Robbie Thain
Founder, CEO
AI-generated illustrative image. Not an official campaign image.
CHKP Group’s reported retail workflow links product advice to offers and sales credit. Makai examines the staffing and measurement lessons for CPG teams.
On November 2, 2026, SAP announced that China-Hongkong Photo Products Holdings Limited (CHKP Group) had implemented SAP Engagement Cloud across AV Life and FOTOMAX. At AV Life, the reported workflow carries a shopper’s product trial and expert advice beyond the store visit through a coded offer.
For U.S. CPG and beverage marketing leaders, the operational interest is that handoff. A physical interaction starts the journey. The reported setup preserves the offer and assigns sales credit when the customer purchases online or in-store.
According to SAP’s announcement, AV Life staff generate electronic quotations with unique promotional codes after shoppers try audiovisual products and receive expert advice. Customers can use the same offer online or in-store. The system credits the originating store and salesperson, and the workflow includes automated follow-ups.
The logistical point is continuity. The customer can change purchasing channels without losing the offer, while the originating store and salesperson remain connected to the transaction. That is a more specific operating model than simply recording that a shopper visited a store.
FOTOMAX illustrates a different part of the customer journey. SAP’s announcement says the retailer unified online and offline interactions for approximately 330,000 members into a single customer view. It describes segmentation by life stage and interests, with reminders tied to relevant occasions.
SAP reported a 47% email open rate for FOTOMAX’s automated reminders, compared with 42% for standard bulk emails. It also reported a 14% customer purchase rate for those reminders, compared with 0.4% for standard bulk emails. Those figures belong to the FOTOMAX reminder program, not AV Life’s product-trial workflow.
There is broader context for paying attention to the physical experience. In its 2025 retail report, Adyen reported that 39% of surveyed consumers preferred in-store shopping and 33% wanted retailers to make the experience more interesting.
These are company-reported Hong Kong retail results, not benchmarks for U.S. CPG programs. SAP’s announcement gives no AV Life conversion-lift figure and omits the methodology needed to assess FOTOMAX’s comparison independently. It also leaves purchase matching and attribution rules unexplained. Neither the implementation report nor Adyen’s shopper preferences establishes that a specific platform or activation caused incremental sales.
Our view at Makai is straightforward: welcome people warmly and treat the follow-through seriously. Useful product advice should feel like help, not an administrative task. The commercial objective still needs to remain visible after the conversation ends.
That balance matters for CPG and beverage brands because product trial is part of the work, not the entire assignment. We create face-to-face experiences designed to capture attention and generate measurable sales pipeline. Our retail demonstrations use trained brand ambassadors to support in-store sales through real conversations and product trials.
AV Life’s reported workflow gives that objective a concrete shape: advice leads to an offer, and the offer remains usable when the shopper is ready to buy. The lesson we draw is not that every sample needs an electronic quotation. It is that the next step should fit the interaction and remain connected to its commercial purpose.
Our own experience provides a category-relevant example. We managed a four-week, multi-market Costco sampling program for Pulmuone’s PlantSpired line. The program delivered more than 65,000 samples and recorded an 18 percent sold-to-sale rate. The operational lesson we take from that work is that structured sampling and purchase measurement belong in the same brief.
That is the balance behind welcoming product conversations backed by operational discipline. A warm exchange and a clear sales objective are not competing priorities. We believe the planning should protect both.
Our team provides reporting on reach and trials alongside leads and sales. For this discussion, the useful distinction is accountability: each measure answers a different question. Reach describes exposure, while trials describe product interaction. Leads and sales bring the conversation closer to pipeline and Return on Investment.
The downstream implication is a staffing and flow decision, not just a data decision. In AV Life’s reported sequence, staff do something after giving advice: they issue an electronic quotation with a unique offer. For a brand considering a comparable approach, that task needs a place in the activation plan.
The following are Makai’s planning implications for U.S. field programs, rather than staffing changes reported at CHKP Group.
The brief should distinguish the product conversation from the task that carries it forward. In the announced AV Life workflow, that transition is the quotation and code. In a CPG activation, the appropriate next step should follow the campaign’s objective rather than copy an audiovisual retailer’s process by default.
Makai’s retail demonstration capability centers on trained ambassadors and shopper conversations. From that perspective, we believe any additional handoff should support the conversation rather than compete with it. Staff responsibilities should make clear who explains the next step and who owns the follow-up.
This is also where a marketing leader should separate participation from qualified interest. A shopper willing to taste a product has completed a trial. Whether that interaction also represents a useful lead is a separate judgment tied to the campaign’s purpose.
For a trade show using a comparable coded-offer approach, the footprint should show where product experience ends and the next action begins. Offer explanation deserves a place in the journey. It should not become an unplanned stop that every visitor must navigate.
Makai plans and manages trade show spaces around attention and conversation with customer conversion as the objective. Our view is that the physical layout and the handoff deserve the same planning conversation. A booth can be visually clear while leaving the visitor’s next action poorly defined.
That is why capturing useful interest without stretching the form is a relevant design consideration. The objective is not to collect more information at every touchpoint. It is to preserve enough context for the next meaningful action.
AV Life’s reported system credits the originating store and salesperson. For CPG leaders, the planning lesson is to settle the meaning of credit before using it to evaluate field performance. The campaign brief should distinguish a recorded interaction from an attributed purchase and a claim of incremental impact.
Those distinctions should also shape reporting. Our measurement approach tracks awareness and engagement alongside conversion, turning brand moments into actionable data. We believe the report should retain those separate views rather than compress them into a single success label.
A useful operational recap should make the handoff visible: what interaction occurred, what next step was offered and what commercial outcome was recorded. That is the thinking behind turning event recaps into operational intelligence. The purpose is to give the next campaign a clearer brief, not just a fuller presentation.
In SAP’s announcement, CHKP Group CEO Sun To-hung said the company’s brands and teams had previously worked toward different performance targets. He described the shared customer view as supporting collaboration across those teams.
That reaction brings the story back to management. If field staff are evaluated only on interactions while another team owns the purchase record, the campaign has separate definitions of progress. Our recommendation is to make the next action and its owner explicit in the brief, then keep each team’s contribution visible in the reporting.
The strategic lesson is bigger than a promotional code. A connected customer journey needs an agreed operating objective as well as a technical connection.
When your next activation opens, will your team be able to trace the shopper’s first product conversation into an offer and a credited purchase, rather than letting that conversation disappear at the store exit?
CPG marketing teams own the daily balance between useful product advice and a clear purchase objective; Makai’s retail demonstration work brings trained ambassadors into that interaction. Makai uses in-store conversations and product trials to support sales for food and beverage brands.
30 Years Experiential & Retail Activation Partner for CPG & Beverage Brands | Multi-Market Demos, Roadshows & Costco/Club Programs That Actually Sell
