consumer
How Restoration Hardware Made ‘Showrooming’ An Asset Instead Of An Enemy
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/restoration-hardware-uses-showrooms-2012-12
Many retailers are terrified of turning into a showroom. They fear consumers will come only to test out the products they’ll later buy online.
Furniture store Restoration Hardware decided to approach “showrooming” differently by accepting and encouraging it, reports Joan Solsman at The Wall Street Journal.
Many stores, including Restoration Hardware’s rival Pottery Barn, fought showrooming by “rushing to lower prices,” Solsman writes.
But Restoration Hardware decreased its number of physical stores and used the remaining ones as showrooms. Sofas, tables, rugs and other decor were meticulously arranged with an emphasis on the aesthetic. Customers could find even more merchandise online or in catalogues while shopping in the stores.
The tactic is working. Direct-to-consumer now makes up half of Restoration Hardware’s business, and the retailer has reported double-digit sales growth for 10 quarters, according to Solsman.
Restoration Hardware’s model probably wouldn’t work for Best Buy, the most prolific victim of “showrooming,” Solsman cautions.
“Furniture and decor, unlike consumer electronics and other items, aren’t easily searchable by specifications,” Solsman writes. “A highly fragmented market, home furnishings sellers benefit from many players having proprietary merchandise, which stunts online competitive threats.”
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The Small Screen Boom [Slide Deck]
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/mobile-video-the-small-screen-boom-2-2012-10
![The Small Screen Boom [Slide Deck]](http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5074612969beddcf2200000c-844-647/ooyalamobilevideo.png?maxX=400 "The Small Screen Boom [Slide Deck]")
We at BI Intelligence have built on our recent mobile video report to put together a comprehensive presentation on the mobile video revolution.
Mobile video is quickly becoming a mass consumer phenomenon, much as digital photos were earlier in the smartphone adoption cycle.
In Mobile Video: The Small Screen Boom, we explore what is driving this massive mobile video growth, examine who watches mobile video and how they watch it, and look at the mobile video monetization opportunity.
We’ve posted the deck here. We hope you enjoy it.
BI Intelligence is a new research and analysis service focused on mobile computing and the Internet. Subscribers can download the entire deck as a PDF or PowerPoint, as well as any of the individual charts from the presentation. Please sign up for a free trial here.
![The Small Screen Boom [Slide Deck]](http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/508e7e0eecad047522000012-400-300/.jpg "The Small Screen Boom [Slide Deck]")
![The Small Screen Boom [Slide Deck]](http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/508e7e1d6bb3f7400400000f-400-300/.jpg "The Small Screen Boom [Slide Deck]")
![The Small Screen Boom [Slide Deck]](http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/508e7e2aeab8eaf84600001b-400-300/.jpg "The Small Screen Boom [Slide Deck]")
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
![mf The Small Screen Boom [Slide Deck]](http://businessinsider.com.feedsportal.com/c/34800/f/641403/s/25018721/mf.gif "The Small Screen Boom [Slide Deck]"){kind=small}
How Mobile Phones Are Killing The Magazine Business
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-how-mobile-phones-are-killing-the-magazine-business-2012-9
Total U.S. ad spending increased just 0.9 percent in Q2 2012, to $34.4 billion, according to Kantar Media, but that marginal increase masked the disproportionate damage suffered by the magazine sector.
Magazine ad sales declined -2.7% percent in the quarter, with across-the-board declines at consumer, business and Sunday magazines. The only magazine sectors to post growth were niche publications like local and Spanish language magazines, according to Kantar.
The report doesn’t say why the declines occurred. The ad economy has been growing in fits and starts for about three years now, and magazines ought to be benefiting from that. But the Kantar numbers offer a clue that mobile phones may be killing the magazine business.
Web display advertising also declined in the quarter, by -5.4%. Kantar only measures display, and not search or other forms of digital adspend. The one thing we know about digital adspend is that money right now is pouring into mobile ad delivery, and lowering prices as it does so. The effect of that is to reduce the total amount of dollars spent on internet display ads — which is probably why you’re seeing web sales declines in Kantar’s numbers.
Now put that together with the way people use their phones and tablets. The iPad and the Samsung Galaxy S III are used by consumers in an almost identical way to how they use magazines: Portable delivery of entertainment and news.
The Kantar numbers also show a continued decline in the newspaper business, where ad revenue sank another -3.1%. The web, famously, killed the newspaper business.
It looks like mobile will do the same for magazines.
Related:
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Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights. 
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