Season Planner
Family needs + ecommerce
= valuable service
To plan all things needed for a family throughout a year is a lot of work. And a lot of expenses.
Every year 28 billion NOK is spent in Norway alone on shoes, sports equipment and clothing. At the same time a big change is happening: mobile is becoming the platform to browse, plan – and also buy all these things. The report, Our Mobile Planet from Google, shows that this activity is seldom impulsive, people spend a lot of time before deciding. So we thought, how could we combine all of this knowledge to create a valuable tool for families – as well as an effective business tool?
Using Norway’s biggest media group, Schibsted, as an example – we came up with the “Season Planner”.
In the intersection where family needs meets product knowledge, editorial reviews and social recommendations, is where you find our Season planner.
Combining the family’s needs with product knowledge and related editorial content – as well as the social part of shopping – creates a valuable service. Add to this ways to budget, plan, share and store your family's need – and mobile tools to solve them on the go, and you have a very powerful mix.
The Season Planner is a tool for families to make sure their needs throughout the year are remembered and organized, a place where they feel secure about the shopping choices they make, and can make the best deal for a product they need – either new or used.
Interlinking the services
For the media selling the service, the Season Planner represents a way to develop long-term relationships with the families and, getting to know their users, and being able to give more relevant products and services. The service is a channel where advertisers can be present with their own products and services, and a way to explore affiliate deals.
With the integration of a button, all of Schibsted’s services could be integrated – and drive traffic to each other. Finn (used market), Prisguide (affiliate driven price comparison and reviews) and Mamma (family related editorial content).
At the core of the system is a recommendation engine that can evolve over time to create more and more relevance for the users of the service. In it simplest form, it combines the knowledge of a family’s shopping history, seasonal needs, events (birthdays, vacations etc) – with product knowledge (price - for old as well as new, social recommendations and editorial reviews). Evolving, it could combine needs of all family members and their associates to create better deals when shopping larger quantities together, recognize tagged photos taken on your mobile (taken as a reminder), continuously crawl the web for the best deals and most popular products.
The Season Planner has not been realized, yet.
We are looking for an company with ineterest, a wide enough range of services — and ambition — to take this idea further. Contact us if you are interested or know anyone who could be, we have the expertise and drive to realise it.
