Product simulation for cross-selling and up-selling
I just ran across an interesting blog post entitled “Measuring and Improving Cross-Sell and Upsell” at GetElastic.com. It gives fascinating numbers and insights about existing online retailers’ current abilities to cross-sell and up-sell products. What struck me is how well product simulation covers all of the take-away messages:
- “we think you’ll also love…” — by putting products in real-world situations, you can expose customers to related products they may not have considered, just like the “we think you’ll also love…” items currently tagged onto shopping cart items.
- Quoting Mike Svatek’s webinar of effective merchandising on Elastic Path, the post says cross-selling works well for “considered purchases”, the ones with higher cost and higher involvement. The consumer who uses simulations to evaluate products will almost certainly be ones prepared for higher involvement in the procurement process (whether in B2B or B2C) — natural candidates for cross-sales (and the consumer will likely be appreciative of the relevance of related products or services).
- Again quoted from Mike Svatek’s webinar, the post says up-sells work best when there is “a small difference in dollar value or a small nominal percentage difference – 10-20% max. You need to show some incremental value for the increase in price.” Including optional product features in the simulation is a great way to lead consumers to the complete product they need.
Simulation as Resilient Job according to NY Times
I just came across an article from the New York Times entitled “In Simulation Work, the Demand is Real“. The article is from a feature about emerging job markets, and basically implies that there is a good demand for jobs in simulation. Great!
In general, the article is fairly innocuous but it leads one to believe that the interesting areas of simulation are about modeling more and more complex systems (for example, it quotes a scientist at AEgis Technologies as saying “we solved most of the problems that one person can do a long time ago”). I think it perpetuates the myth that simulation advances and benefits only are interesting for high-end, complex systems. I really believe that simulation of more mundane processes and equipment has a huge potential impact that is not being realized or accomplished today, because simulation is often assumed to be complex and expensive.
Furthermore, the article suggests that the validity of the science behind simulation is almost a given, it’s just computing power which is lagging. Again, a big simplification. All models have assumptions. I have seen firsthand how simulation developers will try to stick models together without understanding that the assumptions underlying the models may be inconsistent.
I don’t want to be too critical because I understand the article is about high-end simulation, but I would have liked to see a nod to more mainstream applications of simulation.
New Entry into Virtual Event Field – Jack Morton
I just saw a press release about Jack Morton Worldwide creating a new “virtual experience platform”:
http://www.marketing-interactive.com/news/13349
Anyone know how it is different from the other virtual show platforms?
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