StORES Magazine - September 2007 - (Page 91) NUTS AND BOLTS / IN-STORE TECHNOLOGY Connecting the Dot Interactive screens help Barnes & Noble customers browse and sample all CDs in the store BY D. GAIL FLEENOR I t’s not surprising that music sales at the world’s largest bookseller outperform the industry generally when you consider the technology the company employs to drive those sales. Barnes & Noble sells CDs across all musical genres in its 793 stores. To increase the interactive experience of customers and boost sales, Barnes & Noble uses the Dot, from RedDotNet, in its superstores. Customers can listen to any CD in the store, sampling more than 200,000 music titles through the interactive device. The Dot is billed as a high-tech but easy-to-use device that allows customers to view product information and specials, watch videos, compare items, listen to music or search for products not in stock at that particular store. Each Dot utilizes a high-definition touch-screen equipped with thumb wheels for scrolling through items. More than 8,000 Dots interact with customers in 483 locations, with 25 more stores expected to come online in the next 12 months. “We’ve always had technology in our music departments,” says Chuck Gorman, vice president of music for Barnes & Noble. But more and more music shoppers are “browsing with their ears,” and the Dot offered “the ability to allow you to sample WWW.STORES.ORG The Dots transmit data every 15 minutes, at a rate of 10 to 20 messages per second. anything in the store. “The way that they managed the technology allowed for a large capacity of samples to exist in a cost-efficient manner,” he says. “Their user interface was great; it was much friendlier and easier to use from a consumer standpoint versus having a keyboard or touchpad.” With its multiple departments, café and easy chairs, Barnes & Noble’s environment encourages customers to spend time and discover products. “Being able to listen to any CD in our store may be more important for us than it is for other retailers,” Gorman says. “We just thought that in a bookstore, if you’re curious about a book you can open it up, you can read a chapter, anything that you’re curious about, but music wasn’t like that in those environments. “To be consistent with our experience, we needed to offer the customer a way to sample a large number of titles and have some idea of what they were buying before they bought it,” he says. “We are a selection-based retailer, and the Dot reinforces selection, sampling and searching.” The Dot originated from an idea Brian Horsley had about providing catalog information in stores. Horsley, chief technology officer for Vista, Calif.-based RedDotNet, wanted to create an inhouse system that would make a retailSTORES / SEPTEMBER 2007 91 http://WWW.STORES.ORG
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