Count 'em

You can't avoid the commentary from the vendor community.

• "There is no such thing as a store ... retail is now portable."
• "Today's highly empowered consumer is fully in charge of the brand experience.  Brands that fail to relate to this social shopper do so at their own peril."

If you want to do an experiment to see if the mobile/social shopper is a reality, take your Android phone into your favorite mall-based retailer ... and take a video of the first 100 customers that enter the store.  Out of 100 customers, how many use a smartphone or tablet to enjoy a fully empowered mobile/social consumer experience?

Maybe this is the future ... but you're not in the future, you're required to hit sales expectations TODAY, you have to deliver the p&l for 2011.

So, again, take your smartphone in to your favorite retail brand, and take a video of the first 100 customers that enter the store.  Out of 100 customers, how many use a smartphone or tablet to enjoy a fully empowered mobile/social consumer experience?

And I realize that the retailer may not have a mobile website or an app ... but that's irrelevant, right?  We're taught that these customers are interacting via social media, and tablets and smartphones easily pull up websites so that shoppers are fully empowered.

Give the experiment a try.  In fact, if you give the experiment a try, I'll consider publishing your findings on this blog.

Give the experiment a try.