Realtime "Likes" displayed on retailer's clothing hangers

I wonder if the logic behind this is straight-faced usage ("people will find it useful when shopping") or marketing ("this sets us apart - nobody will really care, but it will grab their attention").<p>I hope it's the latter, because the former would seem to me to be a hilarious case of trying to compete with etailers at their game, without realising what a flawed strategy that is. But I've met plenty of people I can imagine thinking it's a good idea, so unsure.<p>Either way, the geek in me loves what they've physically done.

The gamble being made here is that customers want to buy clothing that is popular.<p>I wonder if this might signal the exact opposite of what a shopper is looking for. Instead of clothing being an expression of unique individuality, he or she sees the huge number of people who have 'liked,' and possibly purchased the same item. Not that customers are normally fooled of course, but the volume of sales aren't usually brought to their attention so directly.

Great marketing for their Facebook page. How many people will have fun with this by finding the item on their phone and hitting like just to watch the counter go up?<p>They drive more people to their Facebook page to like something which will drive more people to the page and store.<p>Of course, of this happens, it'll be a short lived novelty. We'll see how much this helps afterwards.

My question is how effective will this be based on showing the number of likes alone? If you go to the store and see a string of numbers associated with each item on sale at what point does it lose its meaning? For example, I see one item over 1000 and one with just under 200. It's either liked five times more by a random sampling of socialtech-aware shoppers, or it's just a difference of 800 people from a group of 280,473 people (the number of likes on their FB page) which is less than insignificant. I'm sure at least a few people will start to get headaches as they try to manage what their "sweet spot" is for pants, jackets, shirts, etc. <i>each</i>.<p>Edit: I do think it's an interesting start, and at the very least I'm sure it will look good to marketing by encouraging more people to "like" what they buy– whether or not that leads to more buyers in the end I don't know.

Amazing, I'd never thought of a hanger as a display device - much less a haptic one. Other data sources can be added for the consumer, but the data gathered by the retail store could provide some amazing insights.

Aticle hijacked from<p><a href="http://www.springwise.com/fashion_beauty/brazilian-fashion-retailer-displays-facebook-likes-items-real-world-stores/" rel="nofollow">http://www.springwise.com/fashion_beauty/brazilian-fashion-r...</a>

Is there any way for the hangers to detect what clothing is currently on them (e.g. RFID)? If not, how are they going to deal with the issue when clothing inevitably ends up on the wrong hanger, if at all?

I had this idea, minus the FB angle, for restaurants. Imagine if the best dishes were somehow rated (like films on IMDB). I know everyone has their own taste but if I saw something I normally wouldn't order had '5 stars', I'd surely try it.

Whether it's useful or not, it's a pretty cool idea, no? Bringing Facebook like counts into the "real world".

This seems like it would be much more useful on a product that you can't try out and examine in the store.

This is just begging to be gamed :)

I already feel that the world is a better place