The sign made it sound deceptively easy.
At the recent Food Marketing Institute 2010 conference and expo in Las Vegas, prominent signage on the show floor promised those of us with smartphones the ability to navigate the conference schedule and expo show floor more easily. "Works on any smartphone!!!" and pictures not just of the ubiquitous iPhone, but also an Android and Blackberry. Sounds good to me... I'd love to replace flipping through the bulky expo guide searching for exhibitors with a cool next-generation smartphone app.
Could it truly be that a conference ostensibly about food retailing had embraced one of the most important principles of mobile retail: don't alienate 80% of your customers?
You see, for all it's vaunted prowess (and ease of "app" distribution), the Apple iPhone isn't the only game in town. Though statistics vary, and depending on which geography, demographic segment, and cycle of the moon, the market share ebbs and flows... it is a relatively safe bet to say that the major smartphone players all enjoy some rough parity in market share:
- Apple iPhone
- Google Android
- RIM Blackberry
- Microsoft Windows Mobile
- Nokia Symbian
If we imagine each of these roughly equal, the average retailer would alienate 80% of their shoppers by embracing a single handset platform. So, needless to say, I was excited by the prospect that my new HTC Hero phone (sorry Apple, I just sunsetted my iPhone... so long AT&T, hello Sprint...) would be my guide to a show I was attending for the first time, and I eagerly followed the instructions on the sign:
"Download at supermarketnews.com or your App store (FMI 2010)"
So, you can imagine my disappointment when a search of the Android Market for "FMI 2010" yielded... nothing. Not a jot, not a tittle. Nothing. Apparently "works on any smartphone" and "your App store" have different meanings to some people.
This is serious fail, not because FMI failed to provide an app that ran on my Android phone, but because they literally promised it to me and failed to deliver on the promise. Had the signage promised only an iPhone app, I would have accepted that leaving my uncharged iPhone in my suitcase was MY failing, and simply considered bringing it the next day. But, to promise a consumer that their phone will, in fact, work with your application, then leave them high and dry does more than keep the consumer from the information. It causes frustration that borders on rage, and more often than not, leads to disproportionate consequences. For me, it's writing this blog. If you're a retail brand that does this, prepare for Facebook statuses and constant retweets griping about how you don't care about your shoppers that use smartphone "X."
The moral of the story: make sure shoppers know what to expect from your brand when it comes to a mobile experience. Don't mislead them and make them fail on their own if you aren't supporting the technology they've already bought.
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