Canadian Tire Launches A Limited Store Test Of Touch Screen Kiosks That Have The Weekly Flyer Embedded Within Them

Within a limited number of Canadian Tire physical stores, a test is now underway to see how in store shoppers react and use a new touch screen Fujitsu kiosk that enables them to browse the weekly flyer (ShopLocal powered of course) among a product locator,  price verifier and browsing the CanadianTire.com site.

It’s exciting to see high engagement technologies creep back into the physical retailer world.  There is a real un-tapped value proposition that retailers need to capitalize on of blurring the lines between the different channels.

Canadian Tire has done a great job of creating a strong visual identify around these kiosks which are called iShop by wrapping the rather boring looking, underlying kiosk in a "skin" of sorts that definitely is more inviting to shoppers.

Here is the "un-wrapped" (or non-branded) Fujitsu made touch screen kiosk that is internet enabled that is being deployed into two (2) Canadian Tire stores on a limited test basis.

The book sellers (Borders and Barnes & Noble) for example has been doing exactly this for a number of years by allows in store shoppers to break free from the limitations of the books available for sale in the physical store to the countless millions more available within the online store by utilizing kiosks.  This just makes so much sense, and prevents a shopper whom didn’t see the book in store from going home an ordering it on Amazon.com.

The Canadian Tire use of the flyer (that is what Canadian’s call circulars or inserts) within these Fujitsu  kiosks is very similar to the problem that Ecast is also trying to solve.  In that, wayfinding (i.e., digital in store maps) combined with engaging “what’s on sale right now” content is a great way to help create motivation for a shopper to visit areas of a store that they may not typically travel to. It also aides in new product discovery as the currently on sale products can be highlighted and showcased. In addition, it is expected to decrease the number of abandoned baskets and increase customer satisfaction as shoppers can now get the answer to their #1 most asked question of, “Where can I find product X?”

Simplification of the overall SmartCircular Adobe Flash/Flex based interface was a key theme in this project here at ShopLocal, in that:

• Super-large navigation visuals were employed
• Only one circular page turning mode was used
• No shopper inputs (of for example a postal code) are required
• No category, brand, keyword search, shopping list, store details or 25 other different views are offered.  Just simple circular / flyer ad page viewing and turning

Integration was the other theme which allowed:

• Tying  into an interactive store maps and in store inventory called iPAL (made by TreoSystems) that creates a seamless product locator action by simply clicking on any of the items within the flyer
• For the store’s postal code to be passed into the weekly flyer application so as to take away a dumb user input from occurring

This is the main flyer view that offers a single page by page, animated page turning mode to browsing the Canadian Tire on sale items. All of this flyer content is of course locally geo-targeted to the specific store location of where the kiosk is located.

From within the interactive flyer, a simple help layer can be accessed at any point to aide any customers that need additional instructions on how to navigate the kiosk version of the Canadian Tire SmartCircular site.

By clicking on any product that is contained within the interactive flyer, the user is taken to an visual map of where that specific item