Former Apple retail chief: Only 1 in 100 Apple store visitors actually buys...

According to a new interview reported in Cnet.com, "The Apple store's a place to be," Ron Johnson said. Not a place to shop, a place to be, in a redefinition of shopping experience....

(Ron Johnson was brought in from Target to set up the Apple store, 'giving reasons to visit and figuring out how to create more intimacy, relationship and experience in stores, but it does not mean you have to buy...')

Yet 'rule-breaker' Apple  is usually the busiest shop in the shopping centre, and generates annual sales per sq. ft. of £2,654 compared with £1,100 for UK mults...

(See the full 50 minute interview at Stanford Graduate School of Business on YouTube)

Simply food-for-thought in classic grocery retailing?

Or a fundamental challenge to our assumptions re collaboration with retailers in connecting with a brand via the in-store experience?

Who’s minding the shopper?

The old deathbed story raises an interesting dilemma in retailing today:
An elderly shopkeeper on his deathbed asks for his wife and then for each of his six children. When the last one replies “I’m here” the old guy demands: “then who’s minding the shop?”

In other words, if the key retail stakeholders are all pre-occupied with survival and continuity of the business, then who’s minding the shopper?

Most of us accept the fact that, given the extent of their loyalty-data insight, compared with that of the supplier, and if knowledge defines ownership, the major retailers now ‘own’ the shopper. Despite the fact that a retailer’s knowledge is mainly derived from analysis of shopping behaviour, their increasing share of consumption via own label growth also means that they have potential access to the shopper’s consumers, and their consumption behaviour.

They are thus capable of leveraging shopper insight in also taking ownership of the consumer…

Unfortunately, ownership does not guarantee action in the best interests of the shopping consumer…
This means that brand owners need to enter the aisle and ‘hand-hold’ the shopper in an attempt to complete the intended purchase in favour of brand-consumer and supplier…

More in this month’s edition of NamNews, now in your mailbox.

Understanding the shopping-consumer

At the moment of purchase a shopping-consumer’s world is all about one SKU, with potential access to all possible alternatives, literally at their fingertips…

Meanwhile, a retailer is coming from a perspective that covers the entire shop’s offering, a world of up to 50,000 SKUs, an expert in selection.

This classic case of depth vs. breadth can be synergistic in that the shopping-consumer can be reassured by the assumption that the retailer, as expert, has surveyed the entire market on their behalf and is now presenting the best offer available. Moreover, the shopper is also taking for granted the implied endorsement i.e. that the product contains ‘what it says on the tin’, especially given the fact that the shopping-consumer may also be making the purchase-decision on behalf of family, etc.

One can only imagine the shopper’s reaction when even a cursory check reveals they have been misled, or even short-changed, either financially, or in terms of what they expected to receive for the money... Moreover, they have a hand-held means of communicating their dis-satisfaction well beyond the walls of the store…

Whereas, if the retailer plays by even the rudimentary rules of consumer marketing, and meets or even exceeds shopper-expectation, they can harness the positive aspects a shopper’s ability to ‘tell a friend’, endorse a purchase and even recommend a visit…