I recently heard about the Zappos Real Time Shoe Map , and thought I’d share this interestesting new tool that melds technology with fashion choices. The Zappos map tracks in real time items from Zappos.com are being purchased and from where via a pop up over the city with an image of the product purchased. Invasive? Not really. A helpful marketing tool? Possibly. Of course, if you like what you see, you can just click on the image and it’ll take you to the Zappos.com page so that you can buy it too. Of course there’s the occasional apparel item that pops up, but the site is primarily a footwear merchant. I watched the map for about 10 minutes, and it seemed that from the styles that it indicated there were a lot of 40-something, more suburban Moms buying shoes at the moment. Unfortunately, a lot of hideous white chunky sneakers were being purchased, along with some relatively dated mule and loafer styles. It’s definitely a cool concept, and I’d love to see other sites, like Nordstrom.com or Amazon.com adapt a similar mapping strategy.
-Julia DiNardo
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