January 14, 2008
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NOT NECESSARILY, HE SAYS
Microsoft is working to create shopping carts, soon to be tested on the East Coast, with video screens that show your previously-loaded shopping list, flash advertisements at you based on which aisle you’re in, and let you scan and check out without a clerk. But ‘”This is not all necessarily about bombarding consumers, about targeting advertising,” said Scott Ferris, general manager of Microsoft’s Advertiser and Publisher Solutions group. “It’s about also making the shopping experience better for the consumer.”‘
Not necessarily. Huh.
What the heck is “the shopping experience”? What a stupid phrase. And do they really want to “make the experience better”? for shoppers? If they did, they wouldn’t be putting video screens on shopping carts. Better in what way? By what standard?
Why are things “experiences” now, instead of just stuff you do? Because that way marketing can target you and craft you into being the kind of creature they want you to be — a passive responder to other people’s desires, the market’s desire to make you a consumer of their stuff, stuff you never knew you wanted till the market told you that you want it — see Calvin and Hobbes. Instead of a responder to your own natural desires; an initiator of your own conduct and attitudes, you become a consumer instead of a doer.
Comments (4)
True, true. I cannot understand why I would want a previously-loaded shopping list to appear. And .. am I giving this thing information on me? Oh, no no no no no no! THAT’S not gonna happen! If these things ever make it and get over here to the West, I’m going to start shopping for only what I can carry in my two hands.
Heheh… you know, 200 years ago people didn’t have a shopping experience when they got their groceries… I can just picture people going out behind the house for their fruits and vegetables, and seeing their little digital screen as they walk among the turnip greens, plucking the ripe ones and sticking them in a plastic bag, “Let’s see… oh! It tells me that while I’m getting the greens, I should check out the green beans to the right! And the carrots to the left! And oh, I need okra! Gosh, I had forgotten I needed all of this stuff; what would I have done without my little digital reminder-dealy!” ….
Or imagine hunters… “Hmm… I think I’ll sit here and wait and see if anything comes around during the next hour. But I’ll check my shopping list and see if I need anything else around here, first. …. *checks* … oh! I need boysenberries, and some nutmeg, and …”
yeah. That’s retarded.
A fresh perspective on marketing, certainly. The part about scanning and checking out does sound good, not because I don’t like someone scanning my things but because those self-check out things that they have now are very inconvenient. Sometimes they are the only ones open and then the computer has a big problem with how you placed your bags on the weigher… blah blah. But I suppose with the good things technology brings to the marketplace comes preposterous and irritating marketing schemes to make our lives more complicated.
An experience? Definitely. If it could help me do shopping faster, than I’m all for it. For me, the shopping experience is all about the tension before going in, and the relief upon going out. (Except if I’m buying wine, but that’s a different story.)
So it would either
a: Shorten my shopping, thus enabling me to get on with my life and get to the pleasurable sensation of relief faster or
b: Make my shopping more painful, thus heightening the opposing sensation of relief.