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As someone living in denial about my “real’ weight, this idea for an ad terrifies me. But I bet it makes people really take notice. Great work.

1. MANAGE CHOICE

Most categories have too much choice.
In the average superstore there are c20,000 FMCG lines. The average household only uses 350 lines in a year and will only buy a relatively small % of these on any one trip. Therefore there is more choice in a supermarket than people will ever need.

Ease of finding and speed around store are key shopping needs. At the moment range complexity is working against both.

This is about range optimisation not necessarily range reduction – so the right products in the right stores.

2. CLEARLY SEGMENT

For most shopping occasions, people know what they want before they get into store – they just want to be able to find it when they get there.
Poor segmentation, complex range and little pack differentiation is not helping them do this at the moment.
This is not about re-merchandising, just using simple POS tools to segment the fixture more effectively. Anything we do should be visible as you walk down the aisle not only when you’re right in front of the fixture.

3. USE COLOUR AND SHAPE

Shoppers don’t read as they shop – they use simple visual cues to recognise categories around the store.

So a brown liquid with a red label = coke = soft drinks.

Shoppers use similar cues to recognise product on shelf (e.g. in fab cons they choose a product for fragrance but recognise it in store through colour).

Use this shopping behaviour to help your customers find what they are looking for.

4. SIGNAGE – VISUAL NOT WRITTEN

The majority of shoppers shop at the same store each week.
They learn a cognitive map of the store and use this to navigate around the store rather than overhead signs.
If they do need navigational help, visual stimulus will work better than written – simply because visual information takes less time to process than the written word. Shoppers read very few things as they move around the store because most of the time they don’t need to.

5. SIMPLE COMMUNICATION IN THE RIGHT PLACE

The average person is bombarded by hundreds of different messages every day. We have become conditioned to this and tend to de-select much of this communication. Therefore messages need to be kept simple to avoid being filtered out.

A vast amount of POS becomes wallpaper because it is either too complex or often in the wrong place. Most people naturally look 15-30º downward when shopping and tend to ignore most things above shoulder level. Therefore signs above fixture or hanging banners are pretty redundant.

You see – easy to implement, easy to maintain and could make a real difference to your retail experience.

Technologies such as instant downloading of the latest book on an e-reader; video, song or app on the i-phone to the ease of shopping online without leaving the comfort of your own home are radically changing the way we shop. Retail theatre and retail design need to deliver something radically different to the functionality of online to give us a compelling reason to shop in the “traditional” way.

Joseph Bona, speaking at the NRF conference, addresses this challenge and gives some US-centric examples. However he does cite the clothing store, Hollisters, as an example of retail design changing the dynamic of a typical store front. Rather than floor to ceiling glass windows displaying stock, Hollisters present a dark, limited view exterior. You don’t even walk straight in but step up and round a corner to the door. Isn’t that breaking every rule in the store design book? However, this gives shoppers the feeling that they will experience something very different in-store. There is a Hollisters store in Westfield shopping centre which has exactly that feel. I don’t find it very inviting, but then I’m not the target demographic. And the dark exterior certainly stands out in that world of bright lighting and white space.

Another agency I have worked with, Liberation, have worked with Jockey, the underwear brand. In talking to Jockey they realised that the company was the first to launch the Y-front, many years ago. This ignited a design around the heritage of the brand in store which really makes it stand out.

Ultimately, understanding that the retail experience is where the values of the brand can – and should – be reinforced will make a real difference to how stores develop in the future. Using retail design to deliver an experience that engages all our senses and gives us a real experience will give us a reason to shut down the computer and go out to the shop.

Next, Home Retail Group (Argos and Homebase) and Debenhams all showed a drop in their share price of between 0.5 and 1.5%. This is despite the British Retail Consortium reporting an annual sales increase of 6% in December – the best performance since 2005.

The Citigroup report forecast that 2010 will be a difficult year for retail and it expects UK retailers to return to negative like for like growth. So was Xmas trading the dead cat bounce that we’ve all been warned about?

“The world hasn’t changed in my view,” said Sir Terry. “Customers still want a better life. They still want the material benefits of a better life and that’s the business opportunity for us. If we can help those people to a better life, we’ve got a business and that’s just as true now as it was coming out of the last recession in 1992.”

He identified the drivers as:

Trust. As life gets more complex, we will continue to move towards those organisations that we feel are genuinely interested in us. Where an organisation can demonstrate that it is not just about the bottom line, this will build real customer loyalty.

Information. Just as organisations have a lot of information on us, so we can find out a lot about our organisations through many channels. And in this age of global business it is important for organisations to present a consistent set of values, wherever they operate. Smart businesses will start to exploit our information age as a two-way street and involve us in decisions.

Health. We want to live forever and so businesses involved in fitness, cosmetics and fashion will see growth.

Convenience. We are still time poor so convenience stores such as Tesco Express, ready meals and self scan checkouts will continue to develop to answer this need.

Simplicity. More products and more choices are not making our lives better. We will be looking for solutions to our problems (even if we don’t know we have a problem) and not just another product. Sir Terry mentioned the i-phone and personal video recorders as examples.

Climate Change. Different consumption rather than less consumption was Sir Terry’s take on how we address this challenge. He sees real opportunities for those businesses that can address our concerns about climate change such as providing low-carbon products.

Some interesting stuff – many of these growth drivers are common sense and my guess is that any business worth its salt is thinking like this already.

The website is clean and clear. You can register for updates and join their online community on Facebook, see them on Flickr and You Tube. A good way to build up a following and a database prior to the stores opening. It’s clear what categories of product will be stocked going forward from the tabbed headlines and there is also mention of their famous Geek Squad.

I think that the entrance of Best Buy into the consumer electrical retailing market in the UK can only be a good thing. Traditionally stores such as Curry’s, Comet and PC World have had poor levels of service and abysmal stock levels. In terms of retail experience, they seem to have real problems delivering the value and support that shoppers need when they are buying high value items, whether it is white goods or computer hardware. Finding staff to answer questions and actually finding stock on shelves that matches the shelf edge ticket shouldn’t be such a struggle.

However, recently I have seen the level of service in some of these stores improve. The senior management must know that Best Buy has excellent customer service and retail experience and so are looking to put their own stores in order. This is happening a little – I have had good service in my local Comet on the my two latest visits.

I’m looking forward to visiting Best Buy and am optimistic that they will deliver a great customer experience that will make us think differently about this retail channel.

However, when I dug a little deeper, I think I have found more to this than just that we are much happier shopping online these days. The items that drove this sales increase were, wait for it, boots, knitwear and cosmetics. Given that the UK has been in the grip of a big freeze over the last couple of months I’m not surprised that boots and knitwear are flying off the virtual shelves. And when it’s freezing outside who actually wants to go out to get a fleecy jumper when you can order one in the warmth of your own home.

And the cosmetics? Well, if your skin has to suffer the nastiness of the freezing cold, then a centrally heated office, then the freezing cold again – any girl will need a good foundation to achieve her glowing best for the Xmas party.

The weather has got even worse since Xmas and looks set to stay cold and snowy for some time. It will be interesting to see how this affects our shopping behaviour. Both what we buy and how and where we buy it.

However, it is not just the big glossy brands that can deliver excellent retail. I bought a new pair of trainers before Christmas and found that all the elements that make a shopper into a loyal customer were in place there as well.

Needless to say I didn’t buy my trainers in one of the High Street sports shops that abound. I am so clearly not their target market and feel really uncomfortable in those stores. The “teenage boy’s bedroom” aesthetic is not a draw to me.

So I went, on recommendation, to Sweatshop in Reading. After a couple of minutes browsing a young sales girl approached me and then spent over 40 minutes with me ensuring that I got the absolutely right trainers. No mention of price and no pressure to buy the most expensive. And, on checkout, I was told that there was a 30 day returns policy with the trainers – go out, run in them as much as necessary to make sure they really were right. If not, bring them back and get another pair. Brilliant. All I had to do was give them my email address (very clever, don’t you agree?) This was followed up by an email restating the returns policy and checking that I was happy with the service.

So all the elements of great retail were there -
Friendly, knowledgeable and passionate staff;
An understanding of how customer use the product, and what they need;
No pressure from the staff to buy expensive or gimmicky items;
A willingness to spend time with shoppers
A follow-up service that offered me confidence.

So I walked out very happy with my purchase and, more importantly, determined to use that shop again.

One store, one experience, I know, but it has restored my faith in UK retail after too many miserable shopping trips had turned me into a total online shopper. Thanks Sweatshop.

It would seem from their research that shoppers have traded down and, in some key categories, been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the items.  The perfect value equation.

Our household certainly has less cash than a year ago.  I’m now running my own business rather than receiving a comfy salary every month.  And I can attest to the truth of the research.  I have bought supermarket own brand, rather than branded, products in many categories and am perfectly happy to stay with the own brand products.  And supermarkets have made this an easy and convenient choice for even a hardened brand lover like me by segmenting their own label ranges into good/better/best.

However, I do wonder if this shopping behaviour will extend beyond our regular shopping.  Is this the same attitude that people will apply to the more considered, and more expensive,  purchases?  For example, when buying a new car are you really going to trade down from your preferred BMW or Volkswagen to a Seat or Skoda? Even though you know they probably have 75% of the same components?

My gut instinct is that this isn’t going to happen.  And for a very simple reason.  You can hide what brand your loo roll, butter or bleach is (or keep a posh one in for when visitors come).  But you can’t hide what car you drive and in our materialistic society, brands still matter.