With the pandemic, there’s been a big boom on anything internet-based. People that have never ordered before, like our parents generation and even older, quickly adopted the click and pay trend thanks to the safety benefits. And as global marketing firms like KPMG and EY predicts that the e-commerce trend will only continue to increase after Covid, so physical shop owners are asking themselves:
Is physical retail really dying?
What will new retail look like in a post-Covid environment?
The answer is no. Physical retail isn’t dying. It’s evolving. As many retailers join the fight for a slice of the e-commerce pie, many physical shop owners see this as an opportunity to market their physical store in a less competitive, offline environment.
What do I mean?
As more retailers turn their focus and efforts on digital marketing to drive sales to their e-commerce channel, less effort and time will be given to improving and driving traffic to their offline stores.
However, that doesn’t mean brick-and-mortar shops can easily find success through no change, maintaining their current path. Instead, it’s more important than ever that shop owners utilise the situation to adapt their operations.
Two considerable areas of focus should be:
1) Study and understand the negative experience shoppers have when buying online and leverage these pains to your advantage when marketing your physical store.
2) The second is to incorporate immersive, interactive and shareable experiences into your brick-and-mortar store. The goal here is to make it worth shoppers effort to take the time and call into your shop.
Remember, your digital competition serves your potential customers with convenience, as shopping can be done directly from the comfort of their homes. So when you decide to launch your in-store experience tactics, make sure your concept is attractive and appeals in a way that customer's immediately make the separation between the value of your offline physical store and a competitor's online faceless-store
1. Disadvantages of online shopping.
Problems in meeting customer satisfaction:
Delay in the delivery
Fit was not good
Quality was not as expected
The wrong product was received
The garment was damaged when it arrived
The garment doesn’t match the website representation (style and/or colour)
You can't touch the product.
With online shopping, customers naturally don't have the ability to feel and touch the product. A lot of the time this leads to returns due to a disconnection between the customer's expectation and what the real garment feels like. A negative experience like this can go so far as to put a customer off from buying from you for life.
Lack of interaction.
A customer loses the personal touch that comes with the in-store customer service.
Returning the product.
This is a big headache! Not just from a customers point of view, but also from retailers. Tracking the parcel, payment for return, confirming quality of return and much more.
2. Improving your in store customer experience.
Now that we’ve understood some of the disadvantages of online shopping, let’s look at how physical shop owners can create experiential retail stores.
Make your experimental store 'The Store' to check out. Think of your store as a "brand temple", as the founder of RJ MTM - Rónan Kent - calls it.
We are heading into a world in which e-commerce captures a growing market share of the Apparel industry. The key word here is 'growing', not dominant, not 100%. To understand the dynamics behind this trend, we need to understand the drawbacks of online purchasing. After, it becomes simple to understand how Brick-and-mortar shops should become “brand temples", strengthening the store brand and enriching the customer experience. The winner here will be the Apparel business who can upgrade their business to systems that allow them to carry little to no-stock inventory and enable their customers to build products from the ground up. This further strengthens the "temple" concept, a place to congregate and experiment. Consumers want to get off of their couch and go explore the world, but when it comes to retail, store experiences are often not worth leaving the house for, since we can find and purchase online so easily. In this digital generation, retailers need to create memorable interactive experiences that take people beyond shopping and make their store a destination rather than a chore.
- Rónan Kent, RJ MTM
In fact, according to KPMG, 78% of young consumers, specifically the millennials, prefer to spend money on an experience or event and share these experience-related purchases additionally on social media. There is an emotional driver to this with 69% believing that attending experiences helps them connect better with friends, community, and people around the world.
Here are some tips for improving your in store customer experience.
Host monthly events.
In a previous article “Juicy Tips On Driving Foot Traffic To Your Store”, I talked about how you could offer a fun, in-store experience, with something simple as a cool photo wall. If you have enough space, you can create a photo or video area in your store. Customers could come in and place their phone on an available pre-set tripod. Allow them to change the backdrop in their videos or photo to their liking. Backdrops could range from: outer space to a palm tree-lined boulevard or even a backdrop of super-cars (you should choose what works for your brand when introducing your new summer arrivals). Once the videos or photos are shot, customers can easily share the assets with others on social media, mentioning your store/brand of course.
You could also aim to become the store for dads and moms, by offering parents a calm shopping experience. If your customers are young parents, offer a shopping experience that works for them. Section off a part of your store for a kids play area. Have some awesome games available in-store, or set up a small movie theatre that the kids can not resist. This will allow the dads to truly focus on what matters, spending cash at your store :)
Create a place where your community wants to hang out.
Unveil monthly interactive experiences through a partnership with:
A local barber - offering a free haircut with any purchase over €100.
A beauty specialist - where girlfriends and wives can book appointments for manicures with any purchase over €100. It's not a fake claim to state that women love to shop just a tiny bit more than men, even though it’s not always for themselves.
Hey, your store might also actually end up as `The Touristic Experience Spot To Check Out´.
Host hands-on workshops
Educational events have become increasingly popular as a way for retailers to spread awareness of important issues as well as their own products. Pick a topic that your customers are interested in. Offer an exclusive offer that will expire on the day to drive sales.
Or give your store an edge just for the fun of it.
Run something fun at your store that your customers are really interested in. Let’s say your customers follow football. You can gamify the visitor experience.
For example: Allow people to drop by your shop to place a bet on the score for the upcoming match on a scoreboard placed in-store. The winner can get a small product at your store. Take a photo of the winner and tag him/her on social media for maximum buzz. A tactic like this is guaranteed to increase your foot traffic from old customers, but it will also attract new faces to your shop too, as they see their pals sharing and talking about this cool new competition in the local Menswear store.
Don't forget: it’s your job to train your sales staff on upselling and cross-selling techniques.
As big brands like Nike are redefining the purpose of the physical store, physical shop owners should learn and adapt how to redefine their own physical retail space to be able to compete with the growing e-commerce landscape. Though some of Nike’s most experimental retail stores are powered with technology, from customizable sneakers to a Kinect-powered basketball court, not all shop owners have space and budget to build a basketball court. However, installing and offering customizable garments in-store has never been easier and more affordable. With RJ MTM you can easily switch from offering set styles and fixed sizes to customers, to customers having control over exactly what they buy from your store.
Their simple to use in-store and on-the-go system allows menswear shop owners to easily offer customers the option to adjust garment designs, colours, fabric weights, sizing and much more.
Experiential retail is not just a fad. It’s the future of how, where, and when we shop!
Cheers,
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