Burger King asks: would you like IM with that?

So the guys over at Three Minds @ Organic posted this picture and asked, "Shouldn't the answer be about customization of your hamburger online, not spending more time online?" And I started to wonder... Is this really a bad thing? Granted, I'm probably too connected for my own good, but I'd be willing to bet that there's a large and growing population that wants to have the option to get connected everywhere they go, and that includes fast food establishments.

To Organic's point, Burger King's first and main goal must be to produce quality (?!) food at a quick pace. If they can't pull that off, no amount of connectivity is going to help them keep their customer base happy. However, customizing your whopper online? Really? Where's the value in that? To me, BK's offer to provide web services seems much more valuable than allowing me to pull up a saved order over the web.

In a world where differentiation is becoming more difficult at the low-end, I think BK's approach makes a lot of sense: their core offering stays the same, their core audience remains unalientated, the process most critical to their business, ordering, remains simple and standard, and they maybe pick up some extra margin on the low-cost, easy-to-swap-if-they-dont-work, and partner-centric digital services that tweens, teens and twentysomethings already expect, and more are coming to use.

All that having been said, how long before the old fast food cliché becomes "would you like advanced digital and/or web services with that?" It doesn't seem to roll off the tongue quite so easily :)

Tags: store experience

Reenergizing Starbucks

You know a company is good when the mere suggestion that a tiny fraction of its stores may be closing in the next 12 months is taken as a sign of general economic malaise. After all, if it's not the force of the global economy slowing down, how else might Starbucks explain the sudden deceleration of their growth? Surely it can't have something to do with their expensive, mediocre coffee (especially compared with much cheaper fare from McDonald's), right?

Well, according to this article in Business Week, maybe it actually does. I know, I know, this would mean that throngs of Wall St analysts and FOX News personnel would be wrong, but apparently CEO Howard Schultz thinks that yes, maybe Starbucks has been doing a few things wrong the past couple of years. Business Week's Matt Vella does a great job of outlining the current problems facing the company (the biggest of which being deteriorating customer experiences at existing stores, and a playing field crowded by the likes of Dunkin' Donuts, Burger King and McDonald's), but also notes some possible solutions:

Brian Collins, chief creative officer of New York's Collins design research firm, thinks "technology seems underleveraged at Starbucks." Collins says the company could better use its digital resources to learn the tastes of regular customers. "Somebody call Facebook," he jokes, suggesting the company should create social networking tools to foster communities and facilitate social interaction at individual Starbucks stores.

Others, however, remain adamant that it's the coffee, not the technology, that will see Starbucks through. Geoff Vuleta, CEO of New York innovation consultancy Fahrenheit 212, says he has a radical solution that will solve the chain's problems even as it soothes Wall Street's jangled nerves: Open a chain of microstores devoted solely to making coffee. "No travel cups, no music, no machines, just amazing beans and a narrow range of the best-in-the-world coffee drinks," he envisions. Such microstores, he says, could hone the Starbucks experience—and result in a smaller, less costly footprint than regular stores which change at a slower pace. Jeneanne Rae, president of the Alexandria (Va.) service innovation consultancy Peer Insight, agrees, saying, "They can't move away from the essence of the brand; they have to focus on getting back to the basics."

I've spoken to folks at Starbucks a number of times about kiosk and digital signage projects, and in general their opinion has been that less is always more, especially when it comes to any form of 3rd party advertising. While I'm generally bullish on the use of in-store technology, I think the idea of microstores that focus on a few key coffee products is the best idea of the bunch. While admittedly it's going to be tough cramming lots of Starbucks style and panache into a couple hundred square feet, working with a small environment and limited product range will allow the company to identify and enhance the most core elements of the Starbucks brand in a cost effective fashion. These findings, of course, can then travel back up the chain into their regular format stores quickly and with little risk, since they essentially will have been vetted by hardcore Starbucks fans frequenting the microsites.

There's lots of speculation as to what direction the firm will take. But we're going to have to wait until March 19th to find out the truth: that's when CEO Schulz will announce his plans for rescuing the company from mediocrity.

Tags: starbucks, store experience, microstores

Guessing the impact of mobile media at retail

I've been watching a conversation at RetailWire about mobile device integration develop for a few days. It seems like the data is finally in and most opinions are settled, and I wanted to draw some attention to what the folks in the discussion -- arguably some of the better-informed, savvy retail analysts and consultants out there -- are saying about the future of mobile phones and devices for the typical retailer. To begin with, Amanda Ferrante, Assistant Editor for the website Retail TouchPoints, asked what seemed like a simple enough question: Within the next five years, what percentage of Americans will have used mobile devices as part of their shopping experience?

Surprisingly, as you can see from the chart, 40% of those who responded think that within five years, at least 60% of shoppers will be using mobile phones to aid and improve their experiences. Almost another 30% of respondents think that it 40-60% of shoppers will do so. No matter how you slice it, these people think that mobile integration is going to be big, soon.

I'm not quite so sure. Yes, I've had a WAP-capable phone since 1999, and I clearly remember trying to do some comparison shopping while at a Barnes & Noble store. Most clearly, I remember the bewildered look of the clerk as I tried to explain that bn.com was selling the same book for less, and I wanted the lower price. Needless to say, the five or six lines of text on the tiny black-and-white screen wasn't the best visual aid to help make a compelling argument.

Anyway, the point is that I've been hoping for better use of mobile devices by retailers for a while. And despite nearly a decade of technological advances, trying to use mobile in a store today isn't much different than it was in 1999. Sure, the mobile Internet is now faster, prettier, and generally more like the regular Internet than ever before (heck, on an iPhone it is the real Internet). But very few are using their devices to try and connect the virtual and real worlds, which I think is a major component of all of these retail-oriented programs I've been reading about and waiting for.

Will mobile devices become a big part of the shopping experience? Sure. We all have them. They keep getting more useful (we can use them as phones, computers, GPS tracking systems, and even payment devices right now). And for the most part, they work pretty well. But in 5 years I expect things to look much the same as they do now: people carrying around gadgets, stores talking about using said gadgets to get better access to the customer and provide better service, and deployments of useful and usable in-store mobile integration systems still very few and far between.

Tags: store experience, retail media, mobile marketing

More retailers discover the benefits of in-store TV

Promo magazine has put together a piece that focuses on a handful of retailers and their experience with in-store TV. According to the article, "About 630,000 TV screens are now housed in 97,000 U.S. retail stores, estimates PowerPact, a consumer marketing agency. That number is projected to grow by 20% a year."

Obviously, this is good news. But even more interesting is the fact that "hipper" stores like Borders (whose in-store TV developments we wrote about in early December), Ecko Unltd and Limited Too are following in the steps of Wal-Mart, who already has 120,000 screens according to Promo. It's even more reassuring that these retailers are working to develop unique content for the in-store TV's instead of just settling for glorified versions of late-night infomercials.

According to the article, "Ecko Unltd teamed up with Channel M to launch 'ecko TV' last October. It uses short-form content -- everything from sports and shout-outs from celebrities -- to 'stop people in their tracks,' says Eric Hebel, president and COO of Channel M."

This is exactly the kind of approach that all companies should take when developing in-store TV project plans: make it eye-catching and entertaining above all else. If a customer stops to watch a video because they are genuinely interested in its content, there's a better chance of the content's message being imparted (rather than if the customer is aware that they are shamelessly being sold a product and decide not to even glance at the screens).

The article also gives lip service to a critic of this kind of advertising: "'It is an intrusion,' says Susan Linn, the group's co-founder. 'This is part of a targeted device by corporations to get brands in our face 24 hours, seven days a week. It may benefit marketers, but it doesn't do the rest of us a lot of good.'"

I don't buy this argument. After all, we are talking about in-store advertising here, so I don't know how that aims to keep "brands in our face 24 hours, seven days a week." Nobody is ever forced to walk into a store. The only time I'd be exposed to in-store TV from Wal-Mart or Borders is if I make the conscious decision to give them my time.

Once a customer is in a store, should it not be the goal of any retailer to enforce their brand and make a sale while they have our attention? Moreover, isn't it better for all of us (customers and retailers) if the store projects an attractive and possibly even entertaining atmosphere? If in-store TV can accomplish both tasks, then why should retailers back off of it? It seems to me like Ms. Linn has a beef with advertising in general and merely looks at this as an illustration of the increasing pervasion of ads.

On the off-chance that you're not familiar with in-store TV networks (which is the subject of one of our other blogs, Digital Signage News), I recommend you check out WireSpring's digital signage primer, and specifically the section on Retail TV.

Tags: digital signage, store experience, in-store TV

Circuit City to experiment with small-format stores?

TWICE, This Week in Consumer Electronics, reports that Circuit City may begin testing smaller stores in an effort to catch up with industry-leader Best Buy. While not exactly boutiques, the stores, dubbed "The City" will be about a third smaller than typical stores, or 20,000 sq.ft. instead of the usual 33,000 sq.ft.

While the stores will be a bit smaller, they'll still be packed full of merchandise. In fact, the ever-shrinking size of today's consumer electronics products was actually cited as one reason why smaller stores might work well. You're probably wondering why Circuit City thinks their approach will work. TWICE says this:

What makes The City different? It's 20,000-square-foot size,
for one. Tests showed that the smaller footprint is more productive
than the chain's typical 33,000-square-foot box, Pappas said, thanks to
shrinking product dimensions. The new stores are also merchandised more
efficiently, with narrower but deeper assortments of best-selling,
high-margin products. Modular fixtures allow The City stores to quickly
alter the mix as demand changes, and greater integration with online
inventory allows in-store customers to choose from 1 million SKUs and
have their purchases delivered free of charge.

Other
innovations include prepackaged product bundles, and high-tech tools
like wireless tablet PCs, which sales associates or "partners" use to
check inventory, schedule Firedog appointments and walk shoppers or
"guests" through the sales encounter. The tablets' "guided selling
application" helps identify products and services appropriate for each
customer by drilling down through a hierarchy of circumstances,
explained Brian Leach, The City's regional VP. This allows associates
to cover multiple categories ("You'll never hear 'It's not my
department,'" Leach said), while addressing the training issues
associated with non-commissioned sales staffs.

So in large part it sounds like the smaller format is part of a bid to improve both perceived and actual customer service by making service personnel more knowledgeable (or at least giving them more/better access to information) and more efficient by un-tethering them from their sales registers. After this Christmas shopping season, I'll be the first to say that better customer service would be a very welcome change, as both Circuit City and Best Buy gave me some headaches while trying to buy a few high-margin (I'm sure) items. Amazon.com didn't, so ultimately they got my money, even though the bricks-and-mortars guys gave me the opportunity to actually try out the kit I was shopping for.

While Circuit City will continue opening new stores in their regular format this year, Steve Pappas, the firm's Small-Stores President, noted that most of the new stores built this year would be of the smaller "The City" variety.

The idea has some merit, but will this be enough to improve their less-than-stellar image? And if the service enhancement portion of the changes work well enough to deploy into a bunch of new stores, why doesn't Circuit City deploy them to their existing (large) stores as well?

Tags: customer service, store experience, Circuit City

Can high-tech gadgets improve customer service?

Normally when I think/talking about high-tech innovation in retail over at Kiosk News or Digital Signage News, I'm usually referring to new options for self-service (on the former) or technical additions and improvement to the store itself (on the latter). But this article from the AP highlights another way that PDAs, WiFi and other gadgetry are helping out: by empowering store associates themselves. The article highlights an experiment at Macy's where,

"Without leaving the customer's side, Macy's sales associate Felicia
Dixon uses a small, handheld electronic device that essentially summons
the shoes in the right style, color and size, from the stockroom. It is
not quite magic: A clerk in the backroom receives the request
electronically and brings out the merchandise.

"The shopper does
not have to hunt around for a clerk each time she wants to try on a
different style or needs a different size. Better service means happier
customers, and that could lead to more sales.

"At least that is the hope, from the retailer's perspective."

We've certainly seen a good number of innovative electronic devices show up on the retail scene lately, but aside from a few notable exceptions (e.g. Apple store employees walking around with miniature POS terminals built into PDAs) most of it has skipped the store personnel in favor of going directly for the shoppers. While that strategy is certainly understandable (or at least not obviously wrong), I have noticed a number of retailers trying out hand-held devices this holiday season. I've seen Macy's and Lowe's employees (I think - after so many stores it's hard to remember) using hand-held scanners, along with a few different temporary mall kiosks set up to sell holiday giftware and baskets. The devices leave personnel free to roam the floor looking for people in obvious need of help, and in turn lets customers being helped avoid long lines. Aside from being able to offer more personalized service, I'd imagine that the tech-equipped salesforce could also encourage up-sells and cross-sells, potentially making the transaction a more profitable one for the retailer. So in the best possible scenario, it's a win-win.

It'll be a long time before handheld POS replaces the checkout line, since retailers are notorious slow movers and have tight budgets even in the best of times. But for the holiday rush it seems like a great way to increase checkout capacity without taking up more floor space. And who knows, with a few years of holiday data maybe the ROI of such an approach will cause a transition to this type of service during non holiday times.

Tags: customer service, POS, store experience

The genius behind Apple's "Genius Bar"

Ever since Apple opened its first retail store just a few short years ago, there have been pundits heralding the demise of the fabulously stylish (still?) tech company. After all, retail presences had killed so many other, bigger computer firms in the past, so what made Apple unique?

Well, the answer, of course, is the focus on the customer experience. What lots of people failed to realize was that a company as obsessed with the user interface as Apple had probably figured out that that same attention to detail would be required to deliver a positive, memorable bricks-and-mortar shopping experience.

Fast-forward to late 2007 and what do we see? Over 200 Apple stores in operation around the world, massive growth on tap, fat margins, a wide selection of (still?) trendy products, and a stock price that shows no signs of coming down soon. But not content with their successes so far, Apple figured that their admittedly-great retail experience still has some room for improvement.

Thus I was pleased to see this announcement at Yahoo noting that the company would be putting more of a focus on their "geniuses" -- Store employees who are filled with Apple knowledge and ready to help, whether it's showing how to use a new iPod or figuring out what's wrong with a Mac. Where other stores routinely have difficulty getting their staff to connect with shoppers, Apple actually asks you to go online and book time with geniuses before making your way to a store.

So let's look at what Apple has done: They've built a retail experience around having great staff. They hired great staff. Sure enough, people don't treat the great staff like a bunch of lepers or used car salespeople. In fact, customers now come to the stores specifically because of the staff in many cases. In response, Apple's latest store has a Genius bar capable of handling up to 50 shoppers at once, and they've added a "personal shopper" service.

While Apple's product line and core demographic lends itself particularly well to guided selling and in-house support, it doesn't seem like the success of Apple's geniuses should be limited to that one company, or even the home/personal electronics industry. There are plenty of other stores that I go to where the staff is truly excellent -- they're knowledgeable, friendly, courteous, and they know when to intrude and when not to. But it seems like there are few other brands who have made great products, great service, great stores a core part of their marketing strategy. Down here in Florida, the Publix grocery chain is trying. They've been big on service since their inception, but only recently have they started focusing on the overall store experience more. I know people are in love with Trader Joe's, and they certainly have a strong reputation, but I haven't shopped there enough myself. Wholefoods has a solid brand, and their stores are pretty to look at, but while free cheese and cracker samples are nice, I haven't found the staff to be up to snuff on many occasions, and their store layouts leave a lot to be desired.

So who else is out there? What other brands offer solid store experiences backed up with first-rate staff bent on making shoppers feel good? I'm sure there are lots of local guys, but are there any other national (or even regional) guys making this a priority right now?

Tags: store experience, apple

Does the retail clothing store experience continue to fail?

I love the Adaptive Path blog. The posters there are super-smart, entertaining, and always capable of coaxing an insightful argument out of even mundane content. Julia's recent post about the retail experience is no exception, and she laments that dressing rooms are still inadequate (a sentiment that echoes Paco Underhill's own observation in Why we Buy). But is it fair to say that the retail clothing store experience continues to fail? After all, Julia points out in her own post that:

The layout of the store tends to provide more open space for shoppers than it did just five years ago. Even in department stores, gone are the days of being squeezed in between the sale rack and some soulless sweater display with a half dressed mannequin. It seems there are more boutiques focused on one style or catering to a well thought out target audience than ever before. There are places for people to sit, often with those nice little tables with magazines. I’ve noticed this in nearly every U.S. city I’ve visited this year from Chicago, to DC, to Santa Fe.

So yeah, dressing rooms might still suck, but given the number of things that universally required improvement just a few years ago, it seems like retailers have been paying attention to customers and actually implementing many of the suggested changes. I agree that if retailers can accomplish so much it seems odd that they would fall short of addressing this common gripe, especially since some of the other recent fixes (like recent whole-store planogram changes at Macy's and JCPenney's) must have been much more costly and complex to implement. But even for an occasional shopper like me, the overall state of affairs inside the typical clothing or department store has improved noticeably over the past 5 years, and is far from what I'd consider failing.

Now remind me I said that in three or four weeks when I'm at the mall during the height of holiday shopping season ;)

Tags: retail design, in-store marketing, store experience

Will retailers look to the Internet for clues to success?

According to a new report released by Datamonitor Plc (and as reported by the Wise Marketer), "retailers around the world are hoping to win back lost market share by making their customers' shopping experiences a little more meaningful - and even theatrical - with emphasis placed on the sensuous elements of an in-store shopping trip." Of course this should come as no great surprise to those working in retail design and marketing, however the report's summary identifies a few key trends that, at least upon my initial cursory analysis, don't quite fit with what my customers and colleagues have been telling me recently.

The summary leads off with the notion that, "the next step in the battle to retain customers is to streamline the
buying experience, bringing it more in line with Internet shopping in
terms of ease and speed of transaction." While most retailers -- especially big ones -- do constantly try to optimize checkout lanes, reduce overall transaction time, and generally improve the part of the experience where the customer has to pay for stuff, in all other parts of the store retailers have been focusing on ways to make bricks-and-mortar less like the Internet, not more. The report notes that as tracking devices become more reliable at identifying a shopper's race, gender and age, retailers will be able to beam targeted ads and messages to nearby digital signs in hopes of catching their attention. So ok, maybe stores will start experimenting with Internet-style banner ads. However, where experience really counts, there's still no topping the bricks-and-mortar store.

Looking for a new guitar? Want to try on a pair of shoes? Is the Corinthian leather really that much nicer than the brushed vinyl? There Internet still lags far behind the real-world experience when it comes to examining/analyzing anything that can't be captured accurately in a photo or two. Lots of really innovative work going on inside the store these days tries to highlight the advantages of traditional commerce, and increasingly, hybrid commerce.

Of course, where the Internet excels is in instances where the customer can benefit from a very large amount of information, the ability to compare multiple products at once (for both price and features), and see reviews from (presumably) like-minded shoppers. And in my experience this is where retailers have been putting more effort lately. In an effort to combat Amazon, Borders has had kiosks in-store for a while, and Barnes and Noble is starting to follow suit. Best Buy and Circuit City have had product info/comparison kiosks for a few years, and recently I've even seen department and home furnishing stores get into the act.

While the Datamonitor study cites POS, RFID and proximity sensors, the key driver (which they also mention) is most likely to be mobile, or perhaps more accurately, a combination of local in-store kiosks, Bluetooth/WiFi beaconing, and mobile Internet, all delivered to a shopper's own handset and in-store digital signs. By letting shoppers access the same kind of information that they'd be able to get over the Internet, retailers can help level the playing field with e-commerce while still pushing native advantages like allowing shoppers to interact with products before buying them.

Giving shoppers the option to get information on their mobile devices forces retailers to give up some control (since the mobile devices come in all shapes and sizes, have differing capabilities, and of course can access content outside of the retailer's control). However, offering the service in the first place means that retailers can still control some of the content and marketing (as opposed to none), can provide for deeper interaction (by using digital signs as big display screens, or letting users snap a picture of an item's bar code to look up information on it, for example), and can help build customer loyalty in a highly value-added, purely opt-in fashion.

Tags: digital signage, retail media, store experience

Subliminal advertising meets retail?

Heather Strang at Retail Design Diva notes that Swiss firm Barix AG has started supplying retailers (specifically New Balance right now) with a new IP-based audio system for delivering in-store music and integrated advertising. While it doesn't sound like anything particularly new to me (pretty much every store you can name is using some kind of audio-over-IP system these days), Strang feels that the system, which has been billed as being able to, "increase brand awareness and customer recall of important marketing messages and can help increase sales through the power of suggestion," borders on brainwashing.

While on the one hand using a phrase like "the power of suggestion" is going to raise some hackles, I believe that the intent of the system is similar to any other POP display. Shoppers are probably not going to devote a lot of time and attention to processing it, but if and when the system plays an ad that's relevant to him, he'll either (consciously) take note, or (subconsciously) be primed to encounter the item while shopping. After all, the inherent power of point-of-purchase advertising is the message's proximity to the product, and consequently the shopper's ability to effectively marry the marketing message to the physical item that can be picked up, examined and purchased.

Now if Barix was doing something sneaky like trying to embed and hide the ads inside of regular-sounding music, that would indeed be creepy, and maybe even illegal depending on who you ask (anybody here see Josie & the Pussycats? No? You should, it's pretty entertaining). But that doesn't seem to be true here, in which case the firm has simply married a new distribution system to its existing in-store audio technology, and hopefully that will be a win-win for retailer and shopper alike. For the retailer, it means an affordable way to add more advertising elements to the store without cluttering up the environment. And for shoppers, well, if the audio track is right, maybe it'll mean no more Michael Bolton or Celine Dion background tracks. And I think that's something that we can all agree would be a good thing (right Heather?)

Tags: in-store audio, in-store advertising, store experience

How far would you go to prevent disappointment?

I've been thinking about the concepts of "expectations" and "disappointment" after reading a recent article over at Flooring the Consumer, a retail experience-oriented blog. The author explains her disappointment after planning and taking a trip to a local IKEA for an afternoon of lunch and shopping. Apparently, due to a county-wide problem with the water supply the IKEA's heavily-used cafeteria was out of commission for the afternoon, leaving the author and her young daughter out of luck (well, for the lunch part anyway. They managed to get some shopping in). Her take on the situation: IKEA could have done a lot more to avoid disappointing its customers, many of whom expect the cafeteria to be operational, and factor it in as part of their decision to shop at IKEA in the first place. She goes on to offer some possible solutions and workarounds that the store could have taken, including:

Given IKEA's commitment to serving family meals, why couldn't the store come up with a temporary, but fun food solution? Offer complimentary cookies? What about water, soda, milk? As we checked out, I noticed that ice cream was available at a cash/wrap snack bar. Why not upstairs in the cafeteria? Why did I have to check out to realize that another food [OK, snack food] option was available? This didn't make sense.

What about selling sandwiches? Or offering Lunchables? I understand water and sanitation issues, but why should that completely shut down this cafeteria? During the busiest shopping day of the week? When the store heavily advertises the service that had been shut down? What a missed opportunity.

Needless to say, I was disappointed with the response to the water emergency. These things happen, and what a lost opportunity to draw in consumers and Wow! them with a delightful and unexpected solution to a crisis. Especially the coveted woman and mom demographic!

Normally, I find the author's (C.B. Whittemore) estimates and advice to be dead-on. Practical and typically insightful, she's a demanding customer who has an eye for turning good retail experiences into great ones. And in fact, I think her suggestions for handling the closed cafeteria problem are mostly workable as well (I don't know about bringing in outside food sources -- I think that kind of thing could be laced with legal and logistical problems that would only be worsened by a lack of potable running water). Overall, though, I think that her high expectations led to a more severe disappointment than she might have felt if she wasn't so enamored with this particular retailer in the first place.

Therein lies a problem, specifically a Catch-22: retailers constantly work to improve their customers' experiences, and hence raise their customers' expectations. Consequently, when any kind of problem arises, it gets magnified, appears much more severe -- and is more disappointing -- than if the retailer had only a mediocre reputation that invoked moderate expectations to begin with. Thus in some ways being a top-notch retailer can get you into trouble, since with the higher highs come the lower lows, and measures to thwart and circumvent day-to-day glitches in the operation have to get continually more elaborate.

The situation reminds me a bit of the JetBlue fiasco that happened when an ice storm this winter shut down traffic to the airline's major New York hub. Traffic to a number of airlines was affected, but JetBlue got the lion's share of negative PR. Sure, a greater percentage of their flights were affected (due to both their reliance on the JFK hub and a bunch of admittedly terrible decisions by management), but by that point the airline had such a tremendously positive reputation that a glitch that would have merely upset another airline's customer base got JetBlue's passengers really, really angry. In short, JetBlue's customers -- just like IKEA's -- felt a more severe disappointment because their expectations were so high to begin with.

What's the solution to this problem? I certainly don't want to have my retailers and service providers suddenly stop trying just so I'll be less disappointed that they suck. That's not in anyone's best interest. But at the same time, I recognize that at some point it gets really hard to keep getting better. The only good news for retailers that continue to try harder is that for the really good, perhaps remarkable ones there seems to be a halo effect that dampens bad memories faster than for less remarkable ones. Thus, all of the goodwill that JetBlue accumulated over its years of being better than everyone else meant that shortly after the negative PR blitz they were able to win back customers with relatively little effort, and once again everyone agrees that if you have to fly, JetBlue isn't a bad way to go.

Likewise, I expect that even despite her lunch-less afternoon, C.B. Whittemore will find her way back into an IKEA sooner rather than later :)

Tags: store experience, expectations, disappointment

Want to engage customers? Here are 12 things NOT to do

Have you read C.B. Whittemore's "Flooring the Consumer" blog yet? Whittemore bills the blog as one focused on, "improving the store experience, particularly in flooring," but believe me, she always has some great insights that are applicable to the majority of retail situations. For example, in a post from a few days ago Whittemore laments the sad state of Wal-Mart, its stores, and its relative indifference to the customer experience, particularly in relation to Target, who has gone to great lengths to keep their own megastores fresh, attractive and inviting. Rather than create a to-do list for errant companies hoping to find their way back to delivering positive customer experiences, Whittemore instead delivers a top-12 what NOT to do list:

1. Don't allow your stores to become dingy, un-cared for, dated or unpleasant.
2. Don't create an environment that burdens your consumer.
3. Don't become complacent and think that good enough is OK.
4. Don't fall in love with expansion and lose sight of existing stores and customers.
5. Don't understaff your stores.
6. Don't focus completely on being the lowest priced retailer.
7. Don't be a schmuck.
8. Don't lose touch with the marketplace.
9. Don't have tunnel vision.
10. Don't ever underestimate the power of quality, convenience and customer service.
11. Don't ever alienate your core customer base.
12. Don't wing it!

Obviously she adds some critical insight to each element of the list, but for that you'll have to read the whole article :) While all of these points are great, my favorite is #12, which seems to be overlooked so often. Rather than just guess at what might work in-store, or implement a huge plan based on a single "great idea" from a company insider, more companies need to implement more a exacting implement -> test -> analyze results strategy to figure out what works. Integrate customer/shopper comments, query in-store staff to gain insight into sales floor techniques, and look for untapped resources and inefficient processes. Above all, be willing to try things that might fail, but also be willing to change them once you've recognized that they actually are failing.

Tags: marketing at retail, in-store marketing, store experience

Starbucks contemplates its brand experience

AdAge is running a good article on the "death of the Starbucks brand experience," citing a recent trend from inside the company (in fact spurred on by chairman Howard Schultz, as noted by a leaked memo picked up by Starbucks Gossip last week) of cutting costs and improving efficiency at the expense of the brand's experiential qualities. For example, the article cites things like delivering vacuum-sealed ground coffee to stores across the nation (as opposed to having them grind their own beans), and using pre-measured espresso "capsules" instead of having barristas pull shots as examples of the way Starbucks has been commoditizing the brand experience in order to keep up its growth rate. The problem in both of these cases is that by reducing the authenticity of the environment and the personalization of service, Starbucks is relegating themselves to acting as a glorified coffee (and CD, and scone and breakfast sandwich) vending machine, losing some of its homey ambiance in the process. Combined with the fact that they were found to have some of the worst-tasting coffee according to a recent Consumer Reports study, that equals a big problem. The most interesting quote from the article is this gem, which definitely sheds some light on the company's changing focus:

"You probably wouldn't leave a Starbucks dissatisfied, but satisfaction is just the price of entry. It has lost its differentiation, its crispness of experience."

In an age where a leaked memo could be a PR ploy as much as it could be a simple oversight, a quote like that could indicate a genuine interest in becoming remarkable again, or it could simply be motivational rhetoric. As one of those coffee snobs who scoffs at Starbucks, I can't say I have a big emotional investment either way, however Starbucks has been one of the standard examples of how to do brand experience right for over a decade now. Watching such a giant stumble but recover would certainly be educational for anybody interested in improving the in-store experience of their venues.

[2007-02-27 UPDATE]: As usual, RetailWire has an excellent thread going on this very subject.

Tags: Starbucks, store experience, marketing at retail

Experience design is not about brand experience

There's a good post (and even better comments) at Adaptive Path focusing on the difference between experience design and brand experience, and why so many people relate the two (when, the author suggests, they don't have anything to do with each other). The main thrust of his argument is basically that the word brand, "will always be about the impression companies want to make, and are by their nature an 'inside-out' proposition — a company figures out its brand and what it means, and does what it can to communicate or otherwise impart that message to people. Brand always starts with the company." On the other hand, "experience... needs to be about the people. What do they want to accomplish, achieve, do? For experience to succeed, it must start with the person, and from there, impress upon the company. 'Experience' is outside-in."

The inside-out versus outside-in concept fits well with my own attempts to figure out why retail marketers do the things that they do. For private label companies, the brand is everything: it's the stores, it's the people, it's the merchandise. But as the Adaptive Path post suggests, focusing on the brand would yield a totally "outside-in" approach, which wouldn't produce a very good experience for the average customer. It might be attractive, visually appealing, and so on, but wouldn't do a very good job of focusing on the customer's needs.

On the other hand, retailers that sell merchandise from multiple brands have a different problem, since they have to balance their own brand with the brands of all of their suppliers. The best retailers recognize the problem and try to adopt the "outside-in" experience approach that the article talks about, realizing that otherwise, they'd just be competing for attention with all of the "inside-out" branded goods.

How these realizations translate into actual design elements and innovations is different for every retailer (or at least that would explain how multiple retailers in the same category can have vastly different but still generate pretty good experiences).

Tags: store experience, experience design, branding, retail media

Wal-Mart names Roces to head ‘Store Experience’

Home Textiles has a brief blurb about the appointment:

Wal-Mart Stores is creating a new organization it calls “Store Experience” to delve more deeply into store planning, space management, and the retailer’s store-of-the-community initiative.

Santiago Roces, who was most recently Wal-Mart’s Korea president, will be leading the initiative. He is relocating to company headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. Roces’ promotion is one of several appointments that make up Wal-Mart’s recently restructured marketing “dream team,” explained John Fleming, evp and chief marketing officer, during Wal-Mart’s presentation Wednesday at the Morgan Stanley Global Consumer & Retail conference here.

Tags: Wal-Mart, store experience

Supervalu aims to surprise and delight shoppers

Fresh off of their recent acquisition of the Albertson's grocery chain, Supervalu CEO Jeff Noddle announced an ambitious plan to spend $1 billion in the coming years to remodel existing stores and build a few new ones under a new program called Premium Fresh & Healthy. The goal, according to Duncan Mac Naughton, EVP of Merchandising Marketing, "is all about surprising and delighting the customer," which will apparently include things like:

[expanding the stores'] produce, meat, seafood, bakery and deli departments. Stores remodeled or built under the new plan will also have an area for international foods, since 24 percent of Americans eat at least one ethnic meal a week, Mac Naughton said.

Supervalu is also pushing to focus on natural and organic products, which have become quite popular for mainstream grocers in the past few years after the rapid growth of specialty chains such as Whole Foods Market Inc.

While it certainly remains to be seen exactly how the chain expects to delight their shoppers, I'm hoping that they'll introduce some new innovations for making grocery shopping faster and more convenient (and you can always spot the good innovations because they spread through the whole industry like wildfire :)

Tags: digital signage, store experience, retail media, in-store media, merchandising, retail marketing, advertising, visual merchandising