Why not market smarter rather than cheaper--all to be more profitable?

A few days ago something I was in a mall store at The Shoppes at Blackstone Valley in Millbury, Massachusetts, and a most unusual event occurred—I actually got good customer service from a sales rep! 

I was in Michaels on a mission for my wife who had just phoned me from the west coast and asked me to see if a store here in New England was selling a Holloween terracotta pumpkin, just like the kind she’d seen a few minutes earlier while on a trip in California.  When I walked up to sales representative I asked if she knew whether or not Michaels had the item I was looking for and she said she didn’t know but would check with a co-worker—which she did.  The young man who she introduced me to also said that he was unfamiliar with the item, that he didn’t think that they’d gotten any this sales season, but he nonetheless took the time to search in case he was mistaken—all to no avail [if you’ve ever been in one of their stores, Michaels carries a lot of stuff!].  

I thanked him for his trouble.  He said he was sorry.  I walked out of the store and was on my way back to my car when a very unexpected thing happened—I was startled to hear the same young man’ voice calling to me and running after me!  He said that he’d asked around the store and looked around more after we’d talked—and, yes, they did have three of the items I was looking for on sale, and would I like to return to the store to see them?  This was amazing! One rarely gets good sales service in a store—much less in the parking lot! 

I was impressed by the time spent, the immediate devotion by Michaels’ sales reps to my needs, and their persistence to make sure I was served—even if it meant running 40 yards out to the parking lot to see if I was still interested in the deal!  All of this made even more sense to me when I ran across the Wall Street Journal report by Geoffrey Fowler and Ann Zimmerman, “Online retailers turn on services to capture more of holiday sales.”  In short, their observations were essentially this:  online retailers are expecting a sales growth this season—in part because they plan to market smarter than ever before.  Here’s what’s slated by some:

Make shopping more convenient, in part to avoid needing to compete on price.  “More convenient” will translate to 24-hour service telephone hotlines, free shipping and returns on purchases—in the words of Aaron Magness of Zappos.com, the on-line shoe retailer recently bought by Amazon, the site “is providing the very best in service and experience.” 

Ebay has begun giving customers toll-free numbers to call if they have a problem with a service.

Some retailers like Sears are reviving an old vender stand-by:  layaway.

Faster shipping is a strategy to be employed by GSI Commerce Inc—the fulfillment company for Aeropostale and Bath & Body Works. 

More friendly sites—Blue Nile has just launched a new “female-friendly” web site, making it easier to create custom rings. 

Sears is implementing a new on-line payment calculator to make it easier to see what the payment schedule will be to make a layaway plan work.

Here’s the point:  It is always smart in business to avoid competing on price or promotion [i.e., advertising] if there are other, more effective ways to make sales.  If overall sales this Christmas are expected to be flat—at best—then for companies’ seeking profits it becomes a zero-sum game.  Exactly how they angle for those finite sales becomes very critical.  Fowler and Zimmerman’s article leads one to wonder:  Why not fully exploit all the marketing levers that a retailer already has—on-line as well as brick-and-mortar—paid for?  In effect, why not market smarter than cheaper?! 

The key takeaway here is this:  Vendors of all types have already planned and paid for the services of sales reps, distributors, on-line sites, what have you—why shouldn’t these resources be fully exploited in a marketing sense to maximize, not so much sales, per se, as the customer experience!  When this is done, sales will almost certainly follow! 

It is hardly a new idea to say that customers vastly prefer to be assisted in the buying process, they value good service, and they will both return to and speak favorably about vendors—again, on- or off-line—who help them in making the buying experience fast, predictable, easy, pleasant, and enjoyable.  Why so few retailers have applied themselves to these ends, I can’t explain.  But those who do will get my business, my positive word of mouth, and, eventually my return—and that’s the key to business success:  fostering a relationship that brings customers back again and again—especially this Christmas selling season! 

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Comments

[sukki]

yep i agree -- marketers might need to pay more attention to the "experience" factor. a growing number of consumer experience research reflect this line of thoughts.