Earlier this month, budget airline EasyJet added a ‘Look & Book’ feature to its app. Customers can upload an image — Instagram images work best due to its geotagging data — and the airline will scan the image and enable the user to book a flight to the nearest airport. Currently the feature only works with European destinations.

Three quick takeaways for you:

– Images, the new text. POINT-KNOW-BUY is one trend we called far too early, back in 2012! A mere six years later, and visual recognition technologies are finally catching up with our core insight about the direction of customer expectations:

After a decade of near-obsessive Googling, instant access to information with the right (textual) input is now expected, a way of life. The next frontier is visual info-gratification: consumers accessing information about objects encountered in the real world, in more natural ways and while on-the-go.

– Contextual omnipresence. For all businesses’ obsession with omnichannel, customers don’t care. They simply want you to be in the right place at the right time. And, with 84 million #wanderlust posts, Instagram is where many seek travel inspiration (no matter how unoriginal they might be!). Which new mediums could be innovative and convenient channels to engage your customers?

– Building an innovation culture. Will thousands of customers book their flights via Instagram? The reality is almost certainly not. But this innovation reminds us of Domino’s digital innovations. Have all of them seen breakout success? No. But according to its CEO, its experimental efforts have cemented a culture of innovation and attracted talent. More importantly, all its innovations focused on a consumer need – convenience! – that’s core to Domino’s business. EasyJet is focusing on inspiring its customers. Before you embark on a costly digital transformation program, does everyone involved know which deep consumer need(s) you’re focused on?

This content is originally sourced at: https://trendwatching.com