Shop... And Make the
World a Better Place
By Morley Winograd
Having totally disrupted
American politics with
the election of
President Barack Obama,
America's youngest and
largest generation,
Millennials (born
1982-2003), are about to
overturn the rules of
retailing with equally
dramatic implications
for the country's
economy. Underpinning
this shift is the
deployment of broadband
speed mobile services
that take full advantage
of the capabilities of
America's favorite new
toy-- smart phones. But
just as Millennials
transformed the Internet
from a libertarian tool
for individual action to
one that provides a new
capability for
connecting everyone
through social networks,
these new broadband
services will be put to
work in ways that
reflect the values and
beliefs of Millennials,
especially their
fondness for doing good
while doing well.
The FCC's recent
announcement of a
National Broadband Plan,
almost exactly a decade
after President George
W. Bush announced he was
thinking about having
one, establishes some
very ambitious goals for
the deployment of a
faster broadband
infrastructure for the
country. The plan's
first goal is to provide
at least 100 million
U.S. homes with
affordable access to
broadband download
speeds of 100 megabits
per second by 2020. But
the plan's second goal
is even more ambitious,
suggesting that the
United States should
lead the world in mobile
innovation, with the
"fastest and most
extensive wireless
networks of any nation."
This will be
accomplished by freeing
up vast swaths of
spectrum, currently
owned by older media,
that these new broadband
speed mobile networks
will need to operate.
As NDN fellow Rob
Shapiro recently
pointed out, the
economic benefits of
this kind of
infrastructure
deployment can lead to
the direct creation of
500,000 new jobs over
the next five years. But
many times more jobs
will be created by the
way "that a basic
infrastructure such as
broadband stimulates
additional economic
activity, much as
highways and railroads
once did. Building out
these networks creates a
platform for the
development of thousands
of new applications,"
and that's where
Millennials' behavior
and use of technology
come into play.
A
recent Nielsen study
of generational shopping
habits found that
Millennials make the
fewest trips of any
generation to any and
all retail settings-from
big box stores to the
local drugstore-but
really enjoy in-person
shopping on those
relatively fewer
occasions when they
engage in it. "On a
typical mission, they
know how to find what
they need and are less
likely to shop the
entire store," the
report concluded,
reflecting the
generation's penchant
for going online to
research their purchases
before they take offline
action. But once they
have a smart phone in
their hands, and about
one out of every three
Millennials already owns
one, this distinction
between virtual and
physical buying
behaviors will blur
almost to the point of
extinction.
About half of all mobile
phones in the US today
are smart phones. The
iPhone alone now has
eight times the number
of users as AOL and is
enjoying the fastest
adoption rate of any
Internet service,
eclipsing the record set
by the Netscape browser
in the mid-90s by a
factor of five.
(pdf) Almost every smart
phone comes with a
camera and a GPS or
location identification
application that, unlike
PC Internet access,
enables the network to
know where you are at
any moment in time. This
combination of
capabilities enables new
"location-based
services" or
applications that takes
the information about
where you are and
provides you with
information you might
find helpful based on
your location. So, for
instance, you will soon
be able to use your
phone's camera to take a
snapshot of a
square-shaped bar code
on a particular piece of
merchandise and send
that information to a
service provider who
will tell you where you
could find that item for
less money at a store
nearby or perhaps even
where to find it in the
color or size you need.
That rather mundane use
of the technology may
make the retailing
industry even more
efficient than it is
today, but that's not
what will soon transform
this key engine of
economic growth.
The real dramatic
changes will occur when
retailers link the
Millennial Generation's
constant use of mobile
phones with its penchant
for helping causes.
Already, Millennial
entrepreneurs are
building social network
sites to link their
generational cohort's
desire to improve the
world with opportunities
for doing so. Chris
Golden and Nick Triano's
myImpact.org website
recently won $25,000 in
the PepsiRefresh
challenge to help them
expand their beta site
that connects service
volunteers with each
other and with local
opportunities to help.
Chris Hughes, one of the
founders of Facebook,
and the creator of
MyBarackObama.com, just
announced
plans for jumo.com
that will do similar
things for those wanting
to make a more global
impact. With Facebook
and YouTube becoming the
preferred destinations
of mobile users
accessing the Net, it is
only a matter of time
before sites like these
will attract Millennials
on their cell phones in
record numbers as well.
This same type of
connection between where
you shop and what cause
you want to support has
just become a newly
popular app on smart
phones.
The capability is being
accessed today by each
of the three hundred
thousand iPhone users
who downloaded the "CauseWorld"
application in its first
two months of
availability. Users earn
"Karma points" by
visiting retailers who
have registered with the
service in order to get
Millennials to "check
in" to their store. By
letting the iPhone's GPS
service know you are
physically in the store,
each visit generates
more points that can
ultimately be traded in
for a contribution to
one of seventeen
selected charities, paid
for by the service's
corporate sponsors.
"Scanning for Karma"
becomes a great way to
multi-task for
Millennials with more
time than money. And for
retailers it moves the
decision on where
someone shops away from
price comparison models
of services such as "ShopSavvy"
toward a more powerful
generational motivation
to shop at companies
that support causes
Millennials believe in.
The application's
popularity is just the
latest demonstration
that, in a Millennial
era, the brand is
political.
The technological
brilliance of the Obama
presidential campaign
was the way it focused
its "Hope
Factory"
organizational efforts
on moving online
interest to offline
action. Now that same
strategy will be
deployed to change
shopping to an activity
that helps make the
world a better place.
Those retailers and
carriers that take
advantage of the
opportunity broadband
internet mobile
computing provides will
soon be rewarded with
victory in their sales
campaigns by a
generation committed to
creating change it can
believe in.
