Digital CPG Blog

Smartphone owners love to scan. According to a new consumer adoption study from barcode technology provider ScanBuy, barcode scanning is up 700% in 2010, reports Read Write Web. Here are the key findings:

The report’s findings include a number of key data points about the adoption of barcode scanning, such as:

• There were more barcode scans performed in a single month starting in July 2010  than in all of 2009.
• Scanning via the company’s barcode system is up 700% from the start of 2010.
• 1D (UPC) and 2D (QR) codes are being scanned equally.
• Linking to a website is the most popular action delivered by a 2D barcode scan, with 85% of scans.
• Health and beauty products were the most popular items among 1D (UPC) scans, with 21%. They were followed by groceries (14.4%), books (12.6%) and kitchen items (9.2%)
• Half of barcode users are ages 35-45 and skew male (as smartphone/early adopter markets often do)
• Android was the most popular smartphone platform, with 45% of barcode users. This is attributable to the pre-loaded barcode scanners on some devices and support from carriers like Verizon.
• Android was followed by Blackberry (27%), iPhone (15%), Symbian (9%), Java (3%) and Windows Mobile (1%).
• The U.S. is the top country doing scanning and California is the top state (among ScanBuy technology users).
• Population size accounts for local scan volume in most places, except for California, Ohio, New Jersey, which are over-indexing.
• Over 45 countries have scanned barcodes.
• Barcode scanning is relevant across age and income groups.
• 69% said they would scan to receive coupons and discounts

Does your app have a barcode scanner capability?

Photo Credit: Stitch.

The new commerce will no doubt be mobile as teens are showing through their large use of texting and mobile app usage. Read Write Web reports:

New data from Nielsen out today delves into the behavior of the youngest mobile consumers: the American teenager. The study further solidifies what we’ve known for some time – teens are heavy-duty users of text messaging services.

No other demographic group texts as much as teens do, with an average of 3,339 texts sent and received per month. (For girls, it’s even higher – 4,050 texts per month!) But the study also revealed that teens are now turning to mobile applications, too, with 38% of teens using downloadable apps like those from Facebook, Pandora and YouTube. And usage in this area is growing, says Nielsen.

Application usage among teens is up, too, going from 26% last year to 38% this year. The mobile Web is used more than apps, however, with 49% reporting they surf the Net on their phones.

Is your brand taking advantage of the increase in mobile?

Photo Credit: Kevin Labianco.

Just how much are your social media efforts worth?

Well, the average value of Facebook fan for brands is an astounding $136.38, but it can swing all the way up to $270.77 on average for “best” fans or go down to $0 in the “worst,” reports Retail Wire. ” This value is based on Syncapse analysis of five factors per fan: product spending, brand loyalty, propensity to recommend, brand affinity and earned media value.”

Other findings in the study:

• On average, Facebook fans are 28 percent more likely to continue using a brand than are non-fan consumers.
• Overall, 68 percent (on average) of Facebook fans indicated that they are very likely to recommend a product across the 20 brands. This is contrasted by 28 percent for non-fans.
• Thirty-eight percent of respondents reported that they would likely become a fan of a brand if they saw a family member or close friend do so. This influence is slightly reduced to 34 percent if it is a person known through Facebook rather than a family member.
• Eighty one percent of fans said they feel “connection/empathy” with the brand, compared to 39 percent of non-fans.

A recent report entitled The Impact of Digital Beyond Sales and Marketing: How Digital is Transforming Organisations from Blue Latitude has found that while many organizations have started the process to effectively harness digital for e-commerce and social media efforts, “they have been less able to harness digital effectively to improve other areas of their business such as HR, customer service and product development.”

The biggest barriers to change?

- Pressure to hit short-term revenue and profit targets (36%)

- Organizational structure (32%)

- Lack of clear understanding of return on investment (30%)

- Company culture (28%), and

- Lack of budget (also 28%)

The report warns that digital strategy should be integrated throughout your organization and can’t just sit within one business function.

Photo Credit: n0r.

AdAge recently launched their predictions for big marketing ideas for 2011… with a bit of humorous reporting.

Here are our favorites:

Big Sampling – Which AdAge editor Jonathan Salem Baskin calls opt-out selling. “The logical next extension of the economic philosophy of ‘free’ means you send products to people, then keep sending stuff until they pay you to leave them alone.”

Sleep Shopping. “Inception meets HSN in this new technique to stop chasing eyeballs and get behind the eyelids of sleep-walking consumers, including dream product placement opportunities (think running gear and things that float) and inclusion in recurring dreams (requires a platform upgrade).”

Branded Conspiracies. “Skip facts: Your toothpaste is a plot to democratize Antarctica. Your competitor employs Martians in Area 51 factories.”

MirrorCasting. “Imagine a set of technology tools that allows people to record blog comments, chat posts and video clips about themselves, and then applies proprietary algorithms to automatically and randomly change the content and play it back to them … so consumers can spend all of their time interacting with themselves!”

Hope these marketing ideas gave you a little chuckle as well. Do you have any predictions for the New Year?

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Pricewaterhouse Coopers, internet advertising is showing strong returns:

Revenue for the first half of 2010 was $12.1 billion, an 11.3 percent increase over the same period last year. That represents the highest revenue for the first half of a year since the bureau began releasing figures in 1996. Revenue for the second quarter of 2010, which accounted for $6.2 billion, was also the highest on record.

“Interactive media are starting to show substantial growth and great vitality in making money,” said Sherrill Mane, senior vice president for industry services at the IAB, during a news conference about the results this morning.

The strongest advertising sectors included search advertising, which accounted for 47 percent of year-to-date revenues, followed by display-related advertising at 36 percent and classified at 10 percent. Lead generation and e-mail were the weakest sectors, generating 5 percent and 1 percent of revenue, respectively.

Where do you see the most return in online advertising?

Deloitte has just released a comprehensive study on private label. Among the key findings:

- Mounting evidence suggests that national brands are losing their hold on the consumer. As a result, consumers are more willing to try new and different brands and believe they have more convenient access to a wider array of product choices.

- In an increasingly transparent world, the most important and discerning consumers—the ones with strong opinions on which salty snacks taste best and which household cleaners are most effective—are twice as likely to have a favorable impression of store brand quality.

- Consumer product and retail managers, when surveyed, believe that 71 percent of consumers will switch stores if their preferred brand is no longer available at a retailer, and 62 percent of consumers make special trips to retailers just to purchase their favorite store brand.

- In the battle for the customer, store brands are winning. Unless manufacturers can create a clear reason in the consumer’s mind that the brand is more important than the store when making their choices, the manufacturers are bound to lose margin to the store. Discounts do not do this. Coherent branding strategies do.

To effectively battle private label, Deloitte suggests that national brands should:

1) Develop clearly differentiated national brands, create unique products, and renounce reckless promotions.

2) Develop a product portfolio that reflects each retailer’s consumer base, that includes localized products and reflects quickly cadenced improvements to packaging and product performance.

3) Revisit and accelerate the pace of their direct-to-consumer efforts.

Read the full and fascinating study here.

More and more retailers, if they don’t carry a private label already, are quickly jumping onto the bandwagon.

Discount retailer Kmart is the latest store to join in on private label, and their new store brand, called Smart Sense, will include more than 1,200 items in snack, beverage and household product categories, priced at 20% less than the national brands.

Kmart has had some private-label products like Little Ones baby care, Champion Breed pet care and Image Essentials personal care products, but are now looking to transition from private label brands to private label strategy. Digital and event marketing, coupons, in-store displays and sampling will be part of the effort to promote the line.

Photo Credit: fatboyke.

CPG and social media seem to have a slow-starting relationship. In a recent study,  almost half of consumer goods professionals attribute no revenue to social media outreach, and 39 percent have low expectations of 0 percent to 2 percent of sales.

Respondents also found the measurement of social media campaigns extremely difficult, with almost half of respondents using a variety of methods, including brand awareness, consumer comments, buzz, quantifiable leads and followers. For those selecting a single measurement method, brand perception and search engine visibility was the most popular at 36 percent.

You can download the full study from CGT.