Shhh… Abercrombie is Cutting Prices

Last night at the mall, we saw what it looks like when retailers who don’t want to discount do the dirty deed in hushed tones. Just a few feet inside the lease line at an Abercrombie & Fitch store, we saw fleece tops at 50% off—a whacked price put onto a tasteful little sign no bigger than a postcard. We saw this throughout the store, motivating price points on merchandise clearly meant for the upcoming fall/winter season. This A&F store even had a sign at the entry announcing a back-to-school sale (odd, since prime back-to-school shopping season is behind us). Deep discounts? On current season merchandise? Is this really “we will not become promotional” A&F? Since the onset of the recession, shoppers have flocked to low-price retailers like T.J. Maxx and Ross. Nearly every clothing chain has aggressively discounted to try to win over penny-pinching shoppers. But in the face of all this discounting, A&F has stubbornly held onto its loftier price structure to protect its “aspirational” brand.

Last week, A&F announced that its sales dove a frightening 29 percent in August – the eleventh straight month of double digit sales declines for the retailer. Sure, times are tough and the teen (and parent) clothing budget has been squeezed, but rival Aeropostale, with its less expensive, but still fashionable, apparel managed to increase sales a very respectable 9%. A&F has finally, reluctantly, quietly capitulated to shoppers’ demand for a deal (while still clinging hopefully to the idea of an aspirational brand). “It (discounting) is not the primary vehicle nor will it be the primary vehicle for driving business, but it is part of the balance at this point… but it is not the driving force of this business. The driving force is fashion, quality, aspiration, and will continue to be so,” Chief Executive Officer Michael Jeffries said on an Aug. 14 conference call.

A&F may have done its job of creating a high-priced brand image a little too well. Despite a current move to more price cutting, the company’s success ultimately depends on the willingness of teens to drop $50 on “Perfect Butt” sweatpants once the economy rebounds. Still, now that teens have learned that for the same $50 they can get a pair of sweats and jeans at Aeropostale and still have money in their pocket for a couple of tickets to a movie, it may not be so simple to get them to return. Habituation is a tough monkey to overcome.

Judge a book by its cover at your own peril

One hundred and ten years after its 1818 founding in New York City, venerable retailer Brooks Brothers opened its second store, in Boston, on that city’s famed Newbury Street. A cautionary tale for the ages happened one morning when a man entered the store in tattered clothing, wearing rubber boots, and smelling a bit rank. The “up” salesman would not wait on him (the associate whose turn it was to help the next customer). The other salesmen looked away, busying themselves with anything else to avoid the unwelcome stranger. When the man finally asked for help from anyone within earshot, he was pawned off on the most junior salesman, who had no choice but to offer some assistance. Then, in the next two hours, the stranger ordered up $10,000 in custom-made suits, shoes and furnishings. (As you might guess, the “up” man tried to claim the sale as his own, to no avail). When the young salesman began asking the stranger about himself, he learned the man just arrived in town from his home in Vermont, where he was the owner of a highly successful hog farming business.

Fast–forward to the reverse situation. What happens when customers are the ones judging salespeople? According to a recent article in the New York Times, a new study found that people give higher customer satisfaction ratings to white male employees than to women and members of minorities, even when their performance is the same. In one test, about 12,000 patients in an HMO rated their doctors. The number of follow-up email messages doctors sent to patients increased their patient ratings only when the doctor was a white man. In another experiment, students watched videotaped interactions between a bookshop sales clerk and customers, and were asked to rate the customer service. Three actors played the part of the sales clerk—a white male, a black male, and a white female. All used the same settings and scripts. The subjects shown the white male clerk rated the bookshop’s service 19% higher than subjects who viewed the other two actors. Even women and people of color gave white males higher marks. Since over 60 percent of employees have at least some of their pay linked to customer satisfaction results, these biases are not just socially undesirable, they hit female and minority employees squarely in the pocketbook.

According to David R. Hekman, the lead author of the study and professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, “Someone needs to call customers out on their biases.” Hopefully, if people are made aware of their subconscious biases through coverage of studies like these, they will be less likely to penalize female and minority employees on satisfaction surveys. Another possibility would be to create employee evaluation tools that are truly objective. Techniques such as video analytics can deliver a bias-free analysis of the customer experience. Any other ideas on how we can eradicate the hidden biases that occur when shoppers evaluate employees (or vice versa)?