Virtual shopper

This FMI show coverage from The New Haven Register looks at new products at the FMI show. Not a lot of buzz, but the report looks at the idea of a virtual shopping experience called Second Life:

For those who prefer their food slightly pixelated, food industry analyst Phil Lempert has teamed with Kraft Foods and the National Grocers Association to launch a virtual supermarket in the online fantasy world known as Second Life.Though visitors to Phil’s Supermarket can’t actually buy groceries, they can guide their avatars (online parlance for a user’s digital personification) through the store to explore products, watch cooking demos and see the latest food and health news.The idea is to help people navigate the real world of food by letting them "pre-shop," accessing nutritional data and other information on various products, previewing a showcase of just-launched items or scoring coupons."The average consumer only spends 22 minutes food shopping," said Lempert, who launched the site Monday. "That’s not a whole lot of time to see new products. But what I hear from consumers is that they want to hear about what’s new and exciting."Lempert expects to have 100,000 products on the site by the end of summer. Visitors can "taste" many of the products, then offer reviews. How meaningful those reviews are, of course, depend on whether users have tried the product in the analog world.


TK: There has got to be some other hook besides the love of learning about new products. Perhaps economic incentives, coupons and free merchandise could be motivators, but it is hard to believe that moms would spend a lot of time on this site "pre-shopping." Here is the link.