Encouraging Customers to Spend More Time Shopping

Paco Underhill, a pioneer in retail anthropology, advises retailers to encourage consumers to spend more time at the store because shopping time (excluding the time spent waiting in a line) is directly related to total spending. This insight has been supported by a variety of studies with online and store-based retailers that have tried to slow the shopping trip through experiential events and shopping environments.²⁰ Our blog site (www.bermanevansretail.com) has posts on this topic.

Among the tactics to persuade people to spend more time shopping are experiential merchan­dising, solutions selling, an enhanced shopping experience, retailer co-branding, and wish-list programs.

The aim of experiential merchandising is to convert shopping from a passive activity into a more interactive one, by better engaging customers. See Figure 18-12. For example, customers at the stores of British-based fashion retailer TopShop can enjoy the London Fashion show using Occulus Rift headsets and then buy from the TopShop Collection.

Origins, owned by Estee Lauder, has been remodeling its stores to encourage customers to sample new products, take selfies, and linger in comfortable chairs. Williams-Sonoma hosts cooking classes, and A. C. Moore offers weekly craft classes for customers. A local beauty store could have a makeup artist come in to show customers how to apply cosmetics and new products. Free food samples (Trader Joe’s), live music (Urban Outfitters Inc.), and product demos (Lush) can entice customers and keep them in the spending mood. Some stores spray aromas in various parts of their stores.²²

Solutions selling takes a customer-centered approach and presents “solutions” rather than “products.” It goes a step beyond cross-merchandising. At holiday times, some retailers group gift items by price (“under $25, under $50, under $100, $100 and above”) rather than by product category. This provides a solution for the shopper who has a budget to spend but a fuzzy idea of what to buy. Many supermarkets sell fully prepared, complete meals that just have to be heated and served. This solves the problem of “What’s for dinner?” without requiring the consumer to shop for meal components.

An enhanced shopping experience means the retailer does everything possible to minimize annoyances and to make the shopping trip pleasant. Given all the retail choices facing consumers, retailers must do all they can so that shoppers do not have unpleasant experiences. Customers at some Nestle Nespresso boutiques can experience a redesigned, enhanced, personal one-on-one coffee shopping experience with open spaces and Nespresso Coffee Specialists who share their expertise, providing tastings, and personally advising customers. These specialists use mobile technology to recommend and prepare beverages based on each customer’s prior purchase history, the occasion, and their mood to help them explore and expand their coffee experience. Each of these boutiques also uses RFID technology so customers can conveniently purchase Nespresso coffee sleeves without any staff interaction and offers pick-up desks for online and mobile orders.²³

Retailers can also provide an enhanced shopping experience by setting up wider aisles so people do not feel cramped, adding benches and chairs so those accompanying the main shopper can relax, using kiosks to stimulate impulse purchases and answer questions, having activities for children (such as Ikea’s playroom), and opening more checkout counters. What decades-old shopping accessory is turning out to be one of the greatest enhancements of all? It is the humble shopping cart, as highlighted in Figure 18-13.

Scanner-enhanced shopping carts provide shrinkage-free mobile self-checkout for retailers and convenience to customers. A customer can scan each product using the retailer’s app on her or his mobile phone before placing it in the online cart. The scanner on the shopping cart finds the price associated with the item name and displays the item name and price, and links the cart to the customer’s loyalty/mobile app account. This information is sent via Bluetooth, and the cart and mobile app automatically sync all scanned items. If the customer removes an item, the cart will remove the item from the scanned items list and deduct the price from the total price. The app on a phone is also be updated accordingly. Pressure sensors at the bottom of the cart prevent customers from placing items into the cart without first scanning them; a buzzer will keep beeping to remind shoppers to scan the items.²⁴

More firms participate in co-branding, whereby two or more well-known retailers situate under the same roof (or at one Web site) to share costs, stimulate consumers to visit more often, and attract people shopping together who have different preferences. Here are several examples: Subway in Walmart stores, Starbucks in Barnes & Noble stores, joint Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin- Robbins outlets, and numerous small retailers that sell their merchandise through Amazon.com. Multiple branded-food retailers that share the same space attract customers who enjoy the ability to order food from different menus at one location instead of selecting a stand-alone chain. Coffee shops and restaurants in department stores can enhance the overall shopping experience, increase the in-store time of shoppers who take a break from their shopping without leaving the store, and enhance the potential for unplanned purchases and more sales per square foot.²⁵

Another tactic being implemented by a growing number of retailers is the wish-list program. It is a technique that expands on the long-standing concept of a wedding registry, and it can be used with virtually any products or life events. Wish lists are being used to great effect by Web retailers (and multichannel/omnichannel retailers) to enable customers to prepare shopping lists for gift items they’d like to receive from a particular store or shopping center. Amazon.com cus­tomers use its wish list as a memory aid. Some customers use wish lists to store possible alterna­tives so they can easily evaluate and winnow them before making their selection. Others use it as a “save for later” list for a future shopping session. Yet others create wish lists explicitly to send to friends and family by E-mail or to post a link on Facebook or Twitter to give them gift ideas. Ama­zon disaggregates wish-list data to develop personalized recommendations for future wish lists and also analyzes aggregate data to apply in predictive analysis for its merchandising decisions.

Source: Barry Berman, Joel R Evans, Patrali Chatterjee (2017), Retail Management: A Strategic Approach, Pearson; 13th edition.