Engage New Customers with Episodes

At the times a retailer is interested in turning a first-time shopper into an ongoing customer, that shopper will be more influenced by specific episodes during the transaction than by overall impressions. It’s recollections of these critical incidents which exert outsized influence on the likelihood of future purchases and willingness to recommend the retailer to others. It is the episodes which engage or distance the shopper, say the University of St. Thomas studies.
     The researchers find that episodes which occur more recently exert a bigger influence. This is especially true regarding negative experiences. The researchers point out this finding could be due to how a negative interaction during a retail transaction might led to the shopper leaving the store. The negative experience becomes the most recent experience.
     Take care that the last experiences you provide the shopper are clearly positive. In addition, avoid any pain for the shopper during the critical incidents touchpoints likely to be recalled by the customer later. Which these are depends on the customer. But there’s less payoff from maintaining a peak positive tone throughout the transaction. To do so uses a great deal of energy from a busy retailer, and it is the specific episodes which will matter anyway. Memorability is more important than uniformity.
     This doesn’t mean shoppers’ recollections feel to them like discrete episodes. Generally, they remember and talk about the visit as overall impressions. Researchers at University of Texas-San Antonio and University of Virginia find that those recollections are influenced by whether the shopper is accompanied by others.
     Shoppers in a group are greatly influenced by what happens early on. First impressions set the scene. The initial sights, sounds, and smells play an outsized role in the global opinions about shopping with you.
     Solo shoppers are greatly influenced by what happens to them in the store late in their visits. If customers are asked afterwards to recall their experiences, the memories most likely to bubble up are about the interactions when they paid for their purchases, exited the store, or looked for their car in the parking lot.
     Researchers at University of Miami and University of Southern California found that similarity and contiguity matter. If your personnel dress in a distinctive outfit, memories of episodes with different employees merge. And if two staff members work physically close to each other, the consumer generalizes impressions from one to the other more strongly.

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Track the Trajectory of In-Store Impressions 

Sound On When the Purchase is Completed