Retail seduction

Lifehacker reports on several recent articles on store design.

From the pleasant music to the choice of floor tiles, retail stores are cleverly designed to do one thing: make you spend money. Here are some of the marketing tactics you should know about so you can shop with a clear head.

How the Apple Store gets customers to touch the machines (and why) (from a Forbes article.)

Pricing gimmicks (from Smart Money)

Defend yourself from manipulative marketing tactics (from Men's Health.)

Read the whole post at http://lifehacker.com/5918780/how-apple-and-other-retailers-subtly-seduce-you-in-their-stores

Why clothing sizes make no sense

Julia Felsenthal writes in Slate Magazine on A Size 2 Is a Size 2 Is a Size 8.

The ASTM recommendations have evolved over time to accommodate a very real trend: vanity sizing. Women don’t want to know their real size, so manufacturers re-label bigger sizes with smaller numbers. In 1958, for example, a size 8 corresponded with a bust of 31 inches, a waist of 23.5 inches and a hip girth of 32.5 inches. In ASTM’s 2008 standards, a size 8 had increased by five to six inches in each of those three measurements, becoming the rough equivalent of a size 14 or 16 in 1958. We can see size inflation happening over shorter time spans as well; a size 2 in the 2011 ASTM standard falls between a 1995 standard size 4 and 6. (This may also explain why smaller sizes are constantly invented. The 1958 standard listed 8 as its smallest size. The 1995 ASTM standard listed a size 2. In 2011, ASTM lists a standard for size 00.)

[...] a private organization called the Textile Clothing Technology Corporation conducted the first widespread study of American women’s bodies since O’Brien and Shelton, called SizeUSA. They installed body scanners at 13 different locations across the country and, over the course of about a month, scanned the bodies of almost 11,000 people between the ages of 18 and 80. The main finding, says Boorady, who was involved with the study, is that people are bigger than ever. The study also distinguished five to seven distinct body shapes for women, as opposed to the single hourglass ideal that has long determined the proportions of clothing (and which only 8 percent of American women have). Boorady says the results mean “it would be extremely difficult to come up with a single sizing system.”

[...] in 1986, the Times reported on manufacturers’ resistance to the development of ASTM standards. “The Laura Ashley woman is different from the Liz Claiborne woman, who is different from the woman whom Calvin Klein envisions,” opined the article’s author, who then quoted a designer saying, “Fit is a type of identity.”
There is something to this. My sense of brand loyalty is as much about the way a designer’s clothes fit as how they look. I [Ms Felsenthal] do pretty well with J.Crew sweaters, Urban Outfitters jeans, and Frye boots—because those have become, after years of trial and error, my brands. If these companies suddenly changed their sizes to adhere to some synthetic average of the American female form, I’d feel annoyed—even indignant.

The article is an interesting introduction to an intriguing topic, one that combines design, statistics, economics, business, and psychology.

Web

The Oatmeal presents "How to make your shopping cart suck less" Vulgarly amusing advice on design.

What not to ask

Sometimes the secret of successful design is to not include a feature. Boing-Boing reports on a company that increased its sales by $300 million by removing its user log-in feature.


http://boingboing.net/2011/08/05/300-million-button-making-customers-create-logins-to-buy-cost-etailer-300myear.html

Off Target

Target tries to use design to distinguish itself from Wal-Mart and K-Mart, but good design is more than stocking flashy products. It also means figuring out how to deal with customers in an intelligent manner.

Last December I was picking up a few Christmas gifts at Target, including a bottle of wine. At the checkout, the cashier asked for my ID to show proof of age. I sighed and opened my wallet to show her my license. Why the sigh? For those who don't know me, I'm almost 50 years old and my beard has more white than black in it. It's been decades since anyone could possibly mistake me for being under 21. Anyway, she needed to see identification, so I showed it to her.

But that wasn't sufficient. She told me I needed to remove my ID from the holder. I complied & held up my license.

Still no good.

The cashier needed to take my driver's license and scan it through her computer. I did a slow burn and considered abandoning my selections right there. Why the criminalization of a perfectly legal product? Security theater has trickled down from the TSA to your local discount store.

The difference is that there's no alternative to the TSA if you want to fly. Target, on the other hand, isn't the only place to shop. Wal-Mart, Meijer's, World Market and my neighborhood liquor store have all figured out systems to allow their cashiers to sell me a bottle of wine without recording my personal details. So my frequent trips to Target stopped. It wasn't a conscious boycott, but every time I thought about it I got cranky & decided I didn't need to go to Target.

Today was the first time in over 6 months that I shopped at Target (my daughter needed soccer shorts & we were in a hurry) and I guess I'm still cranky.

Retailer observation and analysis

For Monday Nov 26th

Play Paco Underhill for a day by observing a retailer. Retailers frequently target a specific group: by gender, age, income, or ethnicity. Choose a store where you wouldn't normally shop: a store catering to a different demographic group. Spend at least 15 minutes in the store. Look for design details: signs, lighting, images, music, noise level, fixtures, space, brands, quantity of products, color choices, materials, styles.

Answer the following questions on your blog.

1. What store did you observe? Who do they market to?

2. Briefly describe the following

a. appearance of store entrance (from outside)
b. sounds (inside the store)
c. how the merchandise is displayed
d. floors
e. signs
f. cashier area

3. What image does this business try to project? Give specific examples of design elements that reflect this image.

4. How did customers interact with various elements of the store's design?

5. What did you find interesting about the design of this store?

Retailing

For Monday's discussion:

Read The Science of Shopping by Malcolm Gladwell
http://www.gladwell.com/1996/1996_11_04_a_shopping.htm

1. Write a discussion question based on this reading and post it on your blog before 4 pm Sunday.
2. Read the questions posted by your classmates and answer two of them on your own blog.

I strongly encourage you to try using an RSS reader.

Ephemeral stores

Trendwatching writes on Pop-up Retail

"If new products can come and go, why can't the stores that display them do the same? Well, you guessed it, retail outlets increasingly do. From gallery-like shopping spaces with one-off exhibitions to mobile units bringing innercity-chic to rural areas, TRENDWATCHING.COM has noticed an increase in temporary retail manifestations around the world."

Retailers and Customers

Edge Perspectives writes on Retailers and Customers

Let’s take a simple, yet very revealing, indicator of business focus. What are the relevant metrics of profitability? Most retailers focus relentlessly on profitability by store and, even more granularly, profitability per foot of shelf – these are facilities-based measures of profitability. True customer relationship businesses focus on profitability by customer, yet few retailers (with the possible exception of some direct marketers) even have a clue of their profitability by customer. Ask them which 20% of their customers generate 80% of their profitability and you get a blank stare. Ask them about customer churn rates and they start looking for a way to change the subject.

Or, take a stroll down the aisles of your nearest “big box” retailer. Try to find someone to talk to in order to get a suggestion for a product you need or to get a question about a product answered. Good luck. It is pretty hard to talk about being in a customer relationship business when you are not available to talk to a customer. Big box retailers are the epitome of an infrastructure management business – reducing operations to high volume, routine processing activities with as few people as possible. They dream of even eliminating the cashiers and automating the check-out process.

Of course, merchandisers live or die based on their ability to anticipate the evolving needs of the market. Some retailers have become very sophisticated in understanding certain customer segments – teens, techies, suburban soccer Moms, etc. In this sense, they are very customer focused. But that’s a pretty shallow notion of customer relationship – all businesses have to do that to stay in business.

True customer relationship businesses set a much higher bar. Deep, lasting, trust-based relationships with customers – the hallmark of a customer relationship business – are generally built one customer at a time. They require the investment to learn about each customer’s needs and then they require the skills to take that understanding and turn it around into relevant, timely suggestions regarding products and services that might be most meaningful for that customer. Think of a good Mom and Pop retailer where the clerk knows you by name and greets you with a suggestion about an interesting new product when you walk in the door.

Ah, but that’s not scalable, the skeptic will say. Ever heard of Amazon? They do something pretty much like that for millions of customers. Ah, but that’s on the Internet and not in a physical store, the skeptic responds. True, but that’s one of the problems – with few exceptions, we still draw hard lines between physical facilities and virtual services.

Now, this is not just an opportunity; it is rapidly becoming a necessity, shaped by the shift from shelf space scarcity to attention scarcity, something I have written about frequently. In the face of this shift, retailers have two choices. They can become vast, automated warehouses with a high return on assets – in other words, infrastructure management businesses. Or they can find creative ways to build real relationships with customers in ways that significantly increase the return on attention for their customers – in other words, customer relationship businesses.

Kohl's

Hee-Haw Marketing has a great post on how not to do retail.

I wouldn't be what you would consider a 'luxury" shopper. Generally, I'm more comfortable in a vintage shop rather than at a Nordstrom's, but, jeez, some level of decency would be nice.

I've got this Kohl's right next to my house, and with that proximity, I'll make a stop by every few weeks to check out the sales. Its always bad, but this Dallas, Texas Kohl's would look more at home in New Orleans after the flood.

See the pictures and full post here:hurricane Kohl's and also see Kohl's response and a Kohl's employee's response.