Rambler is the only pair of shoes in the world that owns a Twitter account, designed and created by artist and technology savvy Ricardo Nascimento. These’s a sensor inside the sneakers that tracks movements, then updates it’s Twitter. However, it can only tweet two words, “tap” and “.”, depending on the pressure you exert.

It’s quite creative but not practical at all at this stage, would be interesting to see it upgraded with geotagging features.

Do you still remember those times when you saw interesting advertisement on TV about this new “discman”, which made you wanted to run to the electronic store immediately and learn everything about it? Yes, that was the time when sales reps were on high demand. Consumer electronics sales rep jobs are slowly declining because of the rise of social media.

10 years ago

Sales reps were THE big investments and assets retail companies had during those times because they…

• were the knowledgeable ones
• educated potential customers about products
• convinced customers with their speaking skills to increase sales
• controlled the customer relationship being “frontline employees”

The Digital Age

Thanks to the Internet! Online affiliates, bloggers, Twitterers and other content creators made it extremely easy for potential customers to search for product information and reviews. Personal reviews and word of mouth are more trustworthy sources for consumers, which influence their purchase decisions way more than anything a sales people had to say.

Many consumers these days do research online before purchases, or even make the purchases online for consumer electronics. Therefore, many customers go into stores (full of knowledge), make the purchase, and leave.

Graph below shows the declining of retail sales industry (consumer elctronics):

I am on my way to Hong Kong from Vancouver BC. Currently 32000 feet high, on 551 mph ground speed, with -54.4 F outside air temperature, and 12 hours to go till it arrives.

I just took newspapers from the flight attendant, which reminded me of the latest prediction that says that all/ most traditional newspapers will be substituted by online news websites/ blogs in 2012.

I am quite sure that most of the services will eventually turn digital in any ways and as a digital marketer I’m glad how things are developing, but I still think that traditional newspaper has it’s values. Same as books, I can’t quite imagine how students will study only from ebooks.