As direct marketers, we know a lot about consumers. While more and more safeguards will be put in place to restrict our access to information about them, the fact is that whatever the restrictions, we will still know a lot about consumers. That’s our prediction. But here’s another prediction: In just a few years, the tables will turn. Very soon, consumers will be able to know a lot about us as well.
A graduate student at the MIT Media Lab has invented a handheld device with a scanner and a memory chip that he calls the corporate fallout detector. It’s set up to sound off like a Geiger counter — you scan the bar code on a product and the worse that company’s history of pollution and ethics violations, the more furiously the fallout detector clicks.
A research sociologist at Microsoft has invented something similar. His device uses a scanner, a handheld computer and a wireless Internet connection. You scan the bar code on a product and the device searches the Internet for information about any dangers or hazards.
It won’t be too long before things like these are commercialized. And when they are, retail shopping will change forever. Imagine a consumer making a trip to the store with one of these handheld devices. Browsing items on the shelf, he or she would scan the bar codes to learn which products contain ingredients that trigger his or her allergies or are not on his or her diet. This would be very useful. But there’s more.
Consumers concerned about the environment could set up their devices to scan environmental databases for an instantaneous rating of how a company stacks up. This could be done for any issue — Third World labor practices, trade with certain nations, product safety, workplace safety, labor relations, contributions to political parties, support of charitable organizations, presence of women or people of color in top management, truth in advertising and more. Indeed, anything at all.
The only requirement would be an accessible database of pertinent information. But that’s not likely to be a problem. Without a doubt, thousands of databases would be put together for consumers to use. In fact, many such databases already exist. These devices would provide convenient access.
And the impact of handhelds won’t be limited to retailing; they will change direct marketing forever, too. As consumers become accustomed to shopping with them, their expectations will evolve to reflect a new sense of empowerment and control. Just as the Internet raised expectations about convenience, price comparisons, service and access — thereby effecting broad changes in consumer behavior — so will these handheld devices make consumers more demanding about full disclosure and corporate transparency on issues that go far beyond information about product performance and customer service guarantees. Before consumers buy anything through any channel, they will demand that marketers, including direct marketers, tag every item with a scannable bar code, whether that product is on shelf, online, on television, in a catalog or in a mailer. Competition among the makers of different handheld devices will quickly lead to new inventions that enable scanners to identify products being offered to consumers in channels that have not provided bar codes in the past, like many DM channels.
Indeed, consumers most likely to make greater demands on direct marketers are the best customers of direct marketers. Research conducted by Direct and Yankelovich among DM shoppers (“The Whys Behind the Buys,” August 2003) found that consumers who purchased something through a direct channel in the past six months are more likely than non-purchasers to boycott companies and to register complaints when they don’t like something. Control is of much greater importance to DMers’ best customers and thus they will be the most affected by new technologies that provide even more control. Bottom line, this new revolution in shopping will turn all forms of marketing upside down.
With these devices in hand, consumers will be able to provide us with an instantaneous referendum on the ways our companies operate. Handhelds are going to shift the balance of power. No matter what we do or say in our marketing, consumers will have a new, user-friendly means of getting another perspective.
That’s our prediction, and it’s not farfetched. Indeed, it’s pretty much here already. Now is the time to look ahead. Because once consumers start scanning and acting accordingly, we will have to make civics more central to our direct marketing in order to be responsive to the new factors that will hold sway over why people buy.
J. WALKER SMITH (l) is president of Yankelovich Inc., Atlanta.
CRAIG WOOD is president of Yankelovich’s Monitor MindBase division in Chapel Hill, NC.
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