Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 31
Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 31
Inspiration from across the world for retail enthusiasts, e-commerce professionals, marketing lovers and technology fans.
I was on a ski holiday for a week, so that’s why there was a short delay in distributing the new edition of this newsletter. In this edition: retail in Chinese trains, virtual doormen in Argentina and the upcoming AI agents, an SEO tooltip for fixing internal links, brilliant ads from Central Houston Nissan, and more, check it out.
📈How the Introvert Economy Is Shifting Consumer Behaviors
Apparently, a new phenomenon is emerging: "the introvert economy." It's a trend to watch as it integrates online and offline experiences.
Consumers are choosing to go out earlier, if at all, to then enjoy the comforts of home and connected entertainment, such as catching up on favorite Netflix shows. Consumers are also becoming more risk-averse in social settings, choosing screens over face-to-face engagements, especially when it comes to talking to strangers. This is also creating a consumer that’s increasingly single and lonelier.
I share it here because if this trend emerges, you can take advantage of it.
Now we’re poised for a new chapter: “collaborative commerce.”
Collaborative commerce immerses customers in the dining experience and also makes them active participants in shaping the operational experience. Beyond just seeing a digital menu on their mobile device, restaurant apps would connect users to POS systems and also to servers to unlock user-centered services such as ordering, payments, feedback and even loyalty programs.
Salesforce and Mad Mobile, for example, launched a collaborative commerce solution that enables restaurants to integrate dine-in mobile ordering and payments with any POS system.
With collaborative commerce, guests are presented with so much more than a menu when scanning a QR code. Once they do so, an intuitive ordering experience launches, identifying their table location and presenting them with a dynamic menu with real-time item availability and pricing.
Details: https://worth.com/how-the-introvert-economy-is-shifting-consumer-behaviors/
🇨🇳 Train: Europe vs China
On my recent ski trip, a friend came to the same place, I stayed by train on his way back home, and it took him from 8 am to far after midnight (1 am) to get to his home. This journey included many transfers and also lots of delays. That’s a whopping 17-hour trip.
When I try to explain to people how easy, fast, and comfortable Chinese and Japanese trains are, people in Europe have difficulty understanding that.
If Europe had a similar system as China or Japan, the above journey might have been only a 4 hr trip or so: 2 to 2.5 hours to Munich, 1.5 hours to Zell am See, and then a short taxi ride to Hinterglemm of 20 minutes.
One of the complaints of my friend was that there was not anything (tasty) to eat on the trains. In Chinese HSR trains, there is always a restaurant that delivers to your seat, and you order by mobile phone, but not only that you can even get a food delivery from outside the stations to your train seat. If you order one hour in advance, it’s very much possible to order a Burger King meal or a Dicos meal for example, and get it delivered to your seat.
🇦🇷/🇧🇪Argentina: virtual doormen / Belgium: virtual wine advice
In Argentina, many of the buildings have virtual porteros (doormen). Instead of the building contracting an employee, they outsource the task to a call center where a single portero can serve this function for multiple buildings.
Now with the coming (summer) release of ChatGPT-5, AI agents will be more common, and we might see something similar but then with virtual agents fairly soon.
The word “AI agents” is taking over the convo faster than United Boeing flights became the world’s biggest red flag.
What they are: AI that can reason, handle higher-order goals, come up with action plans, etc. Example:
AI today (specific task): “Write a blog post about X while following these guidelines”
Agents tomorrow (more general goals): “Draft a week’s worth of content based on the latest news in AI”
In other words: If today’s chatbots are like rearview cameras on a car, agents are like automatic parallel parking.
Details: https://www.theneurondaily.com/p/ai-agents-intro-2024
🐸Screaming Frog: discover internal link possibilities for larger sites
I have used Screaming Frog in the past, it’s a great tool for (technical) SEO site optimization. It helps find broken links, missing page titles and much more. A tip from Chris Long for especially larger sites, is to use it to find internal link possibilities. Note you need a paid account to do this:
Details: https://twitter.com/gofishchris/status/1770064150384771388
🇺🇸 Central Houston Nissan : 13.4 million views on one video
If you need to prove you can get a crazy lot of reach as a small and medium enterprise via TikTok, check out the ads from Central Houston Nissan. Their latest video has 21.4k on comments alone and more than 13.4 million views. A small selection of the comments:
Na. Now this is an ad!!! Give whoever was behind this a raise!
On our way to Central Houston Nissan 🤝
Makes me want a Nissan really bad
These videos for sure took a lot of people to their store.
Details: https://www.tiktok.com/@.centralhoustonnissan
🧐The Norman door principle in practice
A great example of the Norman Door principle.
The Norman Door principle refers to a design flaw where something's functionality is unclear or misleading. It's named after Don Norman, a design expert who identified this issue in everyday objects. It’s also very valid in online UX.
Don Norman said if you find yourself misusing the item, blame the designer not yourself.
https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/norman-doors-ux-design/
Pizza brands 🤣
Probably they sell “Papperoni” or “Morgharita” Pizza 🤣
Thank you for reading,
Greetings,
Alex