During this time of year, shopping is culturally ubiquitous. However, I’m immune to the viral sales pitch so I don’t buy much during this time of year. I’m obsessively frugal. I also prefer to be in control of my wallet and usually ignore winter sales. I stockpile items for my personal use and gifting throughout the entire year at regular intervals.
Unlike many of my peers I love retail stores. I use the internet to purchase virtually everything because of the cost and time efficiency, but I don’t like the internet experience because its too impersonal.
I’ve fallen head over heels in love with Mom and Pop [local independent] row stores and Farmers Markets. They usually offer consumers a very high quality shopping experience.
From what I remember, malls and megastores were always crowded, distractingly lit, and staffed by disinterested minions watching the clock in anticipation of their next coffee break. The clock evidently was much more interesting than the consumers haplessly lingering in line to buy mass-produced bric-a-brac at Madison Avenue boutique prices.
How can retail improve?
Apparently, the key is to merge the superstore cost and branding efficiencies with the Mom and Pop personal one-on-one approach.
Interestingly, Mom and Pop stores desperately need sales, but their key focuses appear to be socialization, experience customization, and community building.
When you shop in a district or local community that is known as an “Antique Row” or “Farmers Market,” you’re engaging with a dynamic retail ecosystem.
The stores and farmers work collectively to generate sales and give each other referrals. If one store sells handcrafted wooden chairs, the owners customarily refer you to an upholsterer right around the corner. The upholsterer engages you in conversation finds out that you just bought a new house and refers you to an interior designer across the street. The interior designer introduces you to an architect upstairs who specializes in restorations and renovations of houses very similar to yours and so on ad infinitum. When will internet commerce and malls become so strategically organized?
Mom and Pop shop owners and farmers socialize by introducing themselves to shoppers and passers-bys, thus fostering a personal connection that is usually based on membership or interests in the local neighborhood or community.
Sales are generated as a byproduct of great conversations and social familiarity.
Has retail improved?
The answer is a resounding “Yes.” Retail is still struggling with execution, but at least their hearts are seemingly in the right place. The Apple store has become the model par excellence for a vast number of technology retailers hoping to recast their brands and launch new products.
Many media sites, including the NYT recently reported that Verizon, Dell, AT&T, and Motorola have new superstores emphasizing “…experience…” In addition, they report “…(Verizon’s) newest store in North Texas lets consumers walk in, sit down, play the latest video game, practice downloading music, or if it’s the weekend, kick back and watch football in high definition…”
Verizon Communications’ executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Robert E. Ingalls Jr., was quoted explaining “,The big proposition here is to experience the product and try it” and “Seeing it, touching it and feeling it gives them (prospective consumers) a better opportunity to make a decision…” He also states that with foot traffic and sales Verizon may expand the concept nationwide.
Conceptually and strategically Verizon is approaching retail in an uncoordinated and disorganized manner.
Apple stores exist to establish and reestablish the public’s connection to the Apple psyche. Steve Jobs knows that the stores do not drive sales.
Verizon is marching into the costly world of retail with an incongruent sales-based strategy.
Firstly, they are evaluating the success of the stores based on the wrong metrics. Verizon must emphasize the duration of time an individual spends in the store as a significant indicator. The store should be viewed as an interactive billboard. Consumers don’t spend inordinate amounts of their time in stores that they do not like. If someone is lingering in the store participating with staff in activities that reinforce the qualities of the brand, then that is a good opportunity to convert a noncommittal passers-by into a prospective long-term customer. The time spent in the store increases the probability that potential sales and word of mouth marketing opportunities are on the horizon.
Secondly, in the present-day world sales decisions are multi-staged incremental events. Sales are fueled by long-term cultural reinforcements and brand definitions within one’s social, professional, class, and demographic clusters. We are in the final days of impulse buying. Few people wait to make critical decisions at the point of sale. Buying via website is surging in popularity since it is an on-demand system. Consumers can mull the idea over and initiate the sale process once they have decided on brands, features, payment method, payment options, etc.
In addition to working with the wrong metrics, Verizon is targeting the wrong demographic. In retail today, the best demographics for technology products are small businesses, freelancers, students, young professionals, and the urban working class. Verizon is launching their flagship “experience” superstore in an affluent, somewhat aged suburb outside of Dallas and Fort Worth.
So, do not expect your average young, mobile geeks or urban tastemakers to make the trek to the 5000 square foot cavern of 40+ year old denizens in the ’burbs.
One of the things Mom and Pop stores do right is emphasize location by often placing stores near similar shops in densely populated, trendy neighborhoods. This tactic creates a clustering or herd effect that lends itself towards greater visibility and increased traffic.
In my estimation, the most significant advantage Verizon’s superstore has is a customer service center called the “guru zone” where consumers can have their questions answered by expertly trained personnel.
In a world with so many messages (blogs, social media, social shopping, ads, spam), reliable expert opinion transmitted face to face is growing in popularity among a growing segment of consumers. Many consumers are concerned about the internet’s impersonal anonymity. They fear that increasing internet purchasing may make them more susceptible to unscrupulous sales pitches.
Will I start going to the mall?
No, not yet. But if retailers use Apple’s retail efforts as their template and significantly downsize the superstore concept making it less cavernous and more intimate, then and only then will I return to a mall. But if malls installed some hip kiosks featuring limited release games, free downloadable MP3s, and advanced programming tutorials with Python and Ruby On Rails tricks then I would have to reconsider.
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