What's Wrong with Retail?

SPECIAL COMMENTARY

By Michael Lambet, CEO of MerchantAdvantage

Rather than quote statistics, as I did in a previous blog entry, and other random facts about retail during the holiday season, I thought that I would offer some of my first hand experience as a consumer to outline some of what I believe is the problem with brick and mortar retail today.  I certainly hope that online retailers can avoid such occurrences.

When arriving in a particular retailer's store within a major mall (let's say for example Aventura/Miami Florida) over the holiday season I spent over 15 minutes waiting for a sales person to help me with a price on a brief case. After waving my hands around and being somewhere between angry and lost, a gentlemen finally came over and began talking to me.  As it turns out, it was the store manager, who proceeded to disclose to me all of the problems he was having with the holiday season. Inventory shortages, bad employees, rude consumers and more.

I simply wanted to know if there were any other matching pieces to the brief case I had found...and wanted to buy. The sale would likely have been $300 to $500. But, I didn’t want to spend more time listening to the manager's problems, and it just didn’t seem worth MY TIME anymore...so, I left. 

I’m sure that the manager is still trying to figure out why sales were down, or perhaps he’s already been fired.

Within the same mall I entered a consumer electronics store and found a camera that I already had purchased from Sharper Image. My wife saw it, and very much wanted to have her own. So, I asked for a price on the camera (which I had just purchased at Sharper Image for $400). He told me the camera was $650. I thanked him, and began to walk out.

He yelled back at me: "...wait, wait, how much do you want to pay me?"  I said $400 just like I paid for my current camera a few days earlier. He said he couldn’t, and that my camera must have been a different model. So, I told him the model number, and where I had purchased it from...then waited for him to look it up online. 

He said there was an “E” after one of the models, and that’s why there was a price difference. So, I asked, what features are different?   He reviewed, and told me ...NONE. So, again I began to walk out, with a very pleasant thank you anyway.  Next, he yelled again, saying: “How much will you pay me for it?”. I said, $400 would do nicely, thank you. He said, how about $450?” Once again, I thanked him, a began leaving. Next, he sold me the camera for $400. 

The moral of these stories?

I will gladly spend more money for a particular product if there is an escalated convenience level.  However, in these situations there is a LOWER convenience level for the increased price. 

Further, even though I eventually got the price I wanted on my camera, it came at the complete loss of trust with this retail establishment. I will never shop at the electronics shop mentioned within these stories. I will shop at the luggage establishment, but probably not this particular store within the chain.
  
I fail to see the difficulty in pleasing such a push over customer like me. 

Frankly, I am completely sympathetic to the retailers plight, and try to act as an appropriate consumer. But it sure seems like retailers are literally chasing me out of their store when all that I required is 1 minute of time to spend between $200 and $500 at the stores.  Add to this the schemes to “trick” consumers into buying more, which we all know happens all of the time, and it really starts to become upsetting.

Why trick some into buying more than they want when you won’t even service those consumers willing to buy what they want and just needing some simple questions answered?  So, I find myself becoming less sympathetic these days to any retailer.

Perhaps the good news is that I’m finding it more and more necessary to purchase online!  Yay!

So, online retailers, PLEASE service the consumers that your marketing department works so diligently to acquire - it’s the cheapest client, and simply the right thing to do. 

 I hope you had a happy and successful online holiday season.

-- Michael Lambert
CEO, MerchantAdvantage