Provide a Rewarding Experience for your customersStep three: Journey of Excitement
Step One - Journey of Discovery
Step Two - Journey of Inspiration
Step Three - Journey of Excitement
Step Four - Journey of Trust
In
previous article in this series we looked at Journey of Inspiration. The consumers in your catchment area have discovered you, and taken 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 in commodity business, selling products or are you providing an experience? Now is time for you to move on from being a commodity retailer and to start providing an experience. This means we should create an experience for customer where they are fully engaged with what we are doing. In USA, Pike Place Fish Market is looked on as ultimate experience in Seattle’s retail scene. In Canada it’s Pete’s Frootique. In Australia, Beechworth Bakery in Victoria, many would argue, creates same experience. Whilst in South Africa, Lifestyle Garden Centre is recognised as a global leader in 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 of market. So you need to do some market research and find out who your target market is and what excites them. Are you targeting female “IKEA” babies (Generation X) or 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 introduced concepts en masse to my own town of Perth, they would have been rejected by 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 ensure whole of your team are behind motion that you need to be leading edge. You can then divide work between 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:
