Smile City Sustainable Consumer EXPerience

One of the things that the punters hype up as one of the on-line channel shopping innovations is the ability to review feedback from previous shoppers. The innovation in this user-share tool is not so much its carrot and stick approach to influencing trading behaviour but its influence on how traders can adapt their service/products to meet new markets. Anybody who's been on trademe, e-bay or the like will attest to this.

SmileCity - as seen on TV

Here is a site that looks to harness the power of a niche of consumers who will hopefully give in to impulse. That was my first impression after the barrage of offers to earn points. Not exactly the stuff for a sustainable strategy, but I persevered and had a good browse through the discussion boards, and shopping areas. They do have a classifieds section, but the business model here is not dissimilar to a mall, i.e. sell as much product as possible. However, there is something interesting here.

Looking at their Footprint

As one of its Reward Partners says: "In 2005 we sold the bricks and mortar to reduce our overheads to concentrate on selling quality..." certainly SmileCity would likely have a significantly lower footprint than any Westfield mall in the country. But once a product is purchased it still takes a tank of gas delivering the product. With the offers coming to you however (instead of visa versa) the social benefits of visiting a shopping centre would need to be balanced out against greater time available for leisure activities - which e-commerce is all about. So far so good. Maybe there is the potential for a sustainable consumer to join this on-line community build up rewards points (or as they call them experience) and then feedback to the reward partners and community on sustainability.

Conclusion

SmileCity have invested in their site and have some strong reward partners, but actually the consumer experience for me would definitely be with the smaller partners I'd never heard of before. Not being much of a mall guy myself I would rate this site as a potentially sustainable business model.