Retail
is a synonym of innovation, constant evolution, listening and learning. But as
the philosopher said, what changes and what will change is the idea of what we
are, and what I add, the eyes through from which we look. And the retail knows
that it would just be able to get this answer watching through the consumer
eyes and putting ourselves in their situation.
I
am not referring to the misused (or abused) “client orientation”, neither to
the construction of “the best consuming experience”, with which we fill
strategic marketing plans to finally push the consumer to form their opinions
and make their decision based on the price, proximity or based on someone who
even does not know well and at the lack of better support he recommends an Internet
forum. I am speaking about the need to learn “the” and “from” the point of view
of the client, listen to their ideas, understand their feelings and respond
suitably their needs with independence of the function of the product or
channel
The retails future, or rather, the retail of
the future it can only go through if it is able to put itself the shoes of the
consumer and employers on, of the
humanization related with both publics.
Even today many retailers suggest that the war
is in the necessity and in searching the way of competing against the physical
proximity and the ease of purchasing that promotes the online business,
especially now, when technology allows any place to become a point of sale, a
shop (a smartphone, tablet, metro stop,…) and where the important thing is, in
this sense, a good management of all this points of contact with our brand and
the creation of an experience of unique brand and integrated, a digital
strategy coherent with the physical one.
But in a moment like the present, where we find
millions of people in the social webs debating, discussing, marking,
recommending, sharing, increases the importance of the existential relations
and personal experiences, requires that should proportionate the brand. The
consumer is a rational person who is constantly looking for accumulating first
person experiences.
As
Lipovetsky said, mas consumption is no longer a massive consumption. The human
being needs to feed the feeling of being part of a group. We want to share our
coffee in group but we want it to be served in the way we like. The important
thing is what stage the brand creates in order to get a relation with myself,
in order to push me building a relation with it and to give me the opportunity
to relate with other consumptions attending my individuality.
Retailers
should attend to this reality and many of them are already doing so. They are
cutting down the number of commercial locals while they are enlarging the space
of most of them, increasing the space of relation.
They
are doing the store, not the extension of the brand, but the window display of
the experience. They are creating spaces to stay and share, providing a reason
for the visit further than the fact of just purchasing. Spaces where it can be discovered new
utilities of the products supplied and where they give you the possibility of
touching and feeling them. Places where the story of the brand is explained and
recreated. Personalize products in function of their ubication and with many
open channels. Retailers, that moreover, and specially, understand that one of
the main distribution channels and ambassadors of the brand are their employees.
The retailers of the present and the future
that don’t base the relation with the consumer as a long term agreement and
with respect of the people that is in front of and behind the brand, that are
not able to connect with the reality that the brand lives, lacking the ability
and the humility of putting their shoes on (the ones of the clients and the
employees) they would not survive.
The orientation to the client is not any more
an added value because the orientation through the people and the brand
empathy, especially in the retail sector, is not any more an option.
Sebastián Fernández de Lara
