Prolong Your Reputation as Cutting Edge

“New and improved” has been a mainstay of retail marketing for forever. But a preference for the cutting edge has exploded in shopper psychology. An upside for the smaller retailer is that it gives an opening to get customers. “Want the latest technology/fashion statement/service delivery method? Come to us rather than to the stodgy retailer that’s been around too long.” At the same time, the challenge for retailers is that once you’ve made “new and improved” a major marketing message, you risk losing that reputation—and your customers—to upstarts.
     Here are some ways to prolong your reputation as cutting edge:

• Continually introduce some new and improved items. A common sense suggestion, I know, but one that is too often overlooked by busy retailers.
• Open pop-up stores. These are stores that remain in business for a very limited time. A Bloomberg Businessweek article from a few years ago describes how even retailing giants Target and Walmart have successfully used pop-up stores. In one case, the Target pop-up was open for only four days. Your objective is to generate excitement about your bricks-and-mortar store and/or ecommerce site. With this in mind, announce the pop-up widely to the media, realizing that even after the pop-up has closed, reporters will figure their audience is still asking, “What the devil happened?” When the Bloomberg Businessweek article was published in 2007, retail was thriving, so the article said, “Unoccupied stores in hot retail locations aren’t easy to come by.” The situation is different now.
• Repackage nostalgia. Australian entertainer Peter Allen thought enough of the saying “Everything old is new again” to coauthor a song by that title. Merchants are accommodating nostalgia fans who want the cutting edge by offering items like antique toasters sold as accent pieces, music tracks from old LP records reissued as MP3 downloads, and traditional house calls augmented with Internet ordering.
• Build customer loyalty. Another common sense suggestion? Maybe, but for a reason you might not have recognized: Loyal customers are sensitive to whether the cutting edge has become overly trendy. Researchers at Concordia University and University of Wisconsin-Madison explored what happened when loyal customers’ shopping selections threatened to be associated with terms like “yuppies,” “metrosexuals,” “urban gangstas,” and “hipsters.” The research findings indicate that loyal customers’ reactions in rejecting these labels strengthen their conviction that their existing store of choice is cutting edge.

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