So before the pundits start whining that consumers just weren't in the mood to buy anything, we need to come to grips with the fact that many marketers did a piss poor job of selling.
Let's try to list the three primary reasons why stores exist in our era of online shopping:ConvenienceImmediate gratificationShopping experience (tangible, hands-on help, etc.)I'm not sure there was much consistency in how any of those benefits were actually delivered over the holidays.
First, there's the problem of the holidays themselves: this idea that consumers are programmed to buy at certain times of the year is a driver of much retail planning. I'm not pulling a Grinch and suggesting that this behavior is or should change, but it does prompt business behaviors that are distinctly un-customer-centric:Those pre-dawn openings and get-one-before-we-sell-out promotions aren't convenient for shoppers, are they? Retailers want to herd consumers like cattle, and get them to buy when its most convenient for businesses (which, like movie studios, add up the sales over the Thanksgiving weekend [in the US] as an indicator of overall success, so they want to maximize the available hours of shopping time).
The cat-and-mouse game of pre and post-holiday pricing is also pretty inconvenient; at best, consumers know that post-holiday sales will make whatever they buy prior to the 25th seem like it was too much or, at worst, they've learned to play the game and game the retailers.So opening at 4 a.m. instead of 5 was an innovation? Not so much, I say.
The second retail benefit -- immediate gratification -- proved to be not so immediate this year, as inventories were kept lean as the precautionary, self-fulfilling-prophecy sort of gesture for that bugaboo of declining consumer buying interest. It was almost as if choices were more broad than ever before, requiring one rack too many, or a stack of merchandise too high, even in some stores that would have never before considered doing so.Good luck if you didn't chance upon the product you wanted in the size or configuration you required. Inventories were being managed to limit retailer downside, not provide the opportunity to prompt as sales upside.
Which brings me to store experiences. Yuck.Hiring temporary store personnel was half the rate it was a year ago. Merchandise was displayed poorly, with bins of stuff often replacing actual displays altogether. Stuff wasn't put back on hangars, or replaced in the right spots on the right shelves.
Combined with the inanity of weird opening hours and limited stock, the unavailability of sales and/or checkout help pushed the retail buying experience past inconvenient, to approach the downright unpleasant. Or, dare I say, terrible?And our conclusion is that consumers didn't want to buy?
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