Create an Experience, Don’t Sell Commodities

Written by By John Stanley


Customers are bored with seeing products on retail shelves, they are looking for more exciting experiences. The challenge is, are you inrepparttar commodity business, selling liquor and grocery products or are you providing an experience.

Commodity sellers place tangible items on shelves and sell units of product. The challenge is always to increaserepparttar 143461 average sale per customer, one way of achieving this is to introduce service and services ie activities you execute. Many retailers have achieved this by providing delivery services, demonstrations, tasting stations and technical knowledge.

Now isrepparttar 143462 time for retailers to move on and provide an experience. This means we should create and experience forrepparttar 143463 customer where they are fully engaged with what we are doing. If Pike Place Fish market in Seattle and Pete’s Frootique in Halifax can achieve this, I’m sure it can be achieved inrepparttar 143464 local store.

Think of developing an experience based on these four elements: •Education •Escapism •Entertainment •Aesthetics

Education Consumers enjoy experiences that provide a forum for education. This can be via cooking or tasting classes, educational leaflets and information provided by your team. Today many people want food and liquor to be healthier and more educating, therefore talks on wines and selecting fruit and vegetables, with cooking tips will be a major draw.

Journey of Excitement

Written by John Stanley


Provide a Rewarding Experience for your customers

Step three: Journey of Excitement

Step One - Journey of Discovery

Step Two - Journey of Inspiration

Step Three - Journey of Excitement

Step Four - Journey of Trust

Inrepparttar previous article in this series we looked atrepparttar 143460 Journey of Inspiration. The consumers in your catchment area have discovered you, and takenrepparttar 143461 time to come into your store. Your next challenge is to excite them so they leave singing your praises!

Basically, customers are bored with seeing products on retail shelves, they are looking for more exciting experiences. The challenge is, are you inrepparttar 143462 commodity business, selling products or are you providing an experience? Now isrepparttar 143463 time for you to move on from being a commodity retailer and to start providing an experience. This means we should create an experience forrepparttar 143464 customer where they are fully engaged with what we are doing. Inrepparttar 143465 USA, Pike Place Fish Market is looked on asrepparttar 143466 ultimate experience in Seattle’s retail scene. In Canada it’s Pete’s Frootique. In Australia,repparttar 143467 Beechworth Bakery in Victoria, many would argue, createsrepparttar 143468 same experience. Whilst in South Africa, Lifestyle Garden Centre is recognised as a global leader inrepparttar 143469 experience market.

How do you create an experience? Experience retailing should be exciting, if it is not, then consumers will fall back on convenience retailers to buy their products. However, everyone is different, what excites some people, will not excite others and therefore don’t think everyone will be stimulated by your displays, merchandising and awesome customer service. The best thing to do is focus on YOUR target market and make it exciting for them.

Who are your customers? You can only excite some ofrepparttar 143470 market. So you need to do some market research and find out who your target market is and what excites them. Are you targetingrepparttar 143471 female “IKEA” babies (Generation X) orrepparttar 143472 female “baby boomers” (45-60 year olds), both of which are major target markets at present. But each region will have a different demographic mix that will need to be addressed.

The challenge is how do you excite them? You need to understand their lives and what appeals to them in fashion statements, colour, meal arrangements, garden design and so on. You then present those products in a “leading edge” not “bleeding edge.” way. If you are bleeding edge you may lose your customers as you are too far ahead of their thinking pattern.

Let me give you an example. I recently worked in Italy and had an opportunity to look at Italian furniture stores. I thought they were amazing, but if I had introducedrepparttar 143473 concepts en masse to my own town of Perth, they would have been rejected byrepparttar 143474 marketplace. In furniture, what is leading edge in Bergamo, Italy is bleeding edge in Perth, Australia.

How do you generate leading edge excitement? Firstly, you need to ensurerepparttar 143475 whole of your team are behindrepparttar 143476 motion that you need to be leading edge. You can then dividerepparttar 143477 work betweenrepparttar 143478 whole team and, in my experience, they will enjoy coming up with new ideas and will want to be involved. The ideas come from a number of areas that include:

Cont'd on page 2 ==>
 
ImproveHomeLife.com © 2005
Terms of Use