AlabamaGroceryJan2017Final

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...the major obstacle to creating the right kind of experience is their obsession with four-wall productivity.

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In his speech, Stephens said retailers will have to shift their thinking beyond being a place to distribute products and focus instead on selling the experience along with the product. “Retail has to become less static,” he said. “The future will be less about dragging things home and more about the value of the experience. “Smart companies will re-deploy employees to become ambassadors – awesome people that add value to the in-store experience as nutritionists, sommeliers or chefs, for example – people who interact one-on-one with customers. People trust other people.” Even millennials, who depend so much on personal devices, “are hungry for physical experiences that do not involve the product itself as much as the brand,” he told conference attendees. Whole Foods’ 365 stores, which are tailored to millennial tastes, “are about the experience,” he pointed out.

For many retailers, however, the major obstacle to creating the right kind of experience is their obsession with four-wall productivity,” which has been the primary operating principle for a century or more, Stephens said. “It’s a hard pill to swallow, but in a world where we can get anything we want with a single click, no one needs what you sell. But what you sell is the only value differentiator left, so you must create a different experience around what you sell by getting innovative, cunning and crafty – not by starting with technology, though leveraging technology could add value to the experience, but by understanding the customer experience in a different, deeper way, then de-constructing that experience.” That may be the only way to meet “the very material threat” posed by Amazon, Stephens said, “but too many retailers will recognize that too late because they are myopically obsessed with the inner workings of the business but unaware or unwilling to see what’s happening outside the walls.

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