Retail customer experience
Ever look around a store and notice all the signs? At least in technology stores you can’t miss them. There seems to be a plethora of signs touting the latest technology, promotions … and price. Yet, in many clothing stores you hardly see any signs. What would happen to consumer experience if you removed the signs? In my recent travels to Turkey and Morocco, I had an opportunity to experience stores “without” signs, since I didn’t have a clue as to what was printed on them. The experience was eye opening.
POS – Point of Sale signage and merchandising
As retailing grew into larger stores and larger chains, the store experience became more “self-service.” With fewer sales staff on the floor, the consumer needed a way to navigate the store to find what they were shopping for. In many big box, mass merchant retailers today, the only staff on the floor are stocking shelves or running the cash register. POS signs are deemed essential for navigation, as well as providing product and price information.
While there have been some recent trends in reducing store “clutter” to improve “sight lines” across the entire store, signage at the product shelf is still profuse. In the case of consumer electronics retailers, the amount of store signs and point of purchase material seems to be growing. Granted, technology products are a bit more complex than a shirt or shoe, but how much signage does a consumer need, especially if they have pre-shopped on the Internet? And, with all the signs screaming specs, financing and low price, how does that improve the quality of the consumer experience?
A startling contrast: Clothing Stores vs. Consumer Electronics
Since I’m focused on consumer electronics retailers, I had never really thought about the general lack of signage in clothing stores. Okay, I admit it; I’m not a clothes horse type of guy and do everything possible to avoid clothing and department stores! But, in my recent travels, I have walked past a lot of clothing stores to get to the consumer electronics stores.
I had an epiphany. It had never occurred to me before, but clothing stores are all about the look, feel and style of the clothes. While there might be some general signs directing you to a department, the POS (Point of Sale) is all about visually merchandising the product in ways to get you to imagine what you will look like wearing it. Nike and the other major sporting apparel manufacturers are particularly good a visually merchandising lifestyles of products sans signs. By contrast, consumer electronics stores are plastered with POS signs and stickers touting every detail … and especially price.
Example of sporting goods apparel visually merchandising without any signage
Example of technology store where even the entrance is plastered with signs
“Greek to me” – Experience changes when you can’t read the signs!
You would think with all my foreign travel I could speak another language … Not! While I can decipher a few words of Spanish, French and German, the only other language I speak is “retail”. There is a popular English expression “it’s Greek to me”, which means that language impaired travelers like me don’t have a clue as to what the sign says. On my recent travels, it turns out that the Turkish alphabet is Latin based with many vowel combinations. In Morocco, it was obviously an Arabic alphabet. Both could have just as well been Greek, because I had no clue when trying to read any of the store signs, brochures or fact tags.
When staring at the signage in the store, and you don’t have a clue, the signs effectively disappear and blend into the background. The whole experience in consumer electronics stores changes when you effectively remove the signs from the experience:
- Your eyes start focusing on the product itself (not specs)
- You notice style, color, texture … attributes of the products
- You start looking at how products are arranged, grouped
- You watch what is on the screen if the product has one
- You want to touch, hold , feel and try the product
- There is an incredible desire to want to talk to someone
- You focus on what fits and excites vs. the price!
When you remove all the signs the experience comes alive!
Humans are geared for language. And, much of POS materials are geared to words explaining the product details. Product packaging also tends to be verbally focused on features and specs. The most prominent thing in consumer electronics stores tends to be the “fact tags” that list the features, specifications and PRICE of each machine. Watching consumers shop for computers, it becomes a very product feature exercise. Even the store sales people focus on the fact tags, packaging … anything to compare the specs in order to justify the price.
If you suddenly can’t read the signs or find a sale person who speaks your language, it becomes a very different experience! It becomes less about specs and more about what feels and looks good. The experience changes to what it feels like shopping for clothing or furniture, where it’s more about color, style, fit and value. Frankly, it’s simply hard to describe! No signs or prices changes shopping to be experience based vs. product comparison based.
An Experiment for Turkey and All Retailers – Take down the signs!
As in most of the world right now, Turkey is a highly competitive retail environment … especially in consumer electronics. Many of the large multi-national consumer electronics retailers are present, including: Carrefour, Media Markt, Saturn, Darty. Best Buy was in Turkey but ended up closing, and its stores were purchased by a local technology specialist – Teknosa. The overarching theme, while I was in Turkey, is the same one occurring worldwide in consumer electronics – a “race to the bottom” to compete on lowest price. Many of the signs in store solely focus on features and price.
No, it’s probably not realistic to remove all store signs and price tags. But, based on my experience of not being able to read any of them, it would be an amazing opportunity and experiment to take down all of the POS signs on the shelf … even for just a week!
Imagine what would happen to the store, staff and consumer experience without signs:
- Assortments could be logically arranged by something other than price & specs
- There would be less shelf clutter enabling space for consumer trials and demos
- Store staff might have to learn the products rather than reading the fact tags
- Engagement would change from “tell me” to “show me” why and how
- Consumers might explore more options and ask about personal value
- Stores might interactive souks (markets) vs. display racks of commodities
Less could be more!
Okay, I’m a realist. Store signage is not going away any time soon. My Turkish epiphany is that there is way too much signage, and removing most of it literally could change consumer experience overnight. It’s a very worthwhile experiment worth testing … and a certain “fruity” retailer is already executing the strategy very profitably every day!
