Reinventing Shopping

A Manifesto for a New Market

Taken from the White Paper Conclusion:

"We are on the verge of a revolution in shopping. The traditional first port of call for shoppers when going to market has been the shop: a retail outlet that excels in the provision of product availability. Now shoppers are beginning to migrate en masse towards a new type of Added Value Buying Service; an emerging form of consumer service that excels in the provision buyer-centric information – information designed to help the shopper shop smarter, better and easier (including exercising better choice between retailers).

Added Value Buying Services seize on the opportunities of the unfolding ‘information age’ to help shoppers:

• Shop better, so they find products and services that meet their needs more fully and richly
• Shop cheaper, so that they pay less for more value
• Shop easier, so that they spend less time, money and effort achieving these desirable outcomes

A catalyst of change

Over the centuries ‘shops’ have changed dramatically in form: from the market stall and bazaar to out-of-town big box discounters and ‘temples of mammon’. But fundamentally, their content has not changed one iota: shops make products available for buyers to inspect and buy.

AVBS:

• Extend this exercise of choice of products beyond what happens to be offered in individual retailers to what is available on the market as a whole
• Extend the exercise of choice beyond products and services themselves to different product sources: different retailers, channels, etc
• Enrich the exercise of choice to help shoppers make more informed decisions, while reducing the cost and hassle of making these decisions
• Expand shoppers’ sphere of influence from (indirect) choice to (direct) voice
• Put buyer-centric information at the heart of retailing and marketing: the pivotal economic function of aligning supply to demand and connecting buyers to sellers

AVBS are a catalyst of far reaching change in:

• Shoppers’ habits and expectations
• Channels to market, for both buyers and sellers
• Mechanisms and processes of interaction and transaction between buyers and sellers

Opportunity or threat?

At first sight, AVBS represent a threat to sellers because they embody a dramatic shift in the balance of power from ‘the producer’ to ‘the consumer’. In fact, most sellers stand to benefit from this evolution. Yes, it will get harder for sellers to extract ‘bad’ profits from customers by taking advantage of their relative ignorance and inertia, but suppliers who excel in product/service value and innovation can only benefit.

Indeed, by creating mechanisms which allow sellers to communicate with the right buyers about the right things at the right times, AVBS will open up new opportunities for sellers: to fundamentally re-engineer their go-to-market processes, channels, strategies and costs – to improve marketing efficiency and effectiveness at the same time.

In addition, by providing shoppers with voice as well as choice, AVBS will open the floodgates of accelerated, co-created innovation.

In other words, AVBS represent an opportunity for rich new ‘win-wins’ between producers and consumers; sellers and buyers. By reinventing the processes of matching and connecting, they will trigger a new productivity revolution in modern economies.

AVBS are just the first wave of the coming person centric transformation: AVBS are just one form of Personal Information Management service, and Personal Information Management Services are just one form of person-centric service. Collectively, these emerging new person-centric services are poised to transform the ways individuals interact and transact with organisations in their roles as employees and citizens as well as consumers.