Auditing Connected Home Displays

How skillful are top chains at marketing WiFi-enabled “smart” home appliances to shoppers in store with product displays, interactive demonstrations and the like? How do they stack up against one another in terms of visual appeal, information availability, product interaction and other characteristics?In a study called “Home Improvement Retail in the Digital Age: Issues in Selling to Today’s Home Improvement Shoppers,” Field Agent published the results of 160 auditor store visits to The Home Depot, Lowe's and Best Buy. These auditors, who examined and rated such connected-home displays, were all homeowners who had never purchased or owned a smart home appliance, and they were each sent to their retailer-of-choice for buying home appliances.In the third of a multi-part series, Pathfinders spoke with Chris Medenwald, marketing manager for Field Agent, about the audit results and their implications. Part one of the series discussed how various home improvement retailers and brands stack up in consumers’ minds. Part two detailed who is buying smart home electronics as well as what, when and why they’re buying. The fourth and final part, scheduled for January, will delve into the marketing mix among the store, online and omnichannel.Rating “Smart” DisplaysField Agent's homeowner auditors were asked to simply spend several minutes walking through and making observations in the primary smart-home appliance and electronics sections of their assigned store, if it had such a hub. They were then asked to rate the store from 1 to 5 (with 5 the highest) both overall and specifically based on traits like visual appeal, information availability, product assortment, stock levels, and product interaction and demonstration.Although Field Agent cautions that sample sizes are not large enough to draw scientific conclusions, the data indicate that Best Buy made a more favorable impression on consumers than the two home center retailers, scoring the highest in each category with between a 4.0 and 4.6, for an overall rating of 4.38. Lowe’s fared better than Home Depot in every category except product assortment, where both scored a 3.7. Lowe’s had an overall score of 3.58 and landed between 3.3 and 3.9 in each category, while Home Depot finished at 3.18, with between a 3.0 and 3.7 in each except for product interaction, where it scored a 2.2.“Best Buy is sort of ‘king of the hill.’ Home Depot and Lowe’s … are pretty much on par, pretty equal, even though you can see that Home Depot came in below Lowe’s on product interaction and demonstration,” Medenwald says.More qualitatively, homeowners said they liked Home Depot’s convenient all-in-one location but would like to see more interactivity, while Lowe’s experienced the opposite set of feedback, with auditors praising the store’s interactivity but wishing the smart-home electronics displays were in one central location rather than scattered among multiple endcaps.“Best Buy has it figured out, it seems to me,” Medenwald says. “Best Buy has a really effective formula. I wouldn’t be at all surprised, and I think Home Depot and Lowe’s would be well-served, if they were to benchmark what Best Buy has done.”Inventory of What’s AvailableAuditors also took an inventory of products available in each retailer’s main “connected home” section, searching for 15 types of products: cameras, carbon monoxide or smoke detectors, door locks, doorbells with video, electrical plugs, garage door openers, home hubs that integrate several smart devices, home security systems, humidifiers, light switches, light bulbs, microwaves, motion sensors, thermostats and Wi-Fi System Controls.Medenwald terms these the “mainstays” of any smart home electronics section. “It’s certainly not an all-inclusive listing of Wi-Fi products, but the main ones are there,” he says. “It gives you an idea of the similarities in terms of dedicated smart product displays. They don’t precisely mirror one another, but they come awfully close.”Best Buy had the widest selection, with at least half of the stores audited carrying 12 out of the 15 products, while Home Depot had 11 and Lowe’s had nine.Medenwald says it appears from the results that Home Depot and Best Buy have dedicated somewhat more floor space to smart-home products than has Lowe’s. “Lowe’s right now, in many of their locations, seems content to dedicate three or four endcaps to smart products,” he says. “Keep in mind that Lowe’s has more interactive capability,” Medenwald adds. “Any time you have that, you’re probably going to eat into the number of products you can actually carry.”For access to the full Field Agent report, click here. Check Pathfinders every month for future installments of the series.

Auditing Connected Home Displays

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