Retail customer experience management

Global CRM

Just got back from trips to NYC and Paris, where as usual I accompanied my lovely bride on retail shopping experiences, carefully observing behaviors, branding and merchandising choices.

After doing a lot of lectures on Diesel vs Calvin Klein and how their positioning, marketing strategies and merchandising tactics show they're clearly choosing different parts of the opportunity cube, I have had a couple of interesting revelations.

First, merchandising is often an issue of testing and re-testing what works. Arrangement of products, signage, environment all are variables in driving sales. Put a table in the wrong place and people won't linger and buy (for example, because they feel as though store traffic is going to brush by their backsides too often). When you need signs to tell people where to go, it's often because the store space doesn't have an obvious logic -- wasting the shopper's mental energy. Keep it clean, keep it testable.

But one store in NYC, at which my wife bought a great pair of high red boots, was a total, chaotic mess. From the moment we entered, though, we both saw great stuff just pouring off of shelves. A pair of shoes was stuffed near pullover sweaters as though a buyer had stashed them there.

Then it occurred to me what the shop was doing.

It was counter-programming. All the shops along the street had merchandising down pat. Givenchy. Chanel. Armani. Clean. Testable. Beautiful. Counter-programming -- a term used in network TV describing how a network will feature a program whose genre is exactly opposite what the other networks offer at the same hour -- is a great strategy for getting attention in a crowded space.

And, even better, the store's crowded, chaotic look was more than deliberate. It was part of a high-concept experience. "We're trying to evoke everyone's fantasy closet -- lots of choices, outfits, things you 'forgot' you had," I was told. As a part of the experience, sales people try to get you into the dressing room and then keep offering you things to try on while you're there. At this shop, there's no "limit three items" rule. They want you to have a rich set of choices while you're undressed.

OF COURSE. That's the moment of truth. You can't be sure something looks good, and makes a nice ensemble, unless you see yourself in it.

Genius.

That was NYC. What did I learn in Paris?

Stay tuned.