Offer Family-Oriented Experiences

Consumers want to buy experiences that include family and friends. What group experiences can you can offer? Could you arrange product and service knowledge sessions in which couples, families, and groups of friends can participate? Wine tasting. How to plan a vacation. How to set up a model railroad. You might charge a fee to make this a direct source of profit or at least to defray expenses. Or you might offer activities at no fee in order to build footsteps into your store.
     As consumers spend fewer resources shopping for material goods, they're seeking ways to spend more time with others. And they're willing to pay for those experiences.
     Consumers are often operating on the assumption that they'll have more time in the future, but not necessarily more money. This doesn't mean at all that the consumers are satisfied to be wasting time. On the contrary, they want to feel in control of their time. An essential part of you offering family-oriented experiences is to advertise the benefits the experiences offer for shared enjoyment.
     What we're seeing now may well be cyclical. A few years from now, consumers might get more motivated to spend money on material goods and lose some interest in the family-oriented experiences. Still, recent psychological research at San Francisco State University and older psychological research at Cornell University verifies that, in general, possessions used just by the purchaser bring less happiness than experiences shared with others.

For your profitability: Sell Well: What Really Moves Your Shoppers