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There's way too much cynicism here and a lack of insight as to how consumer retail works. 'Privacy invasion' aside there's a lot of obvious benefits to this.
by jollybean 5y ago
There's way too much cynicism here and a lack of insight as to how consumer retail works.
'Privacy invasion' aside there's a lot of obvious benefits to this.
1) Impactful Displays - this will increase sales. In your local coffee shop, going from the static nice pictures, to 'active displays' unambiguously generates more attention.
It's a little bit like having 'nice photo' menus vs 'empty menus' for regular dining. Obviously a nice restaurant doesn't want that - but for everything else, it helps turnover.
2) They can make the 'presentation layer' spiffy without having to worry abut what's underneath. A lot of effort goes into making sure everything looks 'right' on the shelf. Any kind of disorderly shelf gives customers a bad impression.
3) Easy pricing changes. My local 'Drug Mart' they have the 'pricing girl' constantly changing tags. I literally recognize the woman. With the prices on a display, it makes it much easier to manage.
4) Creative possibilities: beyond just displaying 'what's inside' there will be other opportunities. Possibly more detailed product information.
My biggest concern would be frankly the size of those screens and their cost and maintenance - and would the added benefits work out in the metrics. For 3 mid-sized screens at your coffee shop - yes. But for 10-20 large screens (that move, and could be broken) in the back of your grocery store, maybe not.
This is definitely a worthwhile retail experiment.
I suggest we may be seeing a lot more of this in the future.
Maybe not, but it's entirely possible.
- kazoomonger 5y ago> generates more attention Fuck you. That's really all I have to say about that. I'm sorry this comment doesn't pass the general HN guidelines, but I hope someday you realize why you should feel ashamed for even thinking that this is a good idea.
- jollybean 5y agoAd-hominem aside, I don't even know what you're getting at. You realize that 100% of the packaging in the store is designed for that reason? And it's why everything isn't in brown paper bags?
- jodrellblank 5y agoI suspect they're getting at the idea that taking people's attention by abusing the fact that people involuntarily look at distracting flashy moving things is bad, not good. If 100% of the packaging in the store was animated and flashing, would you think that was a worse experience, at the same time as being more attention grabbing?
- unishark 5y agoThere's too much cynicism everywhere nowadays. It seems that modern society has become full-on technophobic. Even HN discussions, which you'd think would be a bunch of technophiles. However, the headline and original twitter thread do especially tend to attract such a crowd. If it was a thread titled ""look at this amazing high-tech convenience store in Tokyo" or something, the discussion may hove gone completely differently. Though in fairness there's also a more wonkish HN-specific mockery of an over-engineered product failing to perform as well as a cheap pane of glass. I got a tablet PC in the relatively early days and people would joke how their 99 cent notepad graphically outperformed my $2000 fujitsu. But obviously my clunky early tablet PC could do far more other things even then.
- aaron695 5y ago> There's way too much cynicism here If you sold this as AR using expensive glasses everyone is a believer. > Easy pricing changes. Prices that change by the hour, or as stock runs low is an interesting idea. Corporate could bring in a hourly special. Corporate has total brand control. Corporate can pull items by hiding them if said company doesn't want to pay for peak. The camera can give you personal specials. The power is in corporate control. The weakness is the complexity you mention. I suspect the cameras might be the what's really going on. Camera's by themselves wouldn't be acceptable. Comes with fancy screens though...