Describe Distinctive Attributes to Experts

Guide the choices your shoppers make by discussing product attributes important to them. The number and the nature of attributes can make a difference.
     Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and University of Southern California found that with packaged food items with which the shopper is familiar, shoppers pay the most attention to the attributes of taste and brand name, more than they do the size of the package. Researchers at University of Pennsylvania and University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign found that across all product categories and levels of shopper familiarity with products, the attributes of color and shape have special importance.
     Researchers at University of Iowa, Northwestern University, and INSEAD-Singapore recommend describing fewer attributes to experts than to novices and emphasizing the uniqueness of attributes. In their studies with electronic products, the researchers found that consumers with limited knowledge of a product category would make choices in a store using fairly standard, easy-to-comprehend characteristics on which the various alternatives could be readily compared.
     In contrast, the expert consumers were more interested in whether any of the alternatives had fairly sophisticated features which distinguished that alternative from the other choices. They’re less likely than the novices to count up the number of features. Other research finds that if a number of alternatives receive a high quality rating on a certain attribute, the experts don’t pay as much attention to that attribute in winnowing down the choices.
     Discussion of attributes also plays a role in the categories a shopper uses, and the category in which a shopper places a product determines the comparisons they’ll make in deciding what to buy from you. If you’re selling apples, donuts, and oranges, health-oriented customers will be comparing the prices, the freshness, and other attributes of the apples with the oranges. But the convenience-first customers will be doing an apple-donut comparison.
     If you’re selling flowerpots, statuary, and seed flats, a dedicated gardener looks for the flowerpots and seed flats to be in the same shopping area. The dedicated outdoor decorator wants to compare the aesthetic attributes of the flowerpots with the statuary.
     We can guide the choices of our shoppers by the ways in which we arrange the merchandise and describe the alternatives we give the shoppers for spending their money. But it can work even better to present the alternatives in terms of the number and nature of the attributes we discover our shoppers using already.

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Discuss Attributes to Guide Choices 
Be Aware How Shoppers Compare Products

Beware Open Sell

As the shopper enters your store, she’s invited to don a colored bracelet. She can change bracelets during her visit, if she likes, knowing the color sends a message to your sales staff:

• Green means, “I have time. Please talk with me about my possible purchases.” 
• Pink means, “I’m browsing by myself. I welcome you keeping an eye on me, but I’m perfectly happy not to be asked if you can help me. I’ll come to one of you to ask for help if I want it.” 
• White means, “Please leave me alone. Without you watching my every move, I want to play around with the merchandise while I think about buying and using it. Just give me a little nook I can tuck myself into.” 

     That is actually the setup at a Clinique counter in New York City. Along with this, all the cosmetics packages are out for the shopper to touch. A few retailing consultants have referred to the arrangement as a “petting zoo sales floor.” It’s a dramatic difference from having a Clinique salesperson cajole the approaching shopper into sitting in a chair for a makeup diagnosis.
     This variation of the open sell environment tactic, pioneered by Sephora stores, also is not a dramatic innovation. For a long time now, we in retailing have been calling it “self-service.” We’re there for the shopper, but we let them pick up the products from the shelves or racks by themselves if they wish.
     Well, okay, there are some theatrical differences in the case of the Clinique counter. Beyond the bracelet gimmick, there are iPads shoppers can use to get product information and even a gadget which spritzes a bit of the cosmetic when the shopper signals which one.
     According to a Wall Street Journal video, the change to open sell has led to a double-digit growth in sales.
     Still, beware open sell. In offering to consumers products requiring a personal touch, such as cosmetics, we won’t want to miss opportunities. For instance, researchers at Washington State University and University of Texas-Austin noticed how consumers who intended to buy animal friendly cosmetics, sustainable wood furniture, and fair trade clothing very often failed to ask about those issues at the point of purchase. The consumers would use the information to make their selections if the salesperson told it to them, but otherwise seemed to prefer to stay unaware of it.

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

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Acknowledge Customers’ Willful Ignorance

Appeal to Asian-Americans’ Achievement Ethic

Improve the marketability of your items to Asian-American consumers by appealing to their achievement ethic. A report recently published by the Pew Research Center calls it a “work ethic.” However, other research suggests there’s more to it: An ethic of working hard to achieve substantial results.
     As with any statements about an entire demographic group, we’ll want to avoid stereotyping. The variations in beliefs, feelings, and intentions within a group can be greater than the differences from other groups.
     This could be especially true regarding consumers called Asian-Americans. The term is applied to those with racial roots in any of dozens of countries in the Far East, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. In addition, today’s Asian-American consumers, unlike those from past generations, are most likely of all major racial groups to live in neighborhoods with those of other races and to marry across racial lines.
     Yet, even with all the individual differences in history, culture, language, and religious beliefs, the Pew Research Center finds a compelling commonality: They admire working hard to achieve substantial results.
     In my opinion, one reason for this commonality is that 74% of Asian-American adults were born abroad. So for one thing, these consumers retain ties to their Asian culture. In fact, half say they don’t speak English well. For another thing, these Asian-American consumers have prevailed in emigrating to America, a prime example of working hard to achieve a significant outcome.
     Here are tips for putting the Pew Research Center discoveries to work in your retailing:

• Asian-Americans tend to be more attracted to technology in products than are other groups. In selling technology, discuss benefits for accomplishing more. Also, don’t shy away from describing the work it will take to master the technology. This challenge increases, rather than discourages, interest. 
• These consumers are more comfortable when they believe they’ve earned a promotional reward. Researchers from Baruch College, University of California-Berkeley, and San Francisco State University surprised people with completely unexpected promotional gifts of appreciation. Those from the United States enjoyed their surprise gifts more than did those from Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, or Vietnam. Because the reward appeared to be unearned, the East Asian recipients seemed to feel it produced a menacing imbalance. 
• Allow them to work to buy the best. For example, Asian-Americans expect much more information about product features and consumer ratings when considering house brands than when considering national brands. 

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Add Shopper Fun with Fungibility

Your shopper who feels her dollars are fungible believes that the more money she spends on clothes, the less she’ll have available to spend on entertainment, for instance. “Fungibility” means substitutability. A dollar spent on one item could have brought equal pleasure being spent on another item. At the extreme, this means the person maintains one overall budget for expenditures.
     It would seem that shoppers fully feeling fungibility would buy less than shoppers who have different categories of expenditures. When there are different categories, a shopper can dip into each one without it interfering with the others, you might think. But research at University of Chicago finds that when shoppers compartmentalize their expenditures, they become more like tightwads. They end up consuming less than they wish they had. This is especially true if an expenditure is unexpected and large.
     When you survey tightwads, they admit to making smaller purchases than they think they should. They generally believe they should be willing to spend more money. And tightwads have the money to spend. Annual income is similar for tightwads compared to spendthrifts, who believe they should be spending less. Tightwads don’t feel poor, and this is not the same motivation as with those who fret about the future.
     Tightwads aren’t the same as frugal shoppers. Frugality is driven by a pleasure in saving. Tightwads are driven by a pain of paying.
     So add fun for shoppers who compartmentalize expenditures excessively. Do it by stimulating fungibility. Here, too, there’s a bit of a surprise. Researchers at Yale University, Arizona State University, and Singapore Management University saw little use in saying to tightwads, “By getting a good deal on this item, you’ll have more money available to buy other items.” It’s not that the tightwads aren’t influenced by this reasoning. Rather, it’s that they’ve almost surely thought of it, so they’d consider a retailer telling them it to be a waste of their time.
     Instead, research suggests, catch things at the point where the customer is deciding into what category to place a large, unexpected expenditure. Specifically, findings from Princeton University and New York University indicate, encourage the customer to assign the expenditure to a category called “exceptional purchases.” The meaning of “exceptional” here is “unusual,” but the word works better because it also implies “superiority.”
     In switching the booking of the expense, you’re moving the shopper’s reasoning toward fungibility of money.

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Strip Out the Benefits of Customer Costumes

ABC News was among the many media outlets reporting on the ultimate “come as you are” shopping event: To draw interest to the grand opening of Priss, a grocery store close to the German-Danish border, the first 100 consumers received a €270 shopping spree—if they shopped nude. To the surprise of the store manager, there were about 250 takers, some of whom had camped out overnight. To curb the bedlam, which seemed to include even more photographers than naked consumers, police monitors were recruited.
     I’m thinking that the presence of those photographers and police grew the hype for Priss exponentially. I’m also suspecting some of those bare-bottomed buyers were enjoying the exposure as much as getting the free groceries.
     Maybe you’ll not want to include strip-downs in your special events. Instead, you could have people wear a costume. Consider the benefits:

• The silly look. If your wardrobe requirements are outlandish, you’ll draw the sort of media attention we call free publicity. 
• The naughtiness. Some retailers give incentives to shoppers for dressing in pajamas. People associate wearing pajamas with relaxing their inhibitions. Actually, almost any costume can work. Think about adult Halloween parties! And when consumers relax their inhibitions in your store, they buy more. 
• The celebration. E-commerce retailers could have fans post photos or videos of themselves in costume in order to earn a price discount. Those are fine techniques. However, it’s certainly more fun to wear your crazy costume to a store where you can bask in the reactions of others to you and express your reactions to the others there. 
• Compliance. This one gets deeper into consumer psychology. When the customer agrees to dress up, they are changing their behavior to follow the directions of the retailer. This is a type of foot-in-the-door technique, in which the customer becomes more willing to follow subsequent directions the retailer will give. 

     A skilled practitioner of the costume approach is Chick-fil-A with their annual “Cow Appreciation Day,”  Come fully dressed as a cow and you get a fully dressed combo meal for free.
     Still, your shoppers might not be willing to go all the way, whether it’s coming in nude or dressing up like a cow. Make provision for that, as Chick-fil-A has: “People dressed in partial attire will be awarded an entrée vs. a full combo meal.”

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

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Synchronize Marketing with Consumer Habits

According to YesMail Interactive, based in Portland, Oregon, the best days and times to launch your social media marketing campaigns depend on the platform:

• Mondays work well when the platform is YouTube. 
• Save Tuesdays for Facebook. And across days, the highest level of customer engagement is during the 10 PM to 12 AM Eastern Standard Time slot. 
• For Twitter tweets, Fridays should be your last place choice. The best time slot across days for customer engagement is 5 AM to 8 AM. 

     I suggest taking these as starting points for your own attention to synchronizing social media marketing with consumer habits. Find out when your shoppers are accessing each of the platforms. The YesMail Interactive research appears to be thorough. It analyzed campaigns over three months at retailers including Abercrombie & Fitch, Aeropostale, American Apparel, American Eagle, Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, Diesel, Eddie Bauer, Express, Forever 21, The Gap, Guess, H&M, J Crew, Kenneth Cole, The Limited, Old Navy, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Urban Outfitters. However, the recommendations for days and times are overall conclusions, not intended to take account of your business’s distinctive characteristics.
     The secret to success is in the timing, and YesMail Interactive says many retailers are missing out. For example, most of the Twitter campaigns analyzed launched on a Friday.
     Tony Curtis, who died at age 85 after having appeared in more than 140 movies, is quoted as having said, “…(M)y longevity is due to my good timing.” I don’t know who first advised, “Timing is everything,” but Albert Einstein associated time with everything when saying, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.”
     To help shoppers sort it out, attend to timing:

• Researchers at University of Connecticut and University of Virginia found that women shoppers vary between thinking, “It’s time for me” and “It’s time for others.” Analyze how your shoppers cycle between these two, then adjust your marketing messages to fit. 
• Before the sale, emphasize the number of functions the product can serve and have technical specifications easily available. Once the sale has been completed, state benefits in terms of making it easy to use the functions and reassuring the customer they’ve made the right choice. Researchers at University of Maryland-College Park found that consumers tend to choose the most feature-filled models, but then after purchase, tend to get frustrated with the complexity of what they chose. 

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Time Your Statements of Benefits