As I had promised I will write about my experience about shopping after the Christmas, I am here with with my story. I observed many big stores during last one week and I liked some of them and disliked other. I will not name in which city I am because it may be bad for the store managers in this city. But I can assure it is one of the biggest city in UK.
Honestly, my experience was not so good in most of the stores (except one, ZARA). there were many reasons for that. I will take them one by one.
Operational problems: These stores are operating these stores for decades but i am surprised how poorly they manage the customers during this week. All the customer care has been forgotten. When you get into the store there are so many people who feel like fighting against each other. there are so many queue that it was difficult to purchase or try many items. first there was long queue for the fitting room and then there was long queue for payment. I don't know any perfect solution for this but one solution can be to have more payment counters and temporary fitting rooms during this heavy sale. or probably automated machine for purchase. or many of the stores should collaborate for purchase counters so that you can pay at one place rather than in every store in the same mall. I understand this is not easy and will need to think some radical changes in the system.
Layout: Layout of the items was chaos in most of the stores (including, H&M, New Look etc) there were too many clothes on the display and it left little space for move. When you can not stand for a while (because someone needs to cross and go to next rack) how you can think of purchasing anything? Most of the shopping is impulse buy so there should be space to like the items. ZARA was quite good in this sense. it has just sufficient clothes on display and it was easy to move around or stay and breath.
Selection of Clothes: Somehow, i think more than 90% customers just dont like any item in these stores. I am surprised why? these stores should have done market research on these days. many of the customers buy items because they are irritated of standing in long queues in other stores and now want to buy something and its like ritual to buy something on discount rather then buy something that customer liked. so the selling factor is only cheap price rather than brand. that is not good in long run. A customer who does not have good experience during this week will carry the same perception for rest of the year and a lot of effort will be needed in brand building again. Again Zara was good on this front too. there was WOW effect when you see clothes in ZARA. of course price is on little higher side then the other stores.
I understand USP during this sell period is the price for most of the retail stores but they should not forget that these are the customers who should return during rest of the year and these stores dont want to become discounted item stores. Image building is a long, consistent, expensive task and it should remain same throughout the year, year-after-year.
Many of the customers just dont buy because they are afraid to spend 30 minutes in the queue for the till for one item. Loss of even a single customer is a loss and somehow efforts should be made to retain them.
Honestly, my experience was not so good in most of the stores (except one, ZARA). there were many reasons for that. I will take them one by one.
Operational problems: These stores are operating these stores for decades but i am surprised how poorly they manage the customers during this week. All the customer care has been forgotten. When you get into the store there are so many people who feel like fighting against each other. there are so many queue that it was difficult to purchase or try many items. first there was long queue for the fitting room and then there was long queue for payment. I don't know any perfect solution for this but one solution can be to have more payment counters and temporary fitting rooms during this heavy sale. or probably automated machine for purchase. or many of the stores should collaborate for purchase counters so that you can pay at one place rather than in every store in the same mall. I understand this is not easy and will need to think some radical changes in the system.
Layout: Layout of the items was chaos in most of the stores (including, H&M, New Look etc) there were too many clothes on the display and it left little space for move. When you can not stand for a while (because someone needs to cross and go to next rack) how you can think of purchasing anything? Most of the shopping is impulse buy so there should be space to like the items. ZARA was quite good in this sense. it has just sufficient clothes on display and it was easy to move around or stay and breath.
Selection of Clothes: Somehow, i think more than 90% customers just dont like any item in these stores. I am surprised why? these stores should have done market research on these days. many of the customers buy items because they are irritated of standing in long queues in other stores and now want to buy something and its like ritual to buy something on discount rather then buy something that customer liked. so the selling factor is only cheap price rather than brand. that is not good in long run. A customer who does not have good experience during this week will carry the same perception for rest of the year and a lot of effort will be needed in brand building again. Again Zara was good on this front too. there was WOW effect when you see clothes in ZARA. of course price is on little higher side then the other stores.
I understand USP during this sell period is the price for most of the retail stores but they should not forget that these are the customers who should return during rest of the year and these stores dont want to become discounted item stores. Image building is a long, consistent, expensive task and it should remain same throughout the year, year-after-year.
Many of the customers just dont buy because they are afraid to spend 30 minutes in the queue for the till for one item. Loss of even a single customer is a loss and somehow efforts should be made to retain them.
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