A young musician is in a Washington DC metro station. He wears jeans, a long sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. It’s Friday morning. A violin is in his hand. The case is open at his feet. A few coins and dollar bills are inside as seed money to stimulate contribution. At 7:50 am, he begins playing. He continues for 43 minutes. During this time, he plays through six classical pieces, including the stunning Bach Partita in D minor. His music resonates through the entire metro arcade.
About a thousand people pass by. Almost all ignore him. Twenty three of them glance momentarily and wait. Seven people stop to listen for more than a minute. He collects a total of $32.17.
The violinist is Joshua Bell. He is one of the great musical virtuosos of our time. He sells out concert halls. He plays to capacity audiences all over the world . Now, here he is, in the Washington Metro, playing an 18th century Stradivarius violin, and just seven people stop to listen for more than a minute. (Interestingly, according to Washington Post reporter Gene Weingarten, who concocted this Pulitzer-prize winning experiment, every time children walked by the performance, they tried to stop and listen. And each time, a parent swooped them up and kept walking.)
What does this experiment show us? It depends on your perspective. Are we too busy to appreciate beauty? Was Bell just a bad busker?
One lesson to draw from the story is how much we can learn from well-designed, rigorous real-world experiments. When the reporter first proposed the experiment, he anticipated that the music would draw a throng, perhaps even create problems with crowd control. Instead, he learned that only a very few classical music fans (and children) would stop to enjoy the music. No focus group or interview would have provided the same insight. More importantly, the experiment demonstrates the central role of context in generating a reaction, whether it’s a crowd of commuters or shoppers. Humans have a hard time assessing product quality on its own merits; rather, the environment powerfully shapes decision making. Imagine if someone were to set out a cheap folding table in downtown Chicago displaying piles beautiful couture shirts with a hand-lettered sign selling them for $10. Most likely, people would ignore the display on their way to Macy’s or Nordstrom, because there would be no cues, such as designer labels, admiring sales associates, or piped in classical music, alerting them that these shirts were in fact valuable. For stores, carefully designed research could help figure out what in the environment causes shoppers to line up and what makes them walk on by.
Showing posts with label in-store experience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label in-store experience. Show all posts
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Saturday morning at the hardware store
I walk in and a clerk approaches to ask if I need help. I tell him I need a flashlight, just something basic. He walks me to the appropriate spot in the aisle, and begins describing the selection.
“We’ve got your Eveready. $3.95. Not the greatest, but does the job,” he says, starting at his lowest price point. “Then there’s this Energizer. Better grip. $6.99. Or we’ve got a Sylvania. Good for the garage. It’s $12.99.”
He takes a step to the right, moving toward something else, as if he’s signaling that we’re about to enter a special new universe.
“Of course,” he tells me with a knowing look, “you could get this.” He begins hefting a powerful looking cylinder of silvery black metal and then starts thwacking it slightly menacingly on the palm of his other hand.
“This,” he pronounces, “this is the one the cops carry.”
Of course, he had me at the product demo, but the law enforcement piece put me all in. I buy two of them……at $49.99—each.
There are a number of lessons here, not the least of which is the incalculable sales value of story in the store. This was a pitch-perfect bravura performance, and in case you’re thinking today’s workforce isn’t trainable in this skill, you need to know that this associate was not some old-timer hardware store guy—but a 20-something “kid.”
“We’ve got your Eveready. $3.95. Not the greatest, but does the job,” he says, starting at his lowest price point. “Then there’s this Energizer. Better grip. $6.99. Or we’ve got a Sylvania. Good for the garage. It’s $12.99.”
He takes a step to the right, moving toward something else, as if he’s signaling that we’re about to enter a special new universe.
“Of course,” he tells me with a knowing look, “you could get this.” He begins hefting a powerful looking cylinder of silvery black metal and then starts thwacking it slightly menacingly on the palm of his other hand.
“This,” he pronounces, “this is the one the cops carry.”
Of course, he had me at the product demo, but the law enforcement piece put me all in. I buy two of them……at $49.99—each.
There are a number of lessons here, not the least of which is the incalculable sales value of story in the store. This was a pitch-perfect bravura performance, and in case you’re thinking today’s workforce isn’t trainable in this skill, you need to know that this associate was not some old-timer hardware store guy—but a 20-something “kid.”
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Prescient retail
What if there were a store that knew everything you wanted before you got there, and all of it was waiting for your arrival, ready to go?
It sounds like some parallel universe you may not have yet experienced, but it may well be in a future just up the road.
I first witnessed a stage 1 example of this kind of “no-shop shopping” at Bed Bath and Beyond, which allows customers to select and purchase merchandise in any of its stores, but then has everything ready at any other Bed Bath store anywhere in the country. It’s a service near and dear to the hearts of parents of college students, allowing them to make all the in situ summer selections of sheets, wastebaskets, pots, pans, and bath mats for the far-away dorm room or college apartment—ready and waiting for the start of the fall semester. In this example, the shopper still needs to shop a store, but is able to do so in a more leisurely way, when product availability is high, tension low, and move-in deadlines don’t loom—and simply shift the pick-up to another time and place.
A more recent entry is mygofer.com, a new venture from Sears Holdings Corporation, which allows customers to shop online for groceries, electronics, apparel and more, and then pick up the designated items at a My Gofer store the same day—presumably a defunct Sears or Kmart location, now re-purposed as the bridge between the online and bricks and mortar worlds. This service also offers a delivery option and guarantees product availability.
Interestingly, these hybrids acknowledge an important positive of the traditional retail experience—in one case, the customer desire to see and touch the merchandise, and in the other, the need for immediate gratification. At the same time, they both endeavor to minimize what consumers don’t want—crowded aisles, vapid sales associates, out-of-stocks, and long waits at the checkout.
Inherent in these new constructs, however, is the sad element of partly throwing in the towel on some negatives of the in-store experience, with the retailer now at least tacitly admitting it may no longer be able to heal all of thyself.
It sounds like some parallel universe you may not have yet experienced, but it may well be in a future just up the road.
I first witnessed a stage 1 example of this kind of “no-shop shopping” at Bed Bath and Beyond, which allows customers to select and purchase merchandise in any of its stores, but then has everything ready at any other Bed Bath store anywhere in the country. It’s a service near and dear to the hearts of parents of college students, allowing them to make all the in situ summer selections of sheets, wastebaskets, pots, pans, and bath mats for the far-away dorm room or college apartment—ready and waiting for the start of the fall semester. In this example, the shopper still needs to shop a store, but is able to do so in a more leisurely way, when product availability is high, tension low, and move-in deadlines don’t loom—and simply shift the pick-up to another time and place.
A more recent entry is mygofer.com, a new venture from Sears Holdings Corporation, which allows customers to shop online for groceries, electronics, apparel and more, and then pick up the designated items at a My Gofer store the same day—presumably a defunct Sears or Kmart location, now re-purposed as the bridge between the online and bricks and mortar worlds. This service also offers a delivery option and guarantees product availability.
Interestingly, these hybrids acknowledge an important positive of the traditional retail experience—in one case, the customer desire to see and touch the merchandise, and in the other, the need for immediate gratification. At the same time, they both endeavor to minimize what consumers don’t want—crowded aisles, vapid sales associates, out-of-stocks, and long waits at the checkout.
Inherent in these new constructs, however, is the sad element of partly throwing in the towel on some negatives of the in-store experience, with the retailer now at least tacitly admitting it may no longer be able to heal all of thyself.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.jpg)
