We don’t shop for products the way we did a decade ago. Back then, apps, more commonly known as programs, were for computers only. Our phones were not that “smart.” If a phone had a camera it was probably only a pixel or two. And the Internet was a source for research more than socializing or shopping.

Yes, Amazon and eBay launched in the mid-90s, but they were each still establishing merit as useful commerce sites for the everyday consumer. We may have done some browsing online, but over-the-phone and in-store shopping dominated commerce.

Our shopping habits have changed considerably as technology advanced. Retailers began to embrace online commerce by promoting online buying with new tech terminology such as ‘Cyber Monday’ deals.

When the iPhone was released, perpetual Internet access began to change the way we discovered products and made purchases, among other things. Deal-of-the-day sites hit the scene, and saving money online became easier and actually convenient.

Technology is allowing us to find better, more useful ways to shop. Luckily, we don’t have to wait until the next decade to experience the future of shopping.

• 10 Tech Innovations That Will Change How You Shop
• How to Market Innovative Products and Services
• How do I Find new Product Ideas?

10 Tech Innovations That Will Change How You Shop

Check out how these 10 latest commerce innovations will dramatically alter how you shop.

1. Product Visualization in Augmented Reality
Don’t be fooled by Photoshopped products. Finding that the product shipped to your doorstep is far from how it was depicted online has long frustrated customers. It has also inconvenienced retailers due to excess returns and negative reviews. But now, with augmented reality, we can try products as if they were physically present before making a purchase.

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A leader in the field is Paris-based Augment, which works with e-commerce merchants to integrate “Try at Home” options into existing online shopping models. Using an iOS or Android device, you can see a realistic view of a product from all angles and how it will fit in your own home.

2. Smart Shopping Carts for In-Browser Automatic Deals
Sure you can laboriously go from comparison engine to comparison app in search of the best possible coupon-discounted price. Or, you can let the best bargains come to you automatically.

You can shop at a regular e-tailer while using a smart shopping cart that automatically applies discounts, special offers, and third-party markdowns when available. Sounds simple enough, yet no one single app, website, or even retailer has this down to an exact science—yet.

One frontrunner in the smart shopping cart race to perfection is Mavatar, which allows you to shop online across various retailers while using a single smart shopping cart that applies all available discounts in real time.

3. In-Stream Social Payments
Since we can pay with a credit card, PayPal, gift card, Amazon Payments, or even a QR code or barcode, why is it so hard to check out on social sites? Social media isn’t exactly commerce-friendly yet and that’s the one piece of the social media puzzle no brand seems to have a finger on.

Consumers are on Facebook and Twitter religiously, yet buying and selling hasn’t seamlessly integrated into these sites as once predicted.

Now with some of the first successful integrations of in-stream buying, social shopping may be about to change. Brands such as Puma, Taco Bell, the Portland Trail Blazers, and Green Day have all run payment collecting social network campaigns via social commerce platform Chirpify.

A socially streamlined multi-channel ecommerce platform, Chirpify allows you to make transactions on social networks in-stream without interrupting the standard social media experience. Using this model, buying, selling, and donating are performed via a simple keyword or #hashtag, without your having to leave the site or pull out a credit card.

To participate you need an account with Chirpify, as well as a connected credit card, debit card; bank routing, or PayPal information. While the social commerce concept certainly isn’t unheard of, only recently have campaigns successfully integrated in-stream social payments within mainstream social networks without backlash from either the network or fans.

Social payments are coming and you can expect to see more brands prompting you to comment with a hashtag or keyword on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest in the coming months.

4. Mobile Loyalty Apps for Shopping That Fills Your Wallet
Shopping may not be your cup of tea, but the prospect of cash rewards may help change your mind. An increasing number of incentive programs have come into place to reward shoppers.

Apps in particular have made snatching shopping rewards simpler than ever. Ibotta rewards you with actual cash rather than coupons for scanning product images and barcodes as you browse. ShopKick, on the other hand, rewards you for simply entering stores.

The geo-targeting app delivers “kicks” to customers that accumulate and are redeemable for free gift cards. Shopkick also alerts you to available discounts as you enter stores for a highly personalized shopping experience.

Both apps approach the increase in mobile shopping from a new direction; by focusing on rewarding you for shopping you are already doing, rather than distracting you with deals you may not want or need.

5. Apps That Let You Teleport Customizable Gifts
The term “teleport” may be a stretch, but making an item available in a new location without physically moving it is the basis behind this app. Jifiti allows you to digitally transfer physical or online items from one location to the next via transmittable gift codes.

Simply find a tangible gift you would like to send, scan the item’s standard barcode, and send a redemption code to the recipient. You can also shop from a variety of in-app and online retailers including Nike, Brookstone, and GameStop, and send a similar redemption code to the recipient.

Although the recipient is required to download the app in order to redeem their code, this allows for increased flexibility and customization in gifted items. Sending a pre-paid gift code but not an actual item allows the recipient to customize their gift in their own desired colors, sizes, and styling.

This model doesn’t just remove obsolete, easy-to-lose physical gift cards from the equation, it also eliminates the need for returns or exchanges. Jifiti generated buzz at SXSW 2013, but expect other similar shopping models to come into play.

6. Capri 3D Sensors
On the retailer front, sensing technology is also evolving into a trick of the trade for monitoring customers and creating a better shopping experience. Primesense, known for the innovative sensing technology behind Microsoft’s Kinect, has adapted tiny motherboard sensors for retail purposes in what they call Shopperception.

This advanced retail technique utilizes the smallest Primesense sensor, Capri 3D, to monitor shopping behavior. The sensors not only track customer movements, but also specific actions—such as when a customer picks up a product and replaces it without buying, all the way to the final purchase point.

The resulting data provides detailed insight as to how consumers shop at a specific store, and can also display heat maps associated with shopper activity. Although the customer isn’t directly affected by or aware of the monitoring, retailers will soon be able to optimize stores and even an entire shopping experience based on more precise shopper preferences.

7. The BodyKinectizer
It was only a matter of time before 3D sensing technology became part of the dressing room experience. Adidas Group Global IT is leading the digital charge toward creating a more interactive shopping process with the BodyKinectizer body scanner and CyberFit interactive fitting room.

A state-of-the-art body scanner, the BodyKinectizer allows you to virtually dress either at home or in-store. This process involves scanning a customer and displaying the scan on-screen for virtual dressing. Hand motions are used to switch between products or change colors and sizes.

The BodyKinectizer uses the Microsoft Kinect console, making the scanner an affordable option for customers looking to shop more realistically from the comfort of their home.

8. CyberFit
CyberFit dressing rooms feature the BodyKinectizer, but also include functionality for integrating additional sensory features into the shopping experience.

These interactive fitting rooms are designed to place you in an appropriate semi-realistic 3D virtual world for any product you hold, and focus on digitally interlacing all customer senses to encourage a full sensory shopping experience. The aesthetically pleasing rooms also allow you to gather product details, recommendations and connect to social networks.

9. Shoppable Windows
The latest so-called “Wall as a Mall” shopping screens to hit the streets of Manhattan this month bring us more than just giant buying screens. The touch screens exploit unused store fronts by turning idle spaces into 24-hour catalog-style browsing areas for on-the-go shoppers.

Branded as “Shoppable Windows,” the nine-foot-wide screens are being tested around San Jose, California, and most recently in Manhattan’s chic SoHo neighborhood.

Simply enter your phone number, receive a confirmation email, and pay upon couriered delivery via eBay’s mobile payment service PayPal Here. You can schedule delivery times with windows as specific as one hour.

While touch screens are now commonplace in bricks-and-mortar stores, Shoppable Windows’ around-the-clock shopping and flexible delivery options brings conveniences normally reserved for online and mobile shopping to street shoppers anytime, anywhere.

10. Google Glass
Google Glass will certainly change how you shop. The much-hyped augmented reality glasses will bring all product specs, news, and other content involving a brand, product, or service into focus.

Factor in Google Glass apps and direct and indirect advertising, and Google Glass will offer an entirely new way to find, try, and buy. Although the full implications of this technology aren’t yet clear, Google Glass could seamlessly merge in-store shopping as we know it with social, mobile, and online shopping.

How to Market Innovative Products and Services

Marketing any product or service is vital to its success, highlighting the benefits of your product or service to existing and potential customers.

You will need to develop a keen understanding of where your innovation is positioned in the marketplace. This will provide the basis of a marketing plan for both the initial launch and beyond.

1. Understand your market

Plan how you will carry out market research

• Existing information can be useful. But you may also need to talk to potential customers or carry out other primary market research.
• Quantitative research gives you hard facts and figures about the number of people or businesses you can target, and how they spend their money.
• Qualitative research focuses on how your potential customers think and behave.

Assess the market

• You need to know how many people will benefit from your innovative product or service, what competition there is, and the most cost-effective method of reaching the market with your offering.
• If selling business-to-business, you can look at different market segments by dividing it up according to size of business, output, location and type.
• For business-to-consumer sales, you might segment the market by socio-economic grouping, age, gender, marital status, lifestyle or occupation.

Focus on the potential demand for your new offering

You need to find out:

• who is likely to buy what you are offering;
• what they will buy and in what quantities;
• where they prefer to buy;
• when they will buy;
• why they will buy your product or service;
• how they buy and how often.

Benchmark your product or service against those of potential competitors

• Comparing your offer against those of potential competitors may give you ideas for your own developments.
• Trying competitors’ products or services is the easiest way of understanding the competition. Carrying out a detailed analysis of their strengths and weaknesses will give you an idea of how to establish a market niche or take market share from them.
• Look at other sectors to see how they are innovating. You may be able to make your product or service more attractive to a wider selection of markets and increase your chances of success.

Make sure you are aware of any legal or regulatory issues

• For example, product standards you will have to meet.

2. Conduct market research

Use free sources of information

•  Trade associations often collect data from their members, which will give you a good insight into your industry.
• Large libraries and universities have relevant statistics. University departments or experts working in your field are likely to have data they can provide free of charge or at a low cost.
• Government databases are a useful source of statistics. The Government-run Office for National Statistics can provide data on a variety of issues.
• You can search for information online. But if you do, make sure the data is recent and from a reliable source. Cross-check what you find, if possible.
• Many specialist trade publications offer free subscriptions or unrestricted access to their websites.
• Ensure you do not use research simply to confirm your own viewpoint. Be realistic when analysing information.

Consider buying existing research

• You can purchase market reports and research on your industry or potential customers from specialist research companies. For example, GlobalData, the Economist Intelligence Unit, Euromonitor or Mintel.

3. Talk to potential customers

Understand the needs of customers by talking directly to them

• You will need to talk to potential customers to understand their needs, rather than just trying to anticipate what they want.

Listen to feedback

• Engage with potential customers when developing your product or service, rather than simply hoping it will meet their needs.
• Customers frequently see problems or future developments before manufacturers, because they use products everyday or are selling them on to people who complain if they do not come up to scratch.

Keep your distance

• Do not base research on the opinions of friends and family. You risk hearing what you want to hear, rather than honest opinions.
• If possible, hand the analysis over to someone who is not involved in the project.

Do not take negative comments personally

• You can often learn more from criticism – and improve your business because of it.

Remember to log and analyse any customer complaints

• Customer feedback is an ongoing process; use satisfaction surveys, face-to-face meetings, regular phone contact and log complaints and queries.

Get potential customers to test your product or service

• Find a sample of your target market, get them to try your product or service and give their opinion.
• You could contact relevant businesses and arrange an event for people to drop in for a demonstration, or offer to visit them.
• Approach potential customers about test marketing your product. They may agree to use or sell a prototype.

Consider using a specialist for surveys, focus groups or user-testing

• Specialist market research companies or consultants have the necessary expertise.
• Customers sometimes find it difficult to voice complaints to the supplier or manufacturer. They may also worry that you are trying to sell them something.

Use research regularly

• Continuing your research will allow you to keep on top of your customers’ changing needs and stay ahead of the competition.
• Keep looking out for new areas of growth, whether this is improvement of your product or potential new markets.

4. Develop a market proposition

Identify key benefits of your innovative product or service to customers

• You need to be able to explain these to potential customers. If they won’t buy what you’re selling, you cannot succeed.
• Identifying the benefits will help position your new product or service in the right market, targeted at the right customers.
• Make use of the results from your primary research to adapt and improve your offering.
• Often, customers need convincing. They may not even realise how useful a product could be. Emphasise how your innovation solves a problem for them.
• Customers do not always want new products and services, but added benefits that innovation can provide can help them make the decision to buy.

Make sure the benefits are sustainable

• Products and services are easily copied. The key here is the speed with which you can get your new offering to the market.
• Protect any intellectual property (IP) you develop. Depending on your business model, you could also consider licensing your IP.

Ensure the benefits are marketable

• A strong brand image will make it easy for customers to recognise your products, services and associated benefits.
• Benefits must be important to customers: they must be unique. If a current product or service offers similar benefits, customers will not be able to understand and appreciate why they should choose your offering.

5. Develop a marketing plan

Establish your marketing objectives

• Use everything you have learned from your market research to identify target customers and key markets.
• Establish what you want to achieve from your marketing. If you are an early stage start-up with no existing customers, you need to market the benefits of your offering to create demand among new customers.
• Once you have built a customer base, you should aim to retain it and encourage customers to spend more with you – either through buying greater volumes, range of products or by purchasing more expensive items.

Build the marketing plan

• Clarify which features provide the benefits that customers want.
• Concentrate on the unique selling proposition (USP), as opposed to the “me too” features. For example, any supplier can claim to provide a reliable, high-quality service.

Know who your customers are

• The ultimate end user may not be your customer. You may need to market and sell to an intermediary.
• Distributors are close to your customers and can provide invaluable feedback. Listen to their problems and suggestions.
• Customer relationship management (CRM) systems will help you to develop your customer database and carry out targeted marketing campaigns.

Set out the activities and tactics you intend to use to reach customers

• Identify ways to reach your target customers. Most products and services are not suited to a mass market, and do not have universal appeal.
• PR in local and national media can generate awareness and interest.
• Make the most of your website by including easily accessible information on your home page. Make sure your website is optimised for search, so that potential customers can find you.
• Social media is firmly established as a marketing tool. Having an online presence can allow you to extend your reach and communicate with potential and existing customers.
• Holding customer familiarisation days, particularly with very innovative products and services, can help minimise any nervousness or scepticism from the customer.
• Exhibitions can also provide a direct route to customers, particularly for business-to-business marketing.
• Direct mail can spread your message to a selected list of customers and prospects. While the costs of design, print and mailing can be high, it can be a useful tool if your business is built around high sales volumes.

6. Launch your innovative product

Carry out testing before a launch

• Pre-testing your offering with a small group of willing customers can highlight difficulties, which can be rectified before you move onto a larger scale marketing launch.
• A test market will provide more reliable feedback over a wider audience. If it does not meet expectations, the idea can be ditched before you commit any more resource.
• Tests may reveal unseen problems – with packaging or distribution, for example.

Establish a pricing policy

• Unless you have a unique product or service, its value will depend on what your rivals are offering customers.
• Pricing should reflect how you want to position your offering. A premium product or service should have a premium price.
• You may be able to offer a varied pricing structure for different customers. One-off sales carry far higher costs for your business than repeat sales.
• The higher your fixed costs, the higher the value or volume of sales you will need to achieve.

Research your route to market

• Look at different possibilities such as selling online, through retail outlets, directly to the end customer, or using a distribution network.

Investigate a regional market launch

• Regional marketing allows a steady build-up over a few months. The initial roll out can still reveal teething problems, which can be rectified before launching in further regions.

Consider a national launch for a completely new innovation

• A national launch will get you to the market first, catch competitors by surprise and capture the market. However, this can be an expensive way to establish market share.

Consider setting up strategic relationships

• Effective routes to market may already exist. Joining up with a complementary product may allow you to use an existing distribution network. Working in alliance with partners can help reduce risk and costs.
• Corporate venturing or partnering with a bigger company can provide you with greater resources and a greater breadth of experience.

7. Measure your marketing success

Set SMART objectives for your marketing and strategic plans

• SMART targets are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound.
• Specific targets for a new product launch can include a set level of income or number of new customers, for example.
• Measure your objectives by logging incoming enquiries following the launch of your new product.
• Set achievable targets for each market you are in, your internal resources and level of investment.
• Set realistic objectives. If you take sales enquiries by phone, set your customer sales team a realistic target, such as a higher conversion rate on caller enquiries.
• Set a timescale. Have a start and finish date for your product launch. Missing deadlines can be costly and demoralising for staff.

Defend and expand your market share

• As well as involving less risk and investment, continually updating products and services with small improvements rather than launching major new innovations can help maintain your market share.
• Offering added-value products and services with enhanced benefits can expand existing markets.

Stay up to date with developments and avoid complacency

• Keep on top of developments made by your competitors.
• Monitor the changing trends in the market and consumer preferences.
• Encourage regular feedback from existing and potential customers at every opportunity. For example, create a feedback section on your website, sales enquiry forms or conduct regular surveys.
• Track technological developments so that you understand when you may have to innovate further.
• Environmental developments may impact on your products or services from a consumer and legal perspective.
• Review your marketing plan regularly.

How do I Find new Product Ideas?

New product ideas are important to the growth of any business. Let now look at six ways of generating such ideas.

Idea generation is the first step in the New Product Development (NPD) process. During this stage, numerous ideas are generated, but not all of them will be viable or implementable. Also, these ideas will come in many forms and under different circumstances.

It is left to you, as the business owner, to select the best ideas and implement them. After the ideas have been generated, each must be assessed and analysed to prove it’s viability.

1. Basic research using a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats)

A SWOT analysis is simply defined as a process that companies undertake to understand where they are and then find ways to improve. In this process, the look for ways to build on their strengths, minimize their weaknesses, maximize their opportunities, and snuff out threats from within and without their organization.

In generating new product ideas through this means, emphasis is placed on the need to build on strengths and make the most of opportunities.

In June 2002, Ben Horowitz began transforming Loudcloud, his application hosting service company, into Opsware, a software company that offered products for servers and network devices, among other things. This transformation was a product of necessity, in a bid to keep his company alive.

Loudcloud had been facing hard times so much so that the company almost started trading penny stocks on the stock market. After looking at the situation at hand, and considering the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that lay before the company, Horowitz took the bold step of remodeling and re-presenting his company as a different product.

In 2007, Horowitz went on to sell Opsware to HP for $1.6 billion.

2. Market and Consumer Trends

Allan Gutterman, in his December 2009 publication, “Corporate Counsel’s Guide to Management and Administration”, says that customers are the second leading source of new product ideas. He explains that customers tend to suggest improvements and changes to existing products as opposed to proposing totally new ones.

However, the smart business man will know how important it is to observe market and consumer trends so as to know which product to remove, remodel or create. The inability to follow this simple rule is what cost Kodak and Nokia their position as industry leaders.

When digital cameras were becoming a major trend, it would have been a smart move for Kodak to join in, or even to have initiated the trend in the first place. But instead, the neglected the massive movement of people towards digital cameras and today, they have lost their place to Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, Olympus and Sony, majority of which are Japanese companies.

As for Nokia, it is no news that they are no longer the biggest phone company in the world. They lost their place to Samsung. All because they failed to move in time with the smartphone trend.

3. Company’s R&D Department and Competitors 

Another way to generate product ideas is by research & development, and studying competitors. In the area of research and development, small business are likely not very strong as merely a handful are able to afford the costs that R&D incurs.

However, what small businesses can do is to read up on the R&D escapades of the big companies and tailor some of these ideas to their own level. Also, small companies can actually perform small scale customer and market research to generate new product ideas and improvement strategies.

Frankly, some times, the easy thing to do is to look at what the competition is doing and copy or improve upon it. This was a major step that Apple took with the iPod.

Steve Jobs looked at the Sony Walkman (which was the rave of the moment at the time) and improved upon it. This act is what birthed the iPod, the iPod Touch, and now, the iPad. It worked for Steve Jobs, it can work for you too.

4. Create Effective Customer Feedback Channels

As highlighted in number 2, customers are a very important factor in new product idea generation. For a small business owner, the best way to get ideas from your customers is by walking up to them and asking them to make suggestions based on their experiences with your business so far.

You will find out how eager many of them will be to talk to you because it will make them feel important, and like a vital part of your progress.

Another way for small business owners to get feedback from customers is to provide channels for it, e.g. feedback boxes, survey questionnaires, informal interviews, focus group discussions, etc. It will amaze you how much these people will have to tell you. BMW knows how important customer feedback is to its business. It created a Virtual Innovation Agency (VIA) to collect customer feedback, in a bid to remain the “ultimate driving machine”.

5. Employees

Honestly, these are the most neglected source of new ideas, and Alan Gutterman says they are the best source. Good companies value their employee’s input and ask for it. the bad companies usually don’t.

Some of the reasons why employee involvement in the idea generation process has been on the decline include negligence of top management, not giving credit to the employees who deserve it, fear of intimidation and rejection, etc.

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As an entrepreneur, you need to create an atmosphere where your employees will not be afraid to make suggestions and propose good solutions and new ideas.

HCL Technologies, the fourth largest tech company in India has been able to generate $500 million from employees’ ideas since 2008 when it started the “ideapreneurship” program which encourages employees to come up with innovative solutions to their customers’ business challenges.

6. Trade Shows

This doesn’t cost much, depending on the type of trade show. It is important to select the right trade show. This will give you access to right people, right connections and you will gain new ideas, just by looking around. If you are allowed, you could take photographs of products that interest you and are relevant to your business.

Back in the university, we held regular trade fairs. I never bought things during these trade fairs, but I would always move around to look at what people displayed. During my third year, I and some of my classmates, opened our own trade fair joint.

We called it ‘The Calabar Kitchen’ where we cooked and sold locally made dishes from Cross Rivers state in Nigeria. It was my first and best entrepreneurship venture and we made profit from it. In retrospect, one major factor that contributed to the success of our venture was the knowledge and ideas I had gathered from scouting in previous trade fairs.