Not a day goes by without some exciting news about Target.

This time, Target has initiated “My Target Weekly,” another innovation that simplifies peoples life and improves their shopping experience.

The customizable version of its online weekly ad, which draws more than 1.2 million visitors each week, enables shoppers to create deal alerts that notifies them when their favorite items are on sale, to view coupons, see top 10 deals, and share them via Facebook and Twitter. Furthermore, shoppers can create their own mobile shopping lists.

While millions of students go back-to-school in these days, Facebook has partnered with some retailers to launch a new Universities on Facebook Page.

It shares tips on how to best use Facebook as a student on campus and helps college-based organizations publicize events, information, and foster school spirit.

More important (at least from a shopper marketing perspective), it brings deals, special price cuts and packages for students on everything.

On the lookout for innovative shopper research tools? Tobii Technology, the global market leader in eye tracking, recently came up with a new eye tracking system called Tobii Glasses™.

The wearable system consists of a pair of glasses, a data recording box, and IR markers for designating the Area of Analysis on a store shelf. Due to automatic data aggregation, there is no need to manual code and compile information, anymore.

While shoppers are browsing in shopping environments, these glasses help to gain insights into their behavior and personal experiences.

As a result, the user behaves more naturally giving the data a much higher level of validity.

This time (Wed August 18^th), Target took over a hotel in New York and put on the “Target Kaleidoscopic Fashion Spectacular.” Taking advantage of the glass facade of the hotel, Target displayed a huge light spectacle, part runway show and part dance theater, highlighting their Fall 2010 styles. 66 dancers, dressed in different fall styles, in 155 rooms performed a choreography synchronized with fast-paced lighting patterns and set to a music score.

Moreover, the event was broadcasted via live-stream on Target’s Facebook page.

Target really knows how to engage shoppers in new and exciting ways. Kudos!

The first topic of its revival is coupons. It may sound banal to many of you, but for me, coming from Germany, it is overwhelming how consumption in the US is fueled by this coupon-mania. They are everywhere. You get them in the mail. You see them in newspapers, online, magazines, direct mail sent to your home our even on your mobile device.

And it not only feels like almost everything is for free, sometimes it really is. If you pay enough attention and know where to find deals and coupons, it’s possible to drop your grocery bill by 50% or more.

To give you an example: I had seen a “buy one toothpaste get one free” offer in a circular from my neighborhood store. I also had a coupon on those from the store plus another coupon downloaded from the manufacturer’s website. So, I finally had to pay 1 cent for two toothpastes.

There are also a lot of blogs about current deals and a lot of people are sharing tips how to combine in-store sales with current coupons. Check out this blog for example: “Living rich with Coupons“.

Here is a video that demonstrates the author’s system of gathering coupons and then organizing them.

Not only can one individual person benefit from thrifty living, Groupons makes it a fun group event! It offers daily deals on cool things to do in your city, through the power of collective buying. Their purpose is to give their customers a “too good to be true” experience. But it works only if you get enough people to join you.

Last but not least, I saw this sign (on the right) in a restaurant yesterday. I guess I can’t help but simply HAVE to start clipping coupons, too. Otherwise I’ll be the only one in this country buying overpriced.

]]> http://shopperjourney.culturalfuel.com/?feed=rss2&p=1271 http://shopperjourney.culturalfuel.com/?p=1259 http://shopperjourney.culturalfuel.com/?p=1259#comments Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:31:39 +0000 Dirk Reinhardt http://shopperjourney.culturalfuel.com/?p=1259 Hello everyone!

Long time no write I know…

But yours truly is in the process of a transatlantic move and therefore things have been in a bit of flux. But we will be back bigger, better and more frequently and in fact, with more people contributing to this space.

We’d like for this to be a thriving source of shopper and retail inspiration and looking forward to an engaged conversation with all of you.

So as they say, watch this space! We will be back latest by end of July!

]]> http://shopperjourney.culturalfuel.com/?feed=rss2&p=1259 http://shopperjourney.culturalfuel.com/?p=1245 http://shopperjourney.culturalfuel.com/?p=1245#comments Fri, 30 Apr 2010 23:17:28 +0000 Dirk Reinhardt http://shopperjourney.culturalfuel.com/?p=1245 Pop-up’s have popped up everywhere! First, the trend was about shops that opened for limited times and then disappeared. Later, pop-up restaurants arrived on the scene.

But this one is special: a vintage English double decker bus, turned into a mobile restaurant with a view (also on Twitter and Facebook).

30 Seconds on the @WorldFare BUStaurant! from VidFu on Vimeo.

But the grocery store next to my home seems to be going a bit too far! Tampons, remedies (anti-virus), dish liquids and batteries next to food products, altogether in one price-promotion box (don’t perishable products like cream cheese and milk need to be kept cold, by the way?)!

I won’t mention the retailer’s name here, because really, this could be anyone. To call a spade a spade: this is not an exception. Instead, it’s the harsh reality in Germany’s retail environment, unfortunately.

Well, maybe we don’t want it to be different. I mean, the grocery market share of discounters in Germany is almost at 50%. So why spend money to build retail brands, then? Something is obviously totally wrong with the German retail environment!

There is this huge difference between telling people about the brand and letting them experience it for themselves. Most in-store experiences don’t keep up with the intended brand images. In the era of experience marketing, reality simply catches up with communication!

So, your in-store (and shopping) experience has to be in-line with the brand image, if you want to build your retail brand for real. Else, all your communication efforts are useless!

Apparel retailer GAP, currently having almost 550,000 Fans on Facebook, has added a new application. The “Lookbook”, developed in scope of the promotion of a new premium jeans collection, enables users on FB to create combinations of jeans, shirts and jackets. Each item or the matched outfit can be purchased on the GAP website, afterwards.

Although, it’s a nice idea, the application seems to be created quickly and I am missing any passion: there are only 5 x 5 combinations possible for men and women. Furthermore, it is not possible to personalize the outfit, I can’t take it away to my user profile in order to share it with my friends (only the link can be shared) and get their opinions. In short: I hope they will come up with a revised version soon, otherwise it’s really just a traditional lookbook and therefore of limited use value within the context of Facebook.

Unfortunately, most retailer advertising in Germany is (still) price driven, hard selling and not very creative.

But there are some exceptions – like the posters by pet food retailer Fressnapf.

Tomorrow March 24^th, at the Retail Advertising Summit in Wiesbaden, Fressnapf will be honored with the Merkur Award for creative trade communication. My esteemed colleague, Leo Burnett’s Client Service Director Andreas Cordt, will hold the laudatory speech.