Count on Numbers in Product Names

I spent most of my elementary and middle school time living in Burbank and Hollywood, California, two centers of production of television shows and movies. Among my classmates were a few genuine child stars and a whole bunch of aspiring child stars, each of whom seemed to place great importance on the teacher getting their name right.
     At the start of each school year, when the teacher would ask us to introduce ourselves, I found myself tickled by the special posture and tone with which each of the child stars would announce their name. Pomposity, I’d call it. If I’d known what that word meant at my age.
     My reaction to this was a bit of mischief: When it was my turn, I’d stand up, raise my chin so my eyes appeared to be looking down at the teacher, and spell it out. “B-R-U-the numeral 3-C-E. But the 3 is silent.”
     Recently reported consumer behavior findings indicate I was on to something. Numbers in names can add a special touch, and this is where I bring it all back to improving retailer profitability. On your limited shelf space, which would you prefer to depend on to yield high sales: V8 juice or Campbell’s Tomato Juice? Levi’s 501’s or Dockers?
     Researchers at University of Florida and National University of Singapore find that, everything else being equal, a number in a product name will make it more attractive to your shoppers.

• Small numbers add appeal to low-tech names, larger numbers to high-tech ones.
• Formula 409 has a history of selling well, and 409 is a prime number. However, the researchers find that for unfamiliar products, prime numbers do less well than non-primes. The imaginary shampoo name Zinc 24 was liked better than was Zinc 31.

     There is an important exception to the appeal of numbers in product titles. It has to do with movie stars—child and adult—or more accurately, with the movies they star in. Researchers at UCLA and University of Pennsylvania found that, compared to numbered movie sequels, named sequels earn more box office receipts and receive better reviews. The researcher’s explanation: A numbered sequel seems to be too much like the predecessors—and may very well have been produced to achieve similarity with a proven formula. But movie goers prefer fresh experiences.
     When the benefit is novelty, not consistency, omit sequential numerals.

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Repeat Yourself Repeatedly

After years of observing retailers interacting with customers and staff, I’ve decided that many of those retailers are too quick to believe you can get results by saying something once. The root cause isn’t customer or staff stupidity. It is retailer familiarity: The retailer subconsciously assumes that if they’re highly familiar with how to do a task or why a certain product is good, the other party will get the message promptly.
     Effective retailers repeat themselves. Again and again. Researchers at Harvard University and Northwestern University discovered that, on average, about 15% of communications by managers are redundant. Some of the managers they shadowed generated four or more versions of the same message. Moreover, those managers who were intentionally redundant got better results.
     It’s not just the content of the message, says the research. When you repeat yourself, you’re maintaining contact with the message recipient. You’re making your presence felt, which strengthens your influence. Staff and customers are inundated with instructions and suggestions. Repetition adds distinctiveness.
     The commission of repetition easily irritates the recipient if you’re saying the same words in the same way again and again. Based on their results, the Harvard/Northwestern researchers suggest that when it comes to supervisors giving directions to their direct reports, a face-to-face followed by an e-mail works well. Not only does this ease the irritation potential, but it also takes account of the fact that different people have different learning styles and all people remember best what’s delivered in a range of modalities.

• Tell the person
• Give it to them in writing
• Show them how it’s done
• Have them demonstrate it to you
• Ask them to teach it to someone else and then report the results

     It does work differently when communications are with customers rather than with direct reports. For one thing, retailers are about twice as likely to recognize the need for redundancy with customers as with staff. For another thing, the retailer is less likely to recognize the availability of multiple modalities. Sending a confirmation e-mail to a staff member is natural. It takes more effort to think about sending an e-mail to a customer to follow up on a store visit.
     When talking to a group of staff or customers, another way to ease the irritation potential is to talk to each group member in turn, shifting eye contact as you do.

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

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Tally the Costs of Customer Service

Are your shoppers willing to pay more if you provide them better customer service?
     The latest information says yes, overall they are. But there are important exceptions. Unless you appreciate those exceptions, giving people better customer service might fill your retailer’s heart with warmth, but fail to fulfill your profitability objectives.
     Let’s start with the overall. Yesterday, American Express Company announced their annual “American Express Global Customer Service Barometer” findings. Three months ago, adult consumers were surveyed in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Australia, and India by Echo Research. A random sample of about 1,000 respondents was included for each country.
     Results were generally consistent across the ten nations. About 70% of the Americans said they’d be willing to pay more to a retailer if they were assured of receiving excellent customer service. The average premium was 13% more. In last year’s survey, 58% said they’d be willing to pay more, and the average premium was 9%. It appears that the demand for customer service is up.
     But now the cautions: Other research finds that, indeed, people are willing to pay more for superb customer service than for good customer service. They also are willing to pay more for good customer service than for poor customer service.
     However, there is no firm evidence that your customers would pay more for very good customer service than for fair customer service. If you’re aiming for a price premium based on customer service, either settle for good or drive hard and long for consistently superb customer service. Moving from fair to very good will cost you more money than you’ll recoup from any decreased price sensitivity.
     Tally the costs of providing very good customer service: Selecting the right staff, since not every potential hire is capable of learning and maintaining service skills. Having rich staff-to-customer ratios. Arranging for ongoing training both in customer service and product knowledge. Monitoring the service quality and taking necessary corrective actions.
     Leverage the investment. Your customers might swear by your customer service while at the same time swearing at the customer service offered by other retailers. But unless you continue to remind consumers why to shop with you, they might end up forgiving the others and forgetting to give you their business. If you’re banking on customer service, then feature that fact in your advertising and give customers the opportunity to thank you.

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Push Customers Beyond the Like Button

Happy customers are more likely to push the Like button on your Facebook page than to write a review, according to results from a survey of American adults. The problem with this finding is that both your existing and potential retail shoppers are more likely to be influenced by even a brief customer review than by a tally of Facebook Likes.
     The project, sponsored by CityGrid Media and conducted by Harris Interactive, surveyed a nationwide cross-section of more than 1,000 adults. Overall, about 20% of respondents said they use the Like button to express praise for a local retail business, while only 13% said they write a review. About 25% of women use the Like button, while 11% write reviews.
     Push your happy customers beyond the Like button by making it easy for them to post reviews. Give shoppers materials they can take away with them as conversation starters. This is especially useful for newly introduced products and items for which the purchaser incurs monetary and/or self-concept risk. With ecommerce customers, make it easy for the purchaser to send on a URL to others to show off what they’ve bought.
     Along with this, use findings from marketing consultancy Harbinger about the ways people access and use recommendations. The Harbinger survey included 2,134 women in Canada and the U.S. through the Ipsos panel. I believe that many of the study trends would also hold for men.

• With a toy, about 20% will read reviews when shopping and about 10% will write a review after purchase. On the other hand, with an automobile, about 40% will read reviews when shopping, but only about 5% will write a review after purchase. With automobile-related products, your encouragement to women to give reviews will need to be more vigorous.
• For almost all product and services categories, family and friends were the most popular sources for recommendations. But for restaurants, casual acquaintances were the second most popular source, and for financial products, family and friends took second place to expert and professional reviews.
• For almost all product and service categories, consumers were motivated to give and post recommendations in order to help other people make smart purchases. With automobiles and entertainment, a distinctive motivator was for the consumer to display her expertise. With the home furnishings and food/beverages categories, a distinctive motivator for sharing was the opportunity to help improve the products.

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Build on Couples’ Decision-Making Rituals

When a married couple make a purchase decision together, they are either developing or following rituals. By building on those rituals, you can guide the couple’s preferences.
     The newly married may have already set up housekeeping and therefore made many shopping decisions together already. However, shopping after the ceremony brings out different power dynamics. Both the man and the woman are each subconsciously influenced by how their respective mom and dad handled the decisions. The challenge for the retail salesperson is to track the ritual, which is still in a formative stage.
     The long-married couple have settled into their shopping-together rituals. Here, the challenge for the retail salesperson might come from the ritual being so automatic and quick for the couple that it is hard to discern.
     A set of classic cross-national studies by researchers at University of Chicago and Belgium’s Catholic Universities of Louvain and Mons concluded that the relative dominance of husband and wife depends on the type of product or service being considered when the couple shop together:

• Husband-dominant: Lawn mowers, hardware
• Wife-dominant: Children’s clothing, women’s clothing, groceries, toiletries
• Shared dominance: Cars, refrigerators, televisions, living room furniture, financial planning services, vacations

     Subsequent research described how these overall patterns differ by cultural background. Mexican-American couples are more likely than others to have husband-dominant patterns, while African-Americans are more likely to have wife-dominant patterns.
     Even when there is shared dominance, the husband’s and wife’s decision making styles differ within the couple. While making the decision, the man’s objectives are underpinned by a desire to ensure his individual specifications are met, while the woman’s objectives are underpinned by a desire to have the shared specifications of the couple met.
     Very frequently, married couples aim to balance out their shopping tendencies. Researchers at University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and Northwestern University provide intriguing evidence that tightwads—who recognize they should be more willing to spend money—tend to marry spendthrifts—who recognize they should be more cautious in spending money. Rather than viewing such couples as having opposite attitudes, view them as having complementary approaches. They married each other to help moderate the extremes. When making a sale, give them sufficient time to work their magic with each other.
     All these are overall tendencies, of course, and so differ among individual couples. Still, by remembering the tendencies, you’ve a starting point for identifying and building on the rituals.

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Fix the Problem, Not the Blame

Let’s say something has gone wrong in your retail business. It’s serious enough that you’ve switched from open minds mode—in which you invite creative ideas—or open roads mode—in which you’re moving ahead assertively—to open wounds mode—in which you must take prompt, decisive corrective action.
     Now after the panic eases, who do you blame for what went wrong?
     Maybe nobody. Holding people responsible is different from fixing blame. Estimates by psychologists at New York University and University of Tulsa suggest that about 70% of retail employees will do less well in a store like yours if you put more emphasis on fixing the blame for the problem than on fixing the problem that caused the setback.
     Here are the most common patterns of thinking and behavior set off by blaming retail employees for serious problems that come up:

• Denies that failure has occurred or denies any responsibility for it. The employee then begins distorting everyday business occurrences so as to avoid confronting problems.
• Accepts some responsibility, but deflects most of the responsibility to other people or to unforeseeable circumstances. The employee then is too quick to sense only the criticism when given constructive advice.
• Announces their responsibility in order to brag about the corrective actions they’ve taken. The employee then aims to impress managers excessively, sabotaging teamwork.
• Wallows in self-blame out of proportion to their actual responsibility. The employee then overreacts to even minor mistakes, withdraws from necessary risk-taking, and labels setbacks as failure prematurely.

     Guilt and shame are powerful emotions which can lead to the dysfunctional consequences identified by the New York/Tulsa researchers. Embarrassment is a milder emotion in which the employee still accepts both responsibility and that others know about the incident.
     When serious problems arise in your retail business, hammer out the difficulties in supportive ways. Use your hammer to repair the shortfalls, not to pound your valuable staff—and consequently, their staff morale—into the ground. Stop at embarrassment, short of guilt or shame.

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

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