Great article from Inside Retailing with tips for retailers on how to engage their customers over the festive season. “Retailers have always been prepared to bring Christmas spirit to their customers. For it to be magic, it now needs more than tinsel and carols,”
Australian retailers’ hopes for capitalising from the Christmas rush will not yield the gains of yesteryear, warns a Sydney retail designer.
Instead, consumers will favour service spending this festive season, advocates Alex Ritchie, creative director at design house e2 says.
“Australia’s retailers have gone on record for pinning their hopes on the retail success of Christmas, but hope is not a strategy.”
e2’s says its analysis of early Christmas retail preparations revealed little has been done to tap Australian consumer’s willingness to spend on service, as indicated by the the latest ABS Retail Trade figures showing cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services delivered significantly higher growth than other retail sectors.
“Australians aren’t eating more month on month. The money spent on gastronomy is because that sector provides experiences. Your dollar buys you a memory with the food - be it laughing with friends, spending time with family or simply enjoying new surrounds,” says Ritchie.
“e2’s experience in design research found that as Australia is a relatively prosperous nation, retailers need to differentiate by providing increasingly sophisticated experiences that are emotionally satisfying and meaningful. Australians are seeking and willing to pay for innovative experiences that are combinations of products, services, spaces and information.”
Ritchie suggests simple changes to the way Australian shoppers are treated by stores:
* Provide respite lounges, where shoppers can sit and browse the product range available from that store. A combination of loungers, refreshments and sales assistants guiding shoppers through product ranges displayed and made available on handheld screens. This would allow retailers to profit from shoppers when they are too exhausted to shop the traditional way.
* Offer the postage and packaging services available from on-line stores. Shoppers would be grateful that their gifts could be delivered to the gift recipient, without sacrificing shopping time to queue up for wrapping, packaging and then another line at the post office counter.
* Develop knowledge of customers in the same way online shops do. Online shoppers are accustomed to relinquishing personal information, yet would baulk at doing the same at a retail counter. However, if a shopper were offered a special, and that means inherently valuable, gift for their birthday, because of the value of their Christmas shopping, his or her demographic and psychographic details would be more readily available.
* Provide assistants that are representative of the typical gift recipient. That way a grandmother could help with gifts for nan, while a teenager could help with teen gifts, and middle aged man with gifts for those going through that midlife period, etc.
“Retailers have always been prepared to bring Christmas spirit to their customers. For it to be magic, it now needs more than tinsel and carols,” says Ritchie.
The original story can be found at http://www.insideretail.com.au/IR/IRNews/Hope-no-strategy-for-Christmas-sales—3283.aspx
Get the latest hot jobs sent straight to your inbox!
Retailworld Resourcing is a recruitment agency that specialises in the retail sector. We place people in retail jobs in New Zealand and retail jobs in Australia, throughout all areas and levels within the retail industry.
rwr au v1