Retailers in the U.S.A. are collapsing at a historic rate today. So for me this is a really interesting example. Taking advantage of instantaneous changes in software to build marketing into products makes sense. But the longer lead time and higher costs to make those same changes in brick and mortar models…
I agree when Mr. Ellis & Mr. Brown say “..the hard truth is that no amount of marketing and advertising .. can make people love a substandard product.” (Hacking Growth Pg 80). The return on investment is obviously better per dollar spent with a superior product. And the more frequently your customer buys (a house vs a car vs weekly supermarket trips) the more difficult it is to promote products that leave a bad taste.
So if product market fit (P.M.F.) is intrinsic to Growth Hacker success, how do you address a grocery store with 26,000 different items? There’s no way even the top 20% of them (which generate 80% of the store’s sales) achieve this “aha” moment indicative of an optimal P.M.F. The retailer’s online portal can be tweaked ad infinitum, but we’re talking products here. In some cases they’re harvested only once a year.
Much like my father with Nutella, Growth Hacking with brick and mortar is a bit too early. Look at Amazon. After investing in Amazon Fresh for 10 years in a bid to steal retail customers, they bought Whole Foods. Just like self-driving cars are now all the rage, retail locations are too attractive for tech to pass up. But that doesn’t mean the model won’t change. Apple stores are less about sales then marketing. How long until food trucks become hybrid versions of the same thing? Uber now offers restaurant deliveries to your front door. What about retail? The average restaurant take out order is less than a week’s worth of groceries, and if your fee is a percentage of the bill …
Much like my father with Nutella, Growth Hacking with brick and mortar is a bit too early. Look at Amazon. After investing in Amazon Fresh for 10 years in a bid to steal retail customers, they bought Whole Foods. Just like self-driving cars are now all the rage, retail locations are too attractive for tech to pass up.
A little farther down the road you have “long term moonshots like Facebook’s foray into virtual reality with the purchase of device maker Oculus, and its Internet Everywhere initiative, which includes an audacious plan to deliver wireless internet to remote corners of the globe with solar-powered aircraft.” (source Hacking Growth pg 265). How much easier will it be to build virality into food when your kitchen machine prints online recipes from scratch? Especially when your networked house, with its medical testing toilet, determines that your poop’s sodium count is too high. So it adjusts the food printer’s recipe to have less salt but more chili powder to hide the lack of flavor (with a spice that you love).
And if that chili powder is sprayed on top of your meal in the form of an ad? Well that’s just a few more cents in your bank account to help pay the rent. When the digital and non-digital have attained this level of synergy, algorithms won’t need to compel us. “Rather, they will be so good at making decisions for us that it would be madness not to follow their advice.” (source Homo Deus by Dr. Harari Pg 339).