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Unpacking 'Retail Experience' - What Apple Has Taught Us About Branding

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Sanford Stein

There appears to be near universal agreement among retail mavens that for malls and centers to regain and retain viability in the future means they must "transition from a product focus to an experience focus”. This is essentially moving away from push marketing and toward a pull marketing approach. While I concur with the hypothesis, the very term “experience” is vague, at best. It is about as clear and concise as good food. So, to use an oft-used colloquialism, let's unpack it. To do this subject justice involves a three-part submission, so as they (used to) say, stay tuned.

The broad-brush use of "retail experience" undermines what must occur as offline retailing undergoes a process of reimagination. I would argue there are three distinct levels of experience that need to be considered: engaging, immersive, and transformative experiences. And to further complicate matters, the creation or interpretation of a meaningful retail experience differs within the realm of the brand, the shopping center or mall, and the consumer; and accordingly, must be thought of differently. So, in contemplating the reinvention of a 20th century phenomenon like the shopping center or mall using 21st century sensibilities and context, there is a lot to synthesize. And the fact that within the centers, established specialty retailers and anchors are failing at unprecedented rates, and demographics, technology and the internet are all impacting the status quo like a freight train; it’s safe to say, it’s complicated.

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Starting with the Brand

As to "the brand", I’ll use an Apple anecdote to deconstruct the three levels of experience. When I purchased my first Apple iPhone years back, I felt the store, and many of the brand's touchpoints created a high degree of engagement. Once I committed to the sale, the engagement heightened with a subtle but meaningful gesture. When the sales person cut the cellophane on the phone's package, handed it to me and allowed me to remove the wrapper and open the package, it moved the experience to the next level. While this may seem trivial, it goes to the core (pun intended) of the neurological connectivity that is baked into the well-choreographed Apple experience. For me, even as a consumer who can “see behind the curtain”, this elevated the already engaging experience, to fully immersive. And Finally, how the device began to affect my life, brought the experience to transformational. All three were playing a unique role in the customer experience, during and after the sale.

Sanford Stein

I would argue, however that the within the three realms of experience (brand, center/mall and consumer) the brand’s new realities are probably the most clear-cut, largely because they were the first responders to the "new retail". In a March 2011, while addressing a Global Shop trade show audience, I posed the (rhetorical) question, “With the point of sale conveniently tucked away in one's backpack, back pocket, or purse, what is the retailer, brand bearer, or mall to do to engage this new highly mobile consumer?” It was at that point, now eight years ago, that we were gaining clarity around the separation of shopping from buying, due to the impact of ecommerce.

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Guided Exploration

I believe this, more than anything, has ignited the fire behind omnichannel. It created an urgency around cohesive messaging, everywhere that the consumer exists. Brand management, marketing and sales are no longer "channel-dependent". Correspondingly, the stores need to become less about storing, and more about exploring. However, too few retailers have caught on to the fact that the exploration needs to be a guided exploration, led by technology-toting brand ambassadors, not simply minimum wage salespeople. The prime objective in the retail space has evolved from turning product to building loyalty, and lifetime customer value. Regrettably, as margins have continued to be squeezed, and expenses have risen, the knee-jerk reaction of too many retailers has been to cut store labor and service. Kind of like giving an alcoholic a drink, to overcome the disease.

Ironically, as poor service, and the growth of the internet undermined many brand’s once dependable points of distribution, new, novel customer engagement solutions began popping up. The popularity of social media, along with the growth of influencer marketing conspired to reconstitute “temporary tenancy” into a new and exciting genre, the pop-up. These short-term, highly orchestrated "retail happenings" affected a new type of customer/brand interface, fulfilling the consumer’s innate desire for surprise and serendipity, and some were truly immersive. They also became a bona fide example of how brands could create valuable engagement, and facetime in the new era that separates shopping from buying.

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