How Do Your Customers Shop?
When I go to a bookstore, there are three sections that I look through. It doesn’t matter to me what is on display near the front of the store or what is on sale. I will never notice them.
When I go grocery shopping, I try to get in and out as quickly as possible. I plan a route through the store to minimize the time required, and if I can’t find something I need I would rather leave without it then ask the 17-year old clerk where I could find the pumpkin puree and be forced to retrace my steps.
Does this sound similar to the way that you shop? Probably NOT.
It turns out that most people will have their own way of shopping, which will often vary depending on the product category. This presents a great challenge to retail brands. Shops want to make their in-store experience as pleasant as possible, but what is pleasant for one customer could be misery for another.
How can brands deal with this conundrum? Here are some ideas that you could try.
• Provide multiple paths of discovering products while shopping: Amazon provides a great example. Amongst the home page merchandising, category browsing, keyword searches, recommended products and listmania, there is a way to find new books that will suit the needs of most shoppers. The increasing role of mobile in retail will give brands even more opportunities to cater to different needs.
• Create personas: Developing multiple groups of different personas based on similar attributes is a technique pioneered in politics but can easily be applied to retail brands. Be sure to go beyond simple demographic data and include emotional and interest-based attributes to create these personas. When you have key groups for your brand, make sure that you are meeting their needs.
• Determine the most valuable customer groups: Brands can’t be all things to all people, but luckily not all customers are created equal. Don’t lose sleep if you sacrifice the needs of low value customers as long as you are hitting the mark for the most important ones.
• Train staff for flexibility: Even with extensive planning and careful design of your in-store experience, you must remain flexible to meet the diverse needs of your customers. While you can’t change the physical layout of your store every day, you can train your staff to recognize and adapt to different types of shopping behavior.
• Do one thing really well: Some retail brands have done a great job creating a very clear expectation of the experience you will have in their store. When I go to Walmart, will the staff adapt and respond to my unique needs? No. Do I expect them to? Definitely not. A clearly defined retail brand will convey clear expectations to customers. Just be sure that you can deliver on those expectations.
This list is not exhaustive and not all suggestions should be tried together. What works for Amazon won’t work for Walmart and vice versa. The most important thing you can do is to keep your retail experience true to your brand.
Ben Wise