Real Time Marketing ADIDAS adiVerse: A new shopping experience based on POS Mass Customization

Adidas in cooperation with Intel created adiVerse, a 3D touch-screen, interactive display that increases substantially the assortment of retailers: 8.000 sport shoes can be displayed and customers can search for them, examine them from different angles and order. The system recognizes the shopper’s gender and displays the proper product selection. Adidas, like many other producers of sport articles has quite an extensive experience in online mass customization.

The display developed by Intel as part of their Connected Store vision aims at offering personalized and customized products in a traditional retailing environment, offering in other words traditional shoppers an advantage that so far only online shopping could offer.

The High Street strikes back? Let's wait for the official launch of the service during the London Olympics next year.
ps. an interesting and relevant to Real Time Marketing / mass customization article of ACCENTURE just relesed

Coca Cola's new soda fountain dispenser brings Mass Customization in the Point-of-Sale

Something really original; In an article posted in The Pitch Owen Morris revealed in February the plans of Coca Cola to come to the market with a new proprietary fountain dispenser that will be able to offer more than 100 different drinks!!! How could a soda fountain have space for the enormous stock required in order to offer such variety? No problem, they simply have developed a way to mix the drink in the machine! The news was announced on 28 April in a company press release revealing the name of the product: FREESTYLE. Let's wait and see. The next step? Maybe 150 variants of the Mars chocolate bar in a vending machine?

Manufacture on Demand (or Have It Your Way) II

Manufacture on Demand is an activity made possible by technologies in the Web 2.0 /Social Media domain. In a model I have developed presenting a classification of the Social Media as marketing tools the Manufacture on Demand appears in the 5th column: Social media as means of personalizing the customer experience. * The theoretical basis of the manufacture-on-demand principle is the (contradictory) concept of Mass Customization. The tool used in all these application is called Configurator. In the site Configurator Database you can explore the world of configurators. Prof. Frank Piller is one of the researchers with rich contributions in the subject.

* A working paper about using the Social media as marketing tools is available to those interested. Just send me an email in e.constantinides@utwente.nl

Manufacture on Demand (or Have It Your Way)

People who asked me ten years ago if the Web is the suitable channel for selling fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) like bread, butter, beer, candy, soft drinks and tomato ketchup got a categorical no for answer. But things are changing. If you ask me the same thing today I will answer to you: Of course!
What has changed is that we moved from Web 1.0 to the Web 2.0 era. The new online challenge is to manufacture and deliver customized products of all kinds to customers who are not satisfied with what they find in the supermarket or high-street shop, looking for something very personal.
The revolutionary approach of Dell Computers allowing online customizing and ordering of PCs in the 90s is becoming a routine today for an increasing number of products including FMCGs. Today you can customize (or even design ) online your T-Shirt, sport shoes, soft drinks, paper tissues, candy, tomato ketchup and beer. These products can be ordered and delivered at your doorstep, in many cases becoming available to other customers on line. The amazing capabilities of Web 2.0 applications combined with the explosive growth of broadband made this possible.
The list of customized products in the Web is growing every day and although some of them are not yet available everywhere it seems that the dream of Mass Customization is quickly becoming a reality. Print-on-Demand revolutionized the printing business but the Manufacture-on-Demand will most probably revolutionize FMCG production and retailing pushing the frontiers of branding and product innovation to new directions. The Long Tail can celebrate, it is taken now really seriously.