Last month, as part of our continuing exploration of mobile retailing, we posted on the increasing problem facing heavy mobile phone users: short battery life. While many of us in the United States are simply told "use your phone less or differently," around the world there are a number of innovative solutions being employed to bring power to mobile users in less developed infrastructures that offer some key ideas for retailers looking to solve the paradox of asking power-pressed shoppers to use a phone with a low battery to shop in the store.
In Kenya, two entrepreneurs have come up with a mechanism to turn one hour on a bicycle into a full charge on a cell phone. While pushing a similarly equipped shopping cart around the store wouldn't generate quite as much energy and speed as bicycling (unless, of course, you're bobshopping), it should provide plenty to give shoppers enough power to stay connected and use their phones while in the store.
Urban malls which attract shoppers from potentially "unpowered" neighborhoods (Mumbai, Johannesburg, etc.) are using phone charging machines to quickly power up their shoppers' phones. Though the same concept has played out in US airports as well, the relatively low cost of the mall-based machines (in Abu Dhabi, machines use one dirham coins - about US$.27) and paucity of power alternatives make the mall-based charges more attractive. Retailers considering this approach to stretch power in their stores, however, need to remember: if the phone is locked in a charger, it can't be scanning 2d barcodes or displaying coupons.
Consider offering a "phonesitting" service for free. Retailers in South Africa have long offered free phone charging for shoppers coming in from villages without power. Why not consider offering phone charging as a free service during long mall trips? Though many shoppers would be loathe to give up even a moment of texts, tweets, and Facebook updates... if the alternative is a black screen from a dead battery, 10 minutes of charging while they browse your store is a cheap way to make yourself their hero.
In Uganda, charging a mobile phone battery at one of the ubiquitous kiosks on the street costs 500 Ugandan Shillings (US$.26)... but fully charging a car battery only costs 1000 Shillings (US$.52) and can provide power for radios, CD players, television, domestic lighting, and mobile phones... for a month. The same "power logic" would apply to a shopping cart-mounted battery that charged a customer's phone as they cruised the store while still leaving the phone in their hands and usable for shopping activities.
Just enough phone rather than just enough battery life. Nokia, focusing on emerging markets and launching first in Indonesia, recently debuted phones with up to 22 days of standby time. The phone has yet to experience the "netbook" phenomena where the average price point of a laptop plummeted rather than seeing exponential new features added to it. Manufacturers will increasingly view the "battery life versus performance" tradeoff as tilting toward more battery life and less performance, particularly as the power of smartphones increasingly eclipses the "average user's" needs.
Solar power cells are declining in cost every year, and while there simply isn't enough ambient light inside the store to power a phone, there is definitely enough space on the sides of shopping carts to provide substantial power to an onboard battery. Particularly in high-sun parts of the world where shopping carts in the parking lot sit in bright sunlight for hours of the day, this approach could both take advantage of government programs to boost solar usage and drive down the cost of offering on-cart power to shoppers in the store. It's not a complete solution (yet) but as Tesco says... "Every little helps..."
With this blog posting, GREC is launching a new primary content focus for 2010 and beyond: true sustainable retailing. The combination of economic, ecological, and social pressures have reached a tipping point where the retail industry has a responsibility to the global population, the environment... and itself to shift many long-standing ways of doing business to a model that is truly sustainable in the long term.
For too long, the focus on "sustainability" in retail has often meant "green"... but it needs to be something more. While ensuring that their operations are as minimally impactful on the environment as possible is an absolutely necessity for retailers, the truth is that there are many other areas where retailers need to improve the sustainability of their operations.
The origin of the focus on the word sustainability in modern times stems from the 1980s, when the United Nations stated: "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." This can be translated into retail in a similar concept:
Sustainable retailing is retail that meets the needs of the present without compromising a retailer's future ability to meet its own needs - and those of its customers and ecosystem.
One of the retailers who has both pioneered the concept of sustainability in a comprehensive way and turned a searchlight on itself in its quest to improve is Patagonia. As founder Yvon Chouinard has said: "It's always been difficult for us to lead an examined life as a corporation. I've always felt like a company has the responsibility to not wait for the government to tell it what to do, or to wait for the consumer to tell it what to do, but as soon as it finds out it’s doing something wrong, stop doing it."
Patagonia laid out a five step vision of what Yvon Chouinard called "corporate responsibility for planet earth:"
Step One: Lead an examined life. Most of the environmental damage humans cause is a result of ignorance. That ignorance is willful when we avoid confronting our problems, when we refuse to learn because we don’t want to have to act on what we know.
Step Two: Clean up your act. Once you learn the environmental costs, try to reduce them. And when you can reduce them, you must.
Step Three: Do your penance. No matter how diligent a corporation, it causes waste and pollution. Like any other responsible corporation, Patagonia should pay penance for its sins – while we work to figure out how to clean up our act.
Step Four: Support civil democracy. It’s obvious that governments and corporations hold a lot of power, but so do small groups of people who care passionately about an issue and press their cause.
Step Five: Influence other companies. The company that discovers new ways to be more environmentally responsible has an obligation to spread the word to others – to share the knowledge of what can be done.
These five principles are key, and retailers - like every other industry - have a moral and ethical obligation to embrace the notion that there is more to their goals than to grow and profit and that as conservationist David Brower pointed out, "There is no business to be done on a dead planet."
But beyond the basics, retailers have both a special responsibility and a unique opportunity: to profit from their efforts to be sustainable by a stronger connection to their customers, a longer lasting and mutually beneficial relationship with suppliers, and an improved bottom line through more efficient and ecological operations. In short, retail - perhaps more than any other industry - can truly embrace and benefit from the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit.
To support this vision, GREC is today launching sustainability as one of our two content focuses for 2010 and beyond, and to this end are embracing a comprehensive vision of sustainability for the retail industry. We'll spend a lot of time over the next year exploring and expanding this vision. We believe sustainable retailing to be composed of six key pillars:
sustainable business models, focused on maintainable growth rather than short term profits or volume at the expense of long-term viability
sustainable relationships with shoppers that maximize both "customer lifetime value" and the long term loyalty consumers have to their favorite retail brands
sustainable vendor relations, creating the opportunity for both retailer and supplier to profit and grow together
sustainable community, supporting the local economies where we operate through featuring local products where possible, paying fair wages and giving back to the community, and co-existing in synergy and harmony with residents and other businesses
sustainable sourcing, respecting both the natural resources required for production and the human labor expended to create the products sold in our stores, exploiting no one but instead using the power of retail and shopping to improve the human condition throughout the world
sustainable retail operations, reducing the environmental and ecological impact of store and supply chain operations while simultaneously improving the profitability of the retail enterprise
We recognize that this is a big challenge, but anything worthwhile requires both ingenuity, innovation and hard work. Some retailers are already blazing this new trail, while other lag behind. But as an industry, we owe it both to ourselves and to our children who will someday push grown-up sized shopping carts through our aisles to ensure that retailers of the future will thrive in harmony with society and the planet.
Tomorrow, we have the unique and inspiring opportunity to hear Yvon Chouinard speak, and we'll be covering the event live on our Twitter feed. For anyone else who wants to hear from one of the most sustainable and inspiring retailers, here is Yvon Chouinard speaking at the University of California in 2008.
Urban malls which attract shoppers from potentially "unpowered" neighborhoods (Mumbai, Johannesburg, etc.) are using phone charging machines to quickly power up their shoppers' phones. Though the same concept has played out in US airports as well, the relatively low cost of the mall-based machines (in Abu Dhabi, machines use one dirham coins - about US$.27) and paucity of power alternatives make the mall-based charges more attractive. Retailers considering this approach to stretch power in their stores, however, need to remember: if the phone is locked in a charger, it can't be scanning 2d barcodes or displaying coupons.
In Uganda, charging a mobile phone battery at one of the ubiquitous kiosks on the street costs 500 Ugandan Shillings (US$.26)... but fully charging a car battery only costs 1000 Shillings (US$.52) and can provide power for radios, CD players, television, domestic lighting, and mobile phones... for a month. The same "power logic" would apply to a shopping cart-mounted battery that charged a customer's phone as they cruised the store while still leaving the phone in their hands and usable for shopping activities.
Just enough phone rather than just enough battery life. Nokia, focusing on emerging markets and launching first in Indonesia, recently debuted phones with up to 22 days of standby time. The phone has yet to experience the "netbook" phenomena where the average price point of a laptop plummeted rather than seeing exponential new features added to it. Manufacturers will increasingly view the "battery life versus performance" tradeoff as tilting toward more battery life and less performance, particularly as the power of smartphones increasingly eclipses the "average user's" needs.
