The Skinny
There are several challenges facing the retail and mall sectors - some of which are specific to Hong Kong, and others which are generic.
Ying solves several of these approaches by creating a shopping driven social network among users and creating the missing link between users and malls.
Ying can help mall owners and operators
forecast revenues,
create excitement among users to shop at their malls,
help retailers understand their customers better.
Challenges in retail sales & forecasting
The Missing Link
Mall owners and customers don’t have a direct link. The link is only between the retailers and customers. This makes revenue forecasting hard. While there are several solutions to estimate footfall into a mall, none of them help mall operators assess sales in the retail stores.
Declining tourists from China
The declining numbers in mainland Chinese tourists is a big problem. As these tourists seek other destinations like Singapore for shopping, HK mall owners have no way to generate excitement among mainland Chinese tourists to travel and shop in HK more.
Omnichannel
Retail brands are consistently increasing their Omnichannel focus while the malls don’t get to participate in channels other than in-store sales.
The Disruptive Idea
Taiwanese Receipt Lottery
We looked at several models where users were incentivized to save/upload their receipts. One that stood out was the Taiwan Receipt Lottery, which was started by the Taiwanese government way back in 1951 and is still successful and popular.
Financial Credit Scores
Financial Credit scores have helped businesses and users quantify a user’s credit-worthiness for a long time, but when it comes to retail shopping and hospitality industries, there is no platform for users to quantify and show their value in real time to brands.
A Social Network around shopping transactions
Drawing from these inspirations, we want to build Ying - which will make it cool and rewarding for users to upload their receipts and create a social network among users around their shopping transactions.
Ying establishes a direct link between the mall and users and a channel for mall owners to attract users (both HK users and tourists) to shop there.
Data driven platform for Retailers
Further, Ying will have data that the retailers don’t have. Retailers only have data on the current transaction of the user or the user’s historic transactions at that retail store, but Ying will have data on the user’s transactions across different brands over time. This data can be used to build Ying into a platform for retailers to increase their user base and revenues.
The App
Receipt Scan
Users are incentivized to scan their receipts from their shopping transactions in the mall. The transaction data including the retail business name, the purchase amount and other relevant details are saved and the receipt image is discarded.
Privacy
Privacy will be taken very seriously in building Ying. Once a receipt is scanned, the data is extracted and the image of the receipt is discarded. No images will be saved in the Ying databases.
No personally identifiable information of any user will be displayed corresponding to a purchase unless a user chooses explicitly to post a shopping purchase publicly or to his/her friends.
Shopping Feed
From the scanned receipts a shopping feed is created to show users their, their friends’ and the public’s shopping transactions in a fun and engaging feed.
Social Elements
The app will build a social network around shopping transactions making it cool and engaging for users to scan their receipts and participate in others’ shopping experiences.
The more users post, like, comment and share, the more their “Ying scores” (explained in a section below) grow and this will help them get exclusive offers from their favorite brands.
Real Time Offers
A data platform in the backend analyzes every user’s data to compute scores (explained in a section below) that depict what it will take for a retail brand to cajole the user into completing a purchase.
A Profile worth taking pride in
Perhaps the most important aspect of Ying will be that it will help every user “discover their inner cool”. Users will get the feeling that every person is important to a brand and not just influencers or rich people. This can drive viral adoption of Ying among users.
Revenue Forecast Platform
Ying will have a revenue forecasting platform using the data seen on users of the Ying app. The platform can forecast in-store revenues for retail tenants by using data from the uploaded receipts and from what users are mentioning and tagging in the social activity on the app.
Further, the platform will also be able to forecast digital sales of the retail brands and not just the in-store sales by building data models that can track social activity on the app versus confirmed purchases as shown by the uploaded receipts.
This can provide a huge advantage to the malls in negotiating turnover rents, forecasting revenue numbers for upcoming quarters and correlating sales of retail tenants who have multiple stores in a mall.
User Insights Platform
How cool are you?
Ying will have a user insights platform that quantifies what each user’s appeal is to a brand. Rather than a generic score or generic membership programs, this platform will be able to quantify what is the appeal of each user to each brand in real time.
Ying Scores
Loyalty - This score quantifies how likely a user is to shop the same brand or visit the same hotel over a period of time.
Proximity - This score quantifies whether the user is in the same city or same neighborhood as the mall and what is the likelihood the user is willing to go to a mall versus visit a retail store closer to him/her.
Influence - This score quantifies the social reach of a user by analyzing the comments and posts of the user on the app and the amount of engagement on these social activities.
Purchasing Power - This score quantifies whether the user buys high end brands or mid level brands and what his/her transaction amounts usually are.
User Kitty Wu's Scores for Zara
User Kitty Wu's Scores for Conrad Hotel
Users are also coached on the app to increase their scores by giving them incentives to visit the mall or put out social messages about a brand or try a restaurant in the mall etc.
Further, and most importantly, the real incentive for the user is to get offers and exclusive access based on campaigns set by participating brands as explained below.
Customer acquisition marketplace
Ying will be a marketplace for brands to acquire customers. Brands set campaigns to attract the kind of customers they want to acquire and to increase the value of each shopping purchase.
As described in the previous section, every user will have four scores - Loyalty, Proximity, Influence and Purchasing Power. A brand can set a campaign to target the right kind of users.
Here are some examples to illustrate what these campaigns can look like.
Zara sets a discount of 10%-20% for a user with high Loyalty score and based on the user’s score, the algorithm decides how much influence he/she can get within the range. The user shops at the Zara store in the mall, shows the discount on his/her Ying app and completes the transaction.
Sephora sets a campaign to attract women with high Influence score with exclusive access to a new makeup line.
A high-end cocktail bar within the mall seats Ying users with a high Loyalty and high Proximity scores at their best tables and gives them VIP service.
Burberry sets a campaign to attract high Purchasing Power score users by giving them early access to their sample sale and new upcoming winter line of fashion.
Boost Retail Sales
This customer acquisition marketplace of Ying can provide a much needed boost to its retail tenants and it uses data that the retail brands don’t have access to and only the mall owners will have access to.
This gives mall owners an unprecedented leverage over retail brands and malls can participate not just in in-store sales but also in digital sales.
Summary
Linking malls, brands and end users
Ying can boost retail sales and provide revenue forecasts for mall operators by combining three elements
Make it cool and easy for users to upload their sales receipts
Build a social network for users around their shopping purchases
A marketplaces that helps brands acquire customers by setting campaigns matched to users with the right scores
Incentivize users to shop in the malls and share their data