04 February 2008

Retail: Value Propositions for Customer Satisfaction

Someone famously said “If people went into stores only when they needed to buy something and, once there, they bought only what they needed, the economy would collapse”

Different kinds of people have different attitudes to shopping. Some will buy stuff because it’s cheap, some because its expensive. Some want to browse forever, some want to buy and run. Buying a gift for a wedding you don’t want to go to vs buying a gift for your best friend’s daughter. Buying diamonds vs buying grocery.

Given the complexity of bahaviour patterns, usage, occasions, and purchase pathways, how do you arrive at what could be a handy guide to value propositions for retail brands? Here’s a point of view: V2E3. Value, Variety, Exclusivity, Experience and Expertise. Every retailer needs to pick the dominant offering and craft a combination of those that suit its desired customer base best. Take a look at how each of these come alive.

Value: Some people just can’t resist the lure of low price.
Variety: something for everyone.
Exclusivity:The dilemma and pleasure of buying something expensive.
Expertise:How often have you gone back to a shop because of a sales person, or walked out of a shop because of a sales person?
Experience:Ambience and display turned into an art form, almost.

VALUE:




VARIETY:




EXPERTISE:




EXPERIENCE:


EXCLUSIVITY:

The above post is an excerpt from a talk titled “Value Propositions for Customer Satisfaction” delivered by Mythili Chandrasekar at Asia Retail Congress, Mumbai, Jan 08

1 comment:

  1. Excellent post.

    Regarding the "expertise" in the retail experience in find it is almost as much about "trust".

    Malclom Gladwell articulates it excellently in the book The Lovemarks Effect:

    “There is a trade-off in word-of-mouth between trust and expertise.”
    ...
    “A mistake businesses make is to assume that their consumers prefer their expertise to their trust.”
    - Malcolm Gladwell

    I have experienced it as well first hand, listening to a range of marketing directors for different sport related shops who everyone wanted to focus on "expertise". But when talking about experienced shopping experiences, every story they told were about trust..

    Hope that made sense :o)

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