Retail Marketing Audience Shrinking

Retailers are losing their traditional television audiences to cable, their radio listeners to satellite services and newspaper readers to the Internet. So Vestcom, a company that makes price labels that adorn shelves nationwide is developing a different way to reach shoppers: video monitors attached to store shelves.

"You’re in the store. You’re making a decision and they have the last chance to try to influence you to buy their product," said Tim McKenzie, executive vice president and director of sales and marketing at Vestcom, which produces shelf tags for thousands of stores including Kroger Co., Target Corp. and Walgreen Co.

"It is where the industry is going in terms of trying to redirect advertising dollars to what they call the last three feet of the marketing plan," he said.
. . .
"Consumers are spontaneous and if you can catch their attention, that’s going to increase the chance that they will look at your product," said Jack Taylor, a professor of retailing at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama.
-- http://business.bostonherald.com/technologyNews/view.bg?articleid=132692

Interesting the lengths marketers have to go to these days. It's like they're literally finding ways to make the products jump up and down, crying out, "Me! ME! Pick me! I'm the best!" as you pass by them on the shelves. The article also mentions that Vestcom last year introduced static colored tags-- these, as well as the video monitors, are essentially an attempt at shelf-side education of products.

No wonder, then, that futurists like Bill Gates, Frank Feather talk about the "high-touch" that future consumers demand and why economist Paul Zane Pilzer predicts that the future belongs to those who can serve in the role of product educators (a function of high-touch). Combine that with loyalty incentives and a range of no-, low-, and high-tech product ordering and delivery options to fit your client, and you've got a winning combination.

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