Build Up Shopping Convenience

Retailers succeed by anticipating what customers will want. Survey research by The Integer Group and M/A/R/C finds that shoppers' interest in convenience is trending upwards. With all your focus on price sensitivity in the face of the economic downturn, now is time for you to attend to time. In what ways might you save time for your customers and potential customers, thereby adding to convenience for them?

• Location. You've always been interested in selecting a store location that has good traffic of people constituting your target market. But do you have store vacancies in your immediate area for which you could recruit retailers offering products or services that would draw people from your target market? You then become the convenient location for shoppers buying what you sell.
• Hours. You can't be the convenient place if your store is closed when people want to shop. If you've been opening later to save staff expenses, think about again expanding hours.
• In-stock. And you can't be the convenient shopping place if you're out of stock for what shoppers expect to find. As with store hours, you may have been cutting back to preserve dollars and now is the time to consider expanding your in-stock position.
• Product location, signage, staffing, & staff training. All these are key to pairing the customer with their product quickly. Are your products arranged according to shopper logic? The peanut butter with the jelly? Is signage easy to read and use? Are staff available to help customers locate products and to promptly suggest alternatives?
• Checkout & returns. Can you use single-line queuing like the banks do in order to give a sense of faster movement? Are your payment and return procedures as convenient as they can be while protecting against employee and customer fraud?