eBay Opens ‘Emotionally Powered’ Pop-Up

For two days, eBay opened what it calls the world’s first-ever “emotionally powered” pop-up store. Located in central London, the pop-up store tackled the stress of holiday present buying by inspiring shoppers to connect with the emotional spirit of giving. eBay used intelligent bio-analytic technology and facial coding to help guests discover what items on the company’s giving page that they best connect to emotionally. The technology was able to identify and record which products provoke the strongest feelings of giving. Visitors had the opportunity to enter biometric booths, as well as receive personalized emotion reports, to hone in on the items they connect with.

Total Retail’s Take: This is a tad bit creepy! Although I do like the Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday tie-in, it seems a bit invasive to translate real-time emotions to certain products. It would be interesting to see if this pop-up buzz generated increased traffic to eBay’s U.K. site.