and you can say you are 50% through the problem because you solve one of the two problems.
[13:39] You’re never going to teach the monkey how to recite Shakespeare so building the pillar was a complete and utter waste of time whereas if you would have started with the problem of.
Training the monkey to recite Shakespeare you would have quickly learned you cannot impact training monkey to recite Shakespeare.
And therefore you know you would have moved on and then a company that rewards level to innovation.
That that quick learning and failure you know what would have been rewarded versus versus penalized so that was kind of.
[14:09] The premise of his talk he was a super engaging heads funny antidotes.
My favorite part of his presentation was definitely the off-script moment he he walked through a bunch of.
Future technologies that he feels like are going to create 10x opportunities for fur companies so he was talking about bioengineering he’s talking about it and he wasn’t so much selling any of these specific ideas but just talking about how.
They trigger these kind of 10x ideas and you know some of the things that you might do with them sound sound crazy at first,
and one of the points you if you wanted to make was about you know some changes to cybersecurity and so is a precursor he said he he asked everyone like,
Teresa hand if they were you know primarily concerned about cyber-security today and,
how much snow in in the room raised their hand and it was it was his reaction was hysterical he it was kind of a No-No moments,
and he’s like he’s like oh my God forget all this stuff about innovation.
I have bad news for you the bad guy is already in your network like you’ve already been breached.
I didn’t realize this wasn’t already coming. And so this whole whole like absolutely correct narrative about how.
You know sophisticated intrusion has gotten and how you know these kids that attend that the hacker conference is if I break into much more secure networks than retailer networks for fun and how like all these networks are almost certainly already breached in there already people inside your network.
[15:44] And that if you don’t have a business model to protect your customers data when you’ve already been breached you know you’re probably in Trouble In fairness to the attendees,
you know he went right after Brian Cornell from Target so you know a ton of target people were in the audience and if you work at Target and you you you been the victim of the very public breach that had a material impact on your business,
you probably don’t in a public room raise your hand and say hey I’m super concerned about cyber-security right so you know maybe maybe people just felt like it was inappropriate,
to share that concern publicly and that’s why they didn’t respond or maybe they had question-answering fatigue by that point.
But it was a funny diatribe that Astro went off on and and I certainly true like we all should act like like the bad guys already internet work.
Scot:
[16:35] Got it yet maybe it’s cuz Brands a lot of brands of these conferences are pretty early on their direct consumer turning so maybe they may they’re not even really thinking transaction websites maybe while they’re not retailers in room should be pretty stuff.
Jason:
[16:51] Yeah and I will do it on another show that there been a lot more breaches and in retail in the last couple months in particular Avengers there a lot of retailers rely on it been breached and it’s doing a black eye at a Best Buy in Sears in a bunch of others.
Scot:
[17:05] Yeah but what I find interesting is it’s the ones I’ve seen usually are not through the Commerce side because the Commerce sides kind of got more thought around this usually is to the physical point of sale which is the entry.
Jason:
[17:18] Yet the physical plant cells have been a disaster and then some of these recent ones were where Aunt like ancillary things like the.
The chat system that the retailer uses for customer service that you know you can also change an order via chat and so there’s a Commerce function in there and your point is.
It’s not leveraging the same technology as the normal e-commerce site and doesn’t you know apparently and in several cases didn’t have the same level of security.
Scot:
[17:45] Cool and then who was up after Google.
Jason:
[17:49] So then the afternoon keynote and this is all on Wednesday so Wednesday was kind of a full day I think most of the attendees maybe showed up Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.
Tuesday afternoon keynote after lunch it was a gentleman Michael Dart who’s at the a t Kearney and.
He has written a book called retail seismic shift how to shift faster respond better and when customer loyalty and I want to see it came out.
Late last year maybe like November or so so it’s probably about 6 months old though.
[18:28] And so he did it talk about consumers of the future and had a lot of good points in it I think we’re going to try to get him on the show here in the upcoming episode.
Scot:
[18:38] Yes so maybe we should let’s give just a little taste and then we’ll.
Jason:
[18:43] So a couple of the things that jumped out of me and that’s that’s got subtle way of saying that we’re going to slow an interesting thing I just never thought about is one of the trans he talks about his dematerialization which is this sort of shift.
From atoms to pixels.
And he had an interesting stat that in order to create a dollar of GDP in 1930 required about 4 kg of material.
Like you had to make into something to sell to generated our GDP.
That that same GDP in 1990 so 60 years later you can make with one kilogram so so the amount of of atoms I got cut down by 1/4.
Only 25% of the atoms are required 60 years later you know fast forward today and you only need a hundred mg so one tenth of what you needed in 1990 in so there’s that just.
You know this this strong shift in the economy away from from Material Goods driving the the economy.
[19:47] He you know then kind of went into the the bifurcation topic that we talked about a few times on the show so you know he had to stab that 65% of the.
Of the population was in the middle class in the 1970s and today it’s only about 40% of the population is in the.
The middle class so you’re getting you know Uber rich people and poor people and you know his his promises one of the ways that that plays out in.
Retail is you have these on one end of the spectrum price base retailers are really focus on offering low price and that cohort a Retailer’s he.
Believe have grown 35% is there is there five year growth rate.
[20:28] For the price face retailer 37% on the other end of the spectrum the luxury premium brands of actually grown even better at like 80%.
And all the retailers in between that he would call the balance retailers that aren’t like aggressively focused on price and aggressively focused on luxury experiences have only grown at 2% so it’s sort of showing the.
The growth and Retail is exactly mirror the bifurcation of the population of we’ve had Casey well and brought back from the Delight talking about that on the show as well.
You know you had some interesting statistics on on malls we talked a lot about how the a malls are doing a lot better than the rest of the malls but he actually has some statistics that all malls are down 9% it’s just.
The a malls are traffic is down 9% over the last couple years from a better starting point so they’ve gone from like growing to flatware as the BNC malls have gone from Flat to losing 10% of their traffic in the last 2 years.
Scot:
[21:30] Yeah on the malls he also I’ll put it out as a teaser from having the show he had the the.
[21:38] Worst Mulligan prediction I’ve heard so he had the highest number of Mall closures that he’s thinking are going to happen so I was a little surprised by that but that’s interesting.
Jason:
[21:50] But it is true that like only about like 20% of the malls would be in this like a category so I think did he say their UE thought about a thousand miles we get taken out of the system is that when I’m remembering 13.
Scot:
[22:03] I think you said 1300 out of like 1500 I think there’s only like 200 remaining.
Jason:
[22:08] So that’s that does still mirror that kind of a versus B and C ratio.
Sign out we’ll talk about another show is the Planning Commission in Miami-Dade Florida just approved a new mall project which they’re very few of those in the world,
and this mall would actually be the largest mall in the US who would be bigger than the Mall of America in Minneapolis and so that.
Can a bucking the the the mall again in friend is we could have a new bigger motor than we’ve ever seen before which would be an interesting evolution.
And then the last thing I’ll touch on from.
Michael Jordan’s presentation he was talking about this Matrix that he called the the con Matrix.
Is developed by this one on barbercon who’s the professor at Ward and she she would have booked a couple years ago called the shopping Revolution.
And in her world like.
You could draw this 2 by 2 Matrix that all retailers fit in on the left side of the Matrix are our retailers that are focused on product benefits and so I’m proud of benefits on one end of the spectrum you have.
[23:16] People that focus on The Prestige of the brand and so she would use like.
Louis Vuitton or Warby Parker Saks Fifth Avenue or Zara Nike is kind of brand.
Branda Advocates there and she would use like Eataly or Sephora as experience face retailers as the other end of that that.
That extreme in in the other side of the Matrix would be people that focus on customer experience and their the.
The spectrum is from people that primarily focus on a low price so she’s got like Costco Walmart TJ Maxx in Burlington and that.
That quadrant and then frictionless.
As the as the other end of that spectrum and she has Amazon is the primary example of a frictionless and so kind of a different Spectrum this would be way more apparent if I were able to drop for you on the podcast so maybe I’ll try to put a picture in the.
In the show notes but as as you’ll hear a lot of retail pendants talked about like another 10 to be the Spectrum there tend to be areas.
Any Spectrum where retailers can really Thrive and do well and then the the retailers that are really struggling and we talked about Molly get in and we talked about retailers that are seeing negative growth.
It’s almost always the case that there.
[24:38] The ones that have fall in the middle of the spectrum’s and haven’t really made a committed effort to own.
You know one of one of the the pillars and so this this was another one of these Matrix is where.
Where that you know you kind of look at at her Marquis examples in each each of the quadrants and say yeah that makes perfect sense and then you’d say you know folks that kind of fall in the middle of this this to buy to our bar probably in trouble and.
And you know at the moment that that’s sort of what’s playing at in the marketplace.
[25:10] Yeah so then that was all really warm up so those were those were a sort of the three opening acts Target Google,
Michael dark,
because then we all went to a even bigger room where they had their biggest session of the show which is this whole session about marketplaces and sign up for our listeners Scott,
is a second-year Scott’s done this talk and it was super annoying for me because every time I would talk to the the women planning the show about my session that say Hey registrations great you’re doing really well you’re right the second most popular session,
but you’re way behind Scott.
Scot:
[25:51] Yep so that was fun I was I was coaching them to make sure that you knew that I was figured a little fun competition there would be.
Jason:
[26:03] Yes and I I was a little just cuz you did get to pick your topic and I sort of I I accepted a topic they put in the agenda.
Scot:
[26:11] But you knocked it out of the park will get to that in the second yes or no.
Jason:
[26:13] Thanks man so what did you talk about in marketplaces is that a thing.
Scot:
[26:17] It is yep so two years ago and I did my skin.
[26:22] Standard Amazon talk which is essentially for long-time listeners if you go way back to episode 24 we did the Amazon Deep dive so that’s kind of a lot of the same content,
that I gave that talk and this time they wanted to kind of widened aperture and talk about marketplaces so just just a quick summary about what we talked about.
And what will do is.
I’ll send you a pediatrician that we can put kind of a copy to it in the link to it in the show notes if people want to go to the presentation so.
The Purge for Marketplace is really interesting because you know you and I’ve been at the salon time I’ve been at this Marketplace thing for 20 years.
[27:02] And what I found is there’s a huge desire for Content that.
[27:07] Pretty basic for what a retailer or a seller with the Cabana Marketplace because what’s happening is all these brands are starting to think about going Direct.
And they’re just learning all the basics that that you know.
A retailer or a seller has already there I’m kind of version 8 these guys are on Virgin once so.
But it is always fun to kind of go back and revisit these things because the world has changed so much just a simple thing and you and I had a fun to scream about the marketplace and how do you do to find it so for example selling a car on over.
[27:42] Talk is that a Marketplace or not I would say by strict definition probably not because.
Well my definition marketplaces you sell off of your website.
There’s transparency for the consumer who you’re buying from and then the business model is a percentage kind of a business model not a traditional wholesale markup so once you have that wholesale markup in there it’s just a drop ship relationship.
[28:07] First party retailer not a Marketplace so so in this talk we we probably talked about yo.
Taking a step back and talk about consumers what do they want yeah we’ve talked about that a lot on the show don’t think they’ll be any surprises there then what is a Marketplace.
[28:23] So just answer that question the types of marketplaces so you have pure plays like eBay you have hybrids like Amazon you’ve got a new social ones you got at base now.
Etc,
and then we talked about the pros and cons of selling on Marketplace and then some takeaways for the Brand’s so it was,
when I’m in the middle of training I can never remember the questions I don’t know if you recall any that were Salient for listeners but.
There was way more questions we had time for and then we had to go to a break and then had a lot of good discussions around marketplaces.
Jason:
[29:00] Yeah and let the record show I think you like I certainly agree with your definition that like,
Wayfair is a drop-ship program more so than a Marketplace but what you call and Marketplace.
That I totally understand after you explained it but like I think myself in a lot of other people don’t immediately think of his Marketplace are some of the the social selling models in like when Google sells products through pla Zoar,
shoppable pins on Pinterest or some of those things and then once you draw the picture I totally get out it is a Marketplace but I think those are the the the the one that outliers that kind of surprise,
are the sneaky marketplaces if you well.
Scot:
[29:40] Yeah and when you’re selling on eBay and Amazon.
Don Juan differentiator is day or The Merchant of record which do I think about is when the consumer gets their credit card it says Amazon not you know Jason’s Mouse shop so.
But then to July these new models they’re using so his new payment systems like a striper Braintree and they’re asking you to,
the merchant to now be The Merchant of record so it’s kind of an interesting hybrid in that way.
But it still has a percent of sales model there still a fair amount transparency does Consumer they’re dealing with a third party so I.
I continue to put those in the marketplace bucket but you know a lot of people don’t.
Realize when you’re using things like Wanelo or there’s this many of these now there’s,
we are well over 200 Market places that we track it down visor and more everyday and there’s all kinds of really interesting models there is super vertical ones like.
Reverb for professional music.
[30:42] Or there’s some for you know that dinner Morpher city-dwellers that are in the apparel category and it’s kind of like high-end apparel so you’re a pair of sunglasses that.
Probably you and I wouldn’t buy for $600 but there’s someone out there that that is into those kinds of things.
Jason:
[30:58] Yep and I think one of the marketplaces that you introduced a lot of the audience to for the first time probably was wish and I happened to notice they’re running like national tv ads now.
Scot:
[31:10] Yeah yeah wishes really,
yeah they don’t disclose a lot but there’s all these rumors that they have crossed over a billion dollars at um they’re spending a lot of money on National branding so they’ve done,
I need to be a sponsorship so drawn symbol logos their logos are on jerseys they’re doing a pretty big ad campaign around their Marketplace.
I think of them as a cross-border Marketplace some most product available on wish is being sold direct from China and they.
If I’m in a lot of supply chain things and whatnot.
[31:44] The result is you get super cheap product which really applies that value or any consumer we talked about and bifurcation.
But the trade-off is cuz a lot of its kind of on the literal slow boat from China it does take awhile to get there so it’s one of those kind of trade-offs that consumers seem to be willing to make,
today,
I’m the one thing I worry about witches Amazon is now I got kind of all the same stuff at the same price but then it’s an FBA so now you get it 2 days so it can be interesting to see how wish does against that.
Head-on competition.
Jason:
[32:16] Yeah yeah the the television that I noticed,
it was like a dad that had bought like SmartWatches for three kids and they each got like 10 bucks and so the kids are you know it’s it’s he’s low-cost like sort of surprise and Delight moments.
But I did have a take away from their their big NBA sponsorship is if you if you are building a business and you decide to use it professional sports endorsements,
make sure the players know what the heck you do because there’s some really funny videos on YouTube of like reporters asking.
LA Lakers what which isn’t as they’re wearing The Witcher logo on their uniform and they they have literally no idea.
Scot:
[32:54] And then after my session we went to a one that you were excited about which was the jinsy panel.
Jason:
[33:03] Yeah I probably made Scott go to this one and.
You know this is kind of a common model at a lot of shows is you you bring actual Generation Z folks.
To talk to the audience and like help help give them the more accurate you know representation of of this.
This Persona that you don’t lot of Market marketers are targeting and what what’s a little different about the MPD version like very often.
Literally like the show organizers will go to a high school and get like five regular high schoolers and have you know some moderator ask them questions about how they shop or what brands they like and whether they like going to malls or not.
In this case these are almost I’ll call them professional Generation Z spokespeople.
There’s a guy I got to meet a couple of times now Connor Blakely who.
I don’t I don’t know how old he is but you know he’s probably like 19 and he started a company called youth logic and they essentially cell,
need this kind of advisory service to Brands and so is a brand you you higher.
Connor and he sends some genze folks to your office to.
Serta evaluate your offerings and and talk about you know how they’re seen through the the jimsey wins so Connor was on the panel one one of his employees Madison bringman was on the panel and then.
[34:34] Another gen Z expert that it start his own company called Jen’s iguru a guy named Jonah Stillman and I think Jonah actually got Mark Cuban to invest in his company.
So we have these kind of three genzie’s they were interviewed by the moderator who is Alexandria Levitt.
I wrote a book about about some some other customer to cohorts in the past.
Lacerta interviewing and they’re all the typical funny moments like they.
You know it some point they talk about olds and you know referencing like parents that that don’t get something and that you know they.
They talked about super old people and they were talking about people that were like 35 and older which you know probably was every single person in the in the audience.
There’s a lot of of a interesting dialogue about.
Authenticity and purpose so you know like there’s this notion that like genze like brands with a purpose like.
The Tom shoes you know buy one get one kind of program but how Jen’s he’s really good at smelling out these inauthentic purposes.
And that you know a lot of Brands Make Mistakes by having these inauthentic purposes Connor use one example of a you know company that bought a Super Bowl ad.
Do I got a message that they are that they have an environmentally friendly purpose and conures like.
[36:06] Hey if you really have an environmentally friendly purpose you would have wasted five million dollars on a Superbowl and and his you know kind of thing was,
what you have to understand is jenzie grew up digital they’ve been bombarded with all these messages after multitask much more than any previous generation and so is a result they’re much better at curating information and he he going to bluntly put it,
like we we have more attuned BS meters than previous cohorts,
and so you know you just have to be really careful about being being inauthentic with him and so there’s some interesting takeaways,
you know I thought the panel did a good job but I personally I do Wonder,
if this is the last cohort we ever have to talk about because I like I do have this kind of premise that all the behaviors they were describing,
like I can find you 60 year old to behave exactly the same way and in the old world of like television advertising like one of the only things we can know about her audience was how old they were and so we could kind of Taylor are commercials to a particular age,
but today I feel like we have much more granular tools to the market to individuals and so I just I just wonder if,
is like the differences between Millennials and gen Z are are ever going to be as important as as you know once the the differences between Boomers and and gen-xers was.
Scot:
[37:33] Yeah I kind of came away from the panel with called.
Cognitive dissonance where says there’s like six examples where they would say one thing and then they would like say something that totally countered it and it was really hard.
To get your head around so the one example is in the early part.
UConn reslife Genji’s love them all is great I got them all the time and then someone else then several times you can tell that they haven’t been to the mall a very long time because you know the guy was trying to describe what.
Abercrombie looks like now and he couldn’t really kind of articulated cuz I don’t think he’s been in an Abercrombie in a long time and then some.
Jason:
[38:10] Fun of Abercrombie from like 4 years ago but you’re right like they have chain.
Scot:
[38:13] And then someone said if you had $100 what would you do in one guys like buy stuff in fortnite and you know the girl was like I buy some Nike stuff but she’s not going to go to the mall for that she’ll go to.
I assumed she’d order on.
[38:27] She also said you know I just buy everything from Amazon and I know from my Gins ears that you don’t got to college age kids they do not like to go to the mall and you really have to kind of like.
Dragon alert.
So there’s some that was kind of one example there’s like six or seven other ones were just kind of like you just counteracted what you just said like 6 minutes ago. I don’t know it’s hard to nail down if I can.
There’s no actual thing to do.
Jason:
[38:56] Yeah no end to me part of that is like,
I’m sure you can find Jen’s ears that do go to the mall like an N relative to other cohorts yeah there are there are more 16 year old kids at the mall then there are 60 year olds at the mall,
but like it’s going down across all cohorts and and you know the point is being today you can know which 10,
gen Z years really do want to go to the mall and you can have a message for them and you can know which ones like by 95% of the purchases on Amazon and you can have a different message for them so,
that’s kind of my death of the personas as we move into a one-to-one world.
Scot:
[39:36] Yeah I did not one thing the folks at NPD do a great job at is the entertainment at their shows is top-notch so they shuttle us over to Austin sea life which is exciting I never been there before I and we saw,
a country music band which was runaway June and then the Doobie Brothers and it was kind of a long day so I actually enjoyed the opening acts kind of more than the closing act but that was just going to be so that was good.
Jason:
[40:04] Yeah and I I know nothing about country music so I had never heard of them so that way it’s got a fun and I think it’s a trio of young women that sing harmonies and one of the women was the granddaughter of John Wayne.
Scot:
[40:18] Yeah that was kind of neat neat fun fact.
[40:22] So then we that was day one and then Day 2 began with you drinking three venti latte and then we went to go see Don Unser he is the biggest titles VP of sales there in PD he’s the head sales guy and in one of the guys that leads there vertical teams and he had a really good presentation of some of the insights they’ve gotten from their data.
Jason:
[40:49] And so.
The a Scott was nice enough to have bought at least one of those lattes for me that morning said thank you very much I appreciated that I had to meet early for breakfast with my panel so that was super nice of you.
So MPD because they have access to this really rich data set Don and in particular is super well known for doing these retail Trends Decks that leverage update a lot and so this was kind of a.
A permeation of that like he had some key retail Trends from the date in there and then you also had some.
Hypothesis about like how consumers were actually changing as a result of some of these Trends which that was maybe a new spin on it.
So is you mentioned upfront MPD tracks these 20 core categories across a whole bunch of retailers.
And so it was the first thing he shows is MPD money so I’d which is kind of.
How big each of the categories that they track is and whether it’s growing or shrinking in so this was.
A March 2018 view looking at growth over the last 12 months and you had you know category like the biggest category with by far the most significant growth for them as video games.
So that category was growing at 18.4%.
And it’s a decent-size market it’s like a 36 billion dollar market as they is they Define it Prestige Beauty was growing at 9.4% small appliances were growing at 7% Auto Parts at 5%.
[42:24] Toys at 5%.
Consumer electronics at 4.7% a house where is it 3.8 and then you kind of dropped in all these categories that had.
Pretty nominal gross box office supplies Footwear perishable grocery Dry Goods Health and Beauty AIDS.
And then you got into the bottom categories that were laggards for them apparel was basically flat accessories which is like sunglasses and things like that was down 2%.
And then the big loser which is probably no surprise to anyone as Video Entertainment.
Which young for most of The 3 Tails used to be movies that they sold on these plastic circle is called DVDs.
And that that was way down at like 12% so.
All told if you total up all 20 categories and MPD follows their following about 1.8 trillion dollars in consumer spending.
All retails probably about 3.8 trillion dollars so it’s a good chunk of all consumer spending and on the aggregate all those categories grew at 1.8%.
You know but it’s interesting to know that you know they’re these big opportunities and in things like video games and Beauty less opportunities and apparel and accessories.
And if you’re a subscriber to MPD.
That the even more granular view which Don didn’t get into is super important cuz you look at consumer electronics and you say oh my gosh it’s growing at 4.7% that’s good news but then you look you look at the Grand your data and you see that like.
[43:54] You know flat screen TVs which is the bulk of of the market you know it’s kind of flat to down and it’s things like headphones and smart smart speakers that are responsible for all the growth in the Consumer Electronics category,
that’s really kind of the the magic value of NPD is having that that.
Granular look at what’s happening in subcategories what’s growing what’s ranking you know what’s on Trend versus off of trend.
The one of the things that Don broke out that was kind of a new-look that I haven’t seen them talk about before is that this concept of.
Distribution of of Shoppers based on the amount of their spend is online versus offline so they so.
See if I can describe this in a way that this possible to follow there’s a chunk of the u.s. population that spends less than 10% of their their makes less than 10% of their purchases online.
[44:55] And that chunk is 43% of all consumers spend less than 10% online then there’s a cohort that’s been 10 to 25% online that junk is 18% of the population another 20%.
[45:10] 20% spend 25 to 50% online another 13%.
Percent spend 50 to 75% online and then they’re 6% of the population that spends more than 75% of their budget online,
and said you know they had this kind of interesting distribution and you say oh my gosh the overwhelming majority of consumers 43%.
Still you know which is the biggest by far one of these cohorts still spend less than 10% of their daughters online.
You know the easy take away there is there’s a lot more online gross and you don’t call back to Michael Dart from the day before like he made the point.
Nobody knows what that.
What the final equilibrium will be on online versus offline shopping like Michael postulated that it could be 50/50 eventually but what he says I do know is.
That is a one way Road people are only moving from offline to online that there are not people moving from online back to us.
Which only makes some sense so.
[46:12] You take mpd’s new idea of breaking down the distribution of spender of Shoppers by these different different spending patterns.
And then he you didn’t break it down by retailer and you get some really interesting insights right so.
Less than 1% of Amazon Shoppers spend less than 10% of their budget online so that big 43%.
[46:36] Amazon only has 1% of those guys like those guys are not Amazon Choppers yet which is like frankly great news for Amazon.
And Walmart is exactly the opposite right like the biggest chunk of Walmart shoppers spend.
Less than 10% of their of their budget online and a tiny sliver of the Walmart Shopper spend 75% online and so you kind of you know those are the two extremes.
Amazon heavily biased towards predominately online Shoppers Walmart heavily biased towards very casual online Choppers.
And then you know what was interesting as they showed Target Best Buy in Kohl’s which had surprisingly even distribution across all of those different colored so it’s kind of interesting Target Best Buy in Kohl’s.
[47:25] Do just about as well with the the guys that spend 75% of their budget on line is they do with it that the women that’s been less than 10% online versus.
Walmart and Amazon you know I tended to be heavily bifurcated and so I thought I thought that was sort of an interesting new.
New dimension that I hadn’t really thought about before.
Scot:
[47:46] Yeah it was really cool it kind of need to take away was you know once there’s another one where.
[47:55] The big guy is so close Target at such a loss share as people went towards online in Amazon.
With exception of Best Buy so it showed in one takeaway was Best Buy seem so kind of figured out how to stop erosion so you’re what are they doing to do that and then you know there’s definitely this battle for that 43% of people that are.
We think we’ll come online and your Walmart play wants to keep them in the Walmart family in Amazon,
wants to extract them over onto Prime and that’s going to be a really interesting Battle Ground over the next five years was one of my takeaway isn’t it was just,
we heard Mark Laurie talk about it Amazon hasn’t really talked about specifically but some of the moves they’ve made with going to monthly prime number you know.
[48:38] Paying Prime fees with cats all that stuff has been kind of along the same lines so it’s going to be interesting to watch that that battle come to play.
Jason:
[48:46] Yeah yeah for sure and you know it.
[48:51] I mean I always enjoy Downs presentations cuz I just think the the date is super valuable and it’s like you know we have all these urban legends about how things are doing.
Let there be super useful data sets the MPD provides like there’s another one I didn’t cover but that they do frequently.
Where they show the fastest-growing subcategories right and that’s all you know much more important than the big categories are you find out there like a shoes my beat Footwear might be flat.
[49:21] Performance running shoes is a huge growth opportunity right now.
And you know they even particularly talked about how in the subcategories.
You can really see trends go viral so I can example that use is like Office Products is not a particular growth industry right now but.
Elmer’s Glue like in that the adhesive category is booming.
And the reason is booming for for you no parents that don’t have have like sub 10 year old children at home is there’s this huge trend on YouTube of kids making goo.
And slime rather yeah.
And you know they’re all these different ways to make an all these interesting you know things kids are doing with slime in the primary ingredient for all this slime is Elmer’s glue and before this trend.
Office product companies mainly sold for Nas you know bottles of Elmer’s glue that you’d use to glue paper together and now they’re all selling 5-gallon bottles of this this this glue and you know selling a much higher quantities.
Scot:
[50:31] Yeah it sucks I won’t get into it it’s a problem so I’m fine just taking over our lives.
Jason:
[50:36] Yeah it’s interesting to see those Trends in and be able to react to this trans another one is like the instapot is the is this you no booming small cooking appliance which has you know lifted the whole small appliances category at the MoMA.
Scot:
[50:52] So that was the highlight there and then there was some random guy talking about last mile did you go to them.
Jason:
[51:02] I did I did I was actually the moderator for that one.
Scot:
[51:05] Oh yeah yeah.
Jason:
[51:07] Yes it might have been hard for you to follow because they had to like shrink down the room a lot from the earlier Marketplace one you know not make it look empty with with just interested in something as trivial as.
You know how you get the goods to the consumer.
Scot:
[51:24] Is more intimate setting than the marketplace.
Jason:
[51:27] Exactly.
[51:28] But I thought we had a good day so so I had three subject matter experts on the panel we had Jamie sadlowski who’s the VP of customer experience at Walmart VP of marketing.
Owns the Indian customer experience for Walmart and this is you know Scott Walmart is doing you know a ton of new last-mile experiences.
We had a Jarren Waldman who’s the founder of curbside so there a vendor.
Curbside pickup programs for a bunch of retailers including like Sephora Nordstrom CVS.
And Jared has kind of cool past he had the it started a mobile geolocation company that ultimately got bought by Apple and so Jaron actually ran the the mobile geolocation team at Apple for like 4 years and.
You know a big part of the value proposition of curbside is that there’s some really smart technology for using your phone to geo-locate you and get your order ready you know as you pull into the parking lot.
So he had had some good good povs about.
What customer expectations were in in The Last Mile and then we had a gentleman named Warren schauble who’s from.
A consulting firm called Gwen industries that specialize in drum Technologies.
And Gwen is his bosses name who was the former president of DJI so you know certainly credible.
[53:04] Drones face but these guys are selling like industrial drones for a lot of B2B uses.
And of course you know drones are fake only talked about in The Last Mile and and I was certain pleasantly surprised orang was was.
Turtle refreshingly candid that like.
Really the regulatory environment in the u.s. is is we we are miles away from drones being an important part of the The Last Mile solution in the us cuz we’re.
Where you know there’s still some very significant regulatory barriers but he did mention that most of the other technical barriers that you know the ability to build these practical drones that can carry heavy payloads.
And the software capabilities to do the traffic management and delivery like you know he felt like those problems.
Used to be big big technical challenges and essentially are completely solved and so you know in his mind at this point.
[54:01] That the one barrier to two drones being important part of of The Last Mile are regulatory but he doesn’t think there’s going to be a resolution of that anytime soon.
We did get to talk a little bit about autonomous vehicles and and you know their role in the last month which was interesting.
The big takeaway from Jaren and Jamie is kind of going back to this Persona thing that like.
You know the old world where we have like buy online pickup in-store consumers versus home delivery consumers versus in-store consumers and what you know both curbside and Walmart it started independently learned is.
[54:38] Every consumer is a user of all these different experiences and that it’s it’s just really based on context and that there’s a.
In a soccer mom that loves curbside pickup for her regular groceries but you know how to certain occasions when she wants home delivery and she really wants to shop in the store for her own Christmas dinner meal so.
You know thinking about.
All these experiences being important in different context for the Shopper as opposed to thinking about these experiences being the one and only delivery method that different consumers would use I thought was pretty interesting.
Scot:
[55:12] You just back up a little bit I think it’d be good for listeners you had a great.
It kind of opening setup which was good and you talked about the existing carriers and how much package volume they can handle and how much they’re growing versus e-commerce maybe maybe run to that.
High level for folks.
Jason:
[55:32] Yeah yeah so we’ve talked about this at a high-level a couple times before on the show.
The in general e-commerce is growing at you know call it 15%.
And that the carriers are growing their capacity at about 8%.
So you know we we we have a clear mismatch there.
For this show I showed some more granular data that Kalin and put together and so you kind of paint a picture for for how eCommerce companies are using the different carriers and and you know don’t you know,
the primary carrier that Amazon uses for the last mile is the US Post Office.
And that’s because their fulfillment center so close to the consumer that Amazon’s big problem is not.
[56:22] Moving the goods across the country they they mostly do that in their own private Network now they’re their big problem is the Last Mile and the US post office has the by far the most economical.
Route based delivery solution for that last Mile and so you’re saying like 44% from memory of of all of us.
Amazon packages get delivered by the US post office then UPS of the big air air carrier for Amazon.
FedEx does do some deliveries but it’s only like 5% and then you know a growing chunk I think it’s like between 13 and 15% of Amazon.
Packages get delivered by Amazon Zone people in that that’s obviously a growing percentage.
So then you break down that like the US Post Office is growing at like,
their capacity light 8% UPS and FedEx are growing actually even slower and you go man for for these big e-commerce sites like Amazon and Walmart that are growing like 35%.
They’re they’re consuming much more capacity than the post office and and ups are growing and so you know you think about Amazon investing in their own delivery Network,
that’s not too bad just reduced costs or to threaten the viability of of the commercial carriers it’s really cuz they,
they simply enough to meet their own growth expectations need more capacity than they can buy on the open market.
Scot:
[57:53] Yeah I thought that was so so super insightful and really cheated up nice and I just kidding it was a really good paneling.
Learned a ton.
I wanted to ask her side guy a couple things that he mentioned they’re doing a lot more food curbside delivery in when he starting about food now these places have a curbside vendor like curbside and they’ve got six or seven other kind of pickup and delivery places at one point,
do like.
[58:20] Does the supply chain that the soccer they’re using consolidate because you don’t need restaurants think it like the six iPad sitting there so let’s try to get Jaron on the show and see what he has to say about that kind of thing.
Jason:
[58:31] Yeah yeah that’d be awesome we we we did not,
talk about that specific question so that be great when I asked him he definitely did take usra sort of the fastest growing component and I do think.
That like he’s providing.
Software that essentially the retailer buys and owns versus a lot of those delivery services are sort of outsourced Solutions and be well you’re certainly right like there’s a but you know a,
a desk full of tools that these are restaurants in Key West hours are using at the moment.
Scot:
[59:04] Cool and then your panel wrapped up and then I had to shoot out and then did you get a chance to see the rest of the show.
Jason:
[59:13] I didn’t say there was one other.
Breakout session that I did not get to attend but like I should we should have said for each of these hours during your session in my session there were a couple topics that you could choose then obviously we we were both you know the.
The most interesting one to choose.
[59:34] There a couple couple sessions during the last one there was an interesting case study on Sony.
Sort of rebounding from really losing a lot of their brand Prestige to focusing on making some really hard decisions to get out of some categories and reinvest in others.
I heard I did not get to attend that but I heard it was interesting and then the final Keynote.
Then unfortunately a work emergency called me away for was the A-Rod was in town and and.
You know talked a little bit about his own entrepreneurial Journey which I imagine was was interest.
Scot:
[1:00:14] Yeah I wonder if Jayla was there.
Jason:
[1:00:17] I did not see her yet I feel like she would have drop me a line if she was in town but.
I feel like it’s a good thing that we didn’t have a deep brief recap on a ride because it’s already happened again we’ve used up a perfectly good hour of our listeners time.
So if you have any questions we didn’t get to or or if you’re at the show yourself or had any any comments we would love to hear.
Your questions on Facebook and we can keep the conversation going there as always if you enjoy this show you know it only takes about 10 seconds of your life to jump over to iTunes and give us that 5-star review.
That that really helps us with visibility on the podcast and we we really do appreciate.
Scot:
[1:00:59] Yep thanks everyone for listening and thanks to the team it in PD for putting on a great conference and for having Jason and I are speakers we really enjoyed the show and appreciated the opportunity.
Jason:
[1:01:09] I absolutely in until next time happy commercing.
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