Travels in time: The Apple Watch and its implications for the future of online and offline commerce

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Before the launch of the Apple Watch, every Apple product launch followed a similar pattern: a product announcement on stage in March, June or September; a shipping date announced some days to a couple of months later; and usually about a week before the launch, lines of people starting to form in front of all of Apple’s stores.

There is always a CNN report interviewing the first person waiting in...

2 June 2015 | E-Commerce

Defining the ultimate wearable technology – and what it means for marketers

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I sense a revolution on the horizon. A revolution that will slow the advance of technology, but one not stopping the advance. This revolution will redefine who and how the users, consumers, customers will use the next stage of integrated (wearable) convergence technology.

Defining wearable technology

There is, as you can imagine, a broad and somewhat vague definition available of wearable technology. One definition includes the term...

27 May 2015 | Customer Experience

How marketers can use wearables and end-user insights to improve online customer interaction

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Consumers make their minds up about a company within just a few seconds of viewing their website. Marketers are therefore under pressure to ensure it entices them into engaging with their brand and making a purchasing decision. But all too frequently there’s a disparity between the B2B brand messages on websites and what customers really want to know, which holds things back.

Research from McKinsey revealed that effective supply management and...

7 April 2015 | Branding

How wearables will change the mobile marketing landscape

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Opinion While the Apple Watch is dominating the headlines right now, the larger class of wearables are going to trigger widespread shifts in consumer behaviours up and down the customer journey. Their incredibly personal nature, constant connectivity, and new use cases—from opening hotel room doors to buying coffee with a tap—will combine to appeal to a broad audience, beyond the early adopters who will buy Apple Watches in the first few...

23 March 2015 | Advertising

Why the in-store customer experience is key for marketing wearable tech

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Almost half of Britons surveyed by experiential agency Fizz Experience are willing to spend £111 ($164) on a piece of wearable technology, with a majority saying the in-store experience is key to their making a purchase.

Even though online research was the most common method of looking up new products, according to 41% of respondents, 84% will ultimately purchase in-store, validating the ‘webrooming’ approach to technology...

13 March 2015 | Commerce

Google halts Glass sales days after Tesco announces its first Glass app

Tesco announced earlier this week that it was the first retailer to realise the potential of Google Glass. Yesterday Google revealed that it is halting sales of the device. It was a marketers worst nightmare especially for a retailer that has endured PR disaster after disaster in recent months.

Tesco had triumphed the launch of its Tesco Grocery Glassware, allowing users to browse goods, view nutritional information and add items to their shopping basket all hands-free. This would...

16 January 2015 | Advertising

Wearing thin: Is wearable tech an ethical nightmare for PR and comms professionals?

The CIPR hosted a debate last week at the House of Commons on the implications of wearable technology and how such devices raise ethical concerns around the potential use of the data they provide for marketing and PR purposes. However, these devices pose the same kind of challenges as many current technologies do, argues Aspectus PR’s Garry Dix. Last Monday saw the CIPR ask whether or not ‘wearable technology is an ethical nightmare for PR, marketing and communication professionals’,...

17 July 2014 | Customer Experience

Spreadshirt CEO Philip Rooke on how to make wearable tech work

Philip Rooke, the chief executive of Spreadshirt, is an opinionated man. He believes five years will pass before people make “real money” out of wearable technology, as well as thinking that Amazon’s drone delivery service is “going to be near impossible to make a reality.”

Yet his interest in wearable technology goes beyond the commercial. As a long-time user of Fitbit, Rooke believes the ‘hype’ around wearable tech is simply repeating...

14 March 2014 | Campaigns

Two in three people ‘too embarrassed’ to wear Google Glass

Two thirds of UK people surveyed claim they would not be comfortable wearing Google Glass products, according to a survey from LoveMyVouchers.co.uk.

The survey, which asked 1132 of LoveMyVouchers’ subscribers, had pretty negative viewpoints for Glass all round.

68% of respondents said they wouldn’t be comfortable wearing Google Glass products in public, whilst 64% said they wouldn’t be comfortable talking to someone wearing a Google Glass...

7 January 2014 | Branding