Sampling works. It's a known fact that giving consumers the opportunity to test a product (food, cars, fragrances, consumer electronics, musical instruments) increases the likelihood they will buy.  That's why it's no mystery in food retailing, for example, why companies such as Costco, Trader Joe's and Wegmans sample products continually while the vast majority of grocers either dabble in or steer clear of the practice altogether.

Recently, as an article on AdAge.com pointed out, marketers are rediscovering sampling and seeking to turn them into events to launch new products.

McDonald's, for example, is rolling out a new Southern Style Chicken Biscuit and a Southern Style Chicken Sandwich and plans to give a free sample of the items (depending on day-part) to any consumer who purchases a beverage at one of its fast food restaurants. The chain has started running spots on television to alert consumers to the offer of its free chicken items. It expects to give away up to 8 million sandwiches over the course of the day.

Marta Fearon, director-U.S. marketing at McDonald's, told AdAge.com that the company saw the impact of sampling when it gave away chicken strips during the initial roll-out five years ago. Sales for the product were well above the chain's expectations. More recently, McDonald's sampled its McSkillet burrito in February and saw same-store sales increase eight percent. Others including Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts and Honest Tea have also jumped on the sampling bandwagon.

Mark Anthony Group - a wine merchant and distributor in British Columbia, Canada allows their walk-in customers to taste wine before purchasing it. This proves a highly successful tactics and helps this private enterprise to win the customers from the government-run liquor stores.

Seth Goldman, founder of Honest Tea, is a true believer.

"How many messages are people hit with every day? It's the quality of impressions [that are important], if you were to look at conversions to consumers. I would trade 100 media impressions for one person-to-person, cup-to-mouth sampling impression," he told AdAge.com.

Because sampling works so well, Retail Hero offers existing Microsoft RMS users the chance to sample our add-ins for RMS at http://www.rmsexperts.com/dynamics+rms+add-in+downloads.aspx. To download add-in demos, first register for the website, and then proceed to the link above. They will have you hooked!

All retail industries are different and yet they have lot in common. Their basic procedures are the same: receiving goods, tracking inventory, checking the goods out, receiving payments, tracking the customers' purchases etc. That is why a such a universal and robust software product as Microsoft Dynamics RMS works well in various retail verticals: high-end clothing stores, sporting goods, groceries, pet stores, fast food restaurants, at the the trade shows, in the libraries and many other applications. You can see our product used in retail stores, malls, in the colleges, churches, government organizations, fast food stands, trade posts, museums - everywhere where "goods or services for money" transactions occur (sometimes even with no money exchange involved!).

However, each of these retail verticals have their unique approaches and requirements. That's where various Dynamics RMS add-ons come handy.

Dynamics RMS as a software has great advantage compared to other 500 POS software systems available out there. It is extendable (read about what makes a great POS software in our previous newsletter or in this blog posting). It means that third party software developers experienced in retail industry and Dynamics RMS can produce their own  additions to the base software which enhances it in some ways or implements a particular workflow specific to the retail vertical.

Retail Hero is one of the leading specialists in this field. We have developed numerous Dynamics RMS add-ons which make the business solution even more attractive. Retail Hero makes these add-ons available directly to the customers,  or through other RMS Partners, who see opportunity in offering a better, fuller solution to their customers by including Retail Hero's add-ons.

The most popular of Retail Hero's add-ons are:

Customer Loyalty

• Hero Points - a simple customer loyalty program which allows the customer to collect points for their purchases and redeem them for an instant discount. The program was first implemented in 2005 and since then counts numerous customers. The major new version 3.0 is due to be released by the end of Q3 2008 which will include various new features and HQ compatibility for multi-store chains.

• Q-Rewards - the name stands for "Quantity Rewards". It implements a common retail discount scheme "Buy X Get Y For Z" which works in many unique ways. First of all, it allows to buy X not at once but over time (say, few months).  Second, X can be not just one item but the group of similar items (we call it "Incentive group") so each purchase from the group - whatever the actual item is, qualifies for final reward. Third, the program is fully HQ-integrated, i.e. in a multi-store chain all groups are defined at the headquarters and the customer can shop and receive the final reward at any store in the chain. Initially designed for pet store industry (to implement widely known "Frequent Buyer" or "Buy 10 Bags Get 1 Free" program) , Q-Rewards found ways in many other industries since 2006 when it was first released.

• Happy Checks - the newest in the customer loyalty program. It is somewhat similar to Hero Points in that that it enables customer to collect points for their purchases, but the redemption process is different. Instead of just generating a simple discount at the till,  the points are converted into personalized coupons disguised as bank checks (hence the name) with expiration date. The Happy Checks are then mailed to the customers and the expiration date on them entices to shop at the store more often. More than that, this helps the retailer to exercise tight control over the customer  points and reliably predict  future sales and discounts.

• Basket Rewards - another interesting variation of the points loyalty program, especially popular in grocery stores in Australia. The points are only awarded if the amount of the purchase is larger than a certain threshold "basket" value. By analyzing average customer purchase, the retailer sets the "basket" value just slightly above the that average and therefore encourages the customers to additional purchases.

• Case Rewards - popular in some wine stores in the USA. A discount is instantly given when the customer purchases a mix-and-match "case": 12 bottles  of mixed wine and hard liquor. The discount applies only to the qualified products (i.e. wine and hard liquor) but not to other items in the transaction.

POS Enhancements

• Catalog View - an excellent POS enhancement  for the industries with touch screen displays, fewer items and inability to scan: Chocolatiers, coffee shops, ice cream stands, fast food stands etc. At the POS it displays large buttons with pictures, product description and price. The buttons can be easily customized, reordered and added to the Frequent Items set for faster access.  The pictures are added by just simply dragging them onto the buttons or taking snapshot with a web-cam (using built-in Webcam interface).

• QuickTender - works well in shops that use lot of cash transactions. By cashier clicking one button the POS immediately tenders the corresponding dollar value. It is very simple to install and use.

• HQ Liberty - this add-on runs at POS and allows to change the Global customer information directly at the POS. The future version of the software will also include ability to add and change global items at the store level and also control some of the store's local settings (such as user name, passwords, file locations, receipt and report templates, etc.) from HQ.

Workflow Enhancements

• BackOrder Presto - designed for industries that deal a lot with back orders, such as hardware stores, furniture, hot tubs etc. Allows changing the back order without invoking the POS, consolidating multiple back orders for the same customer, showing if a particular item is already on the purchase order, generating the POS based on back-ordered items only etc.

• WorkOrder Fusion - is an enhancement to work order processing in RMS. It adds numerous customizeable fields to the work order (e.g. servicing item type, brand, description, history of services, technician's name, equipment used, work order status, inventory items and services used for servicing etc.). The program is still in works and is due to be released at the end of June 2008.

Utilities

• PIC-ME - very useful with physical inventory counts and data collectors. Allows to import the count file from the data collector and identify the  items by item lookup code, alias, sub-description fields, with prefixes and suffixes if necessary. It also allows to consolidate multiple count sheets into one before committing it in RMS.

• TOP Import - allows to import a comma-delimited file from data collector or other source directly into a Transfer Order or Purchase Order (the functionality completely missing in the current version of RMS 2.0). Great application for receiving shipments on-fly (without a pre-created Purchase Order) or populating an inter-store transfer using a data collector.

We also have a number of the Dynamics RMS add-ons custom developed for specific requirements. Retail Hero always looks for new ways of enhancing Dynamics RMS in various aspects. Therefore if you have an idea, and the idea makes business sense to us, we can develop an add-on for you and other RMS customers for just a fraction of the regular cost of a custom development project.  Contact Retail Hero for more information!