Cause and Effect Series: The People Effect
People have a major influence over what is happening in store. From planogram compliance to logistics and supply chain, in-store promotions, pricing, merchandising, and positing of your product. We can’t undermine the role that people play in customer experience.
The reason big brands often boast national merchandising teams, is because they know they have to. Beyond different retailers placing different priority on how your product gets to their store and gets where ‘in the store it needs to go,’ different retailers actually have variances in policy and prioritization from store to store. Often it is the results of the management in the individual location and unique challenges that store may be facing.
Getting back to customer experience, the table below highlights that a shocking 72% of respondents in a PWC survey last year indicated that their customer experience was disrupted by products they wanted being out of stock.
Do you know what 32% of respondents said ‘was how they react to this’? By buying the retailers store brand as a substitute. So, the result of not prioritizing the merchandising of third party product actually has a desirable effect for the retailers because it boosts their products sales which they likely ensure are stocked.
The romance of technology has devalued the importance of people and how they positively impact service.
Job shortage at retail? Nope! In fact, according to Statistics Canada the ratio of new hires to vacancies in retail trades is trending downwards.
| Cause | Effect |
| Retailers not scaling staffing to support positive customer experiences. | Lower sales as stocking, pricing and compliance fall to the wayside. Understaffed is understaffed! |
Ask yourself these questions:
- Can you say that your product is where it should be in every retail store it is listed in?
- Can you say that your product is properly priced in every retail store it is listed in?
- What is your KPI and key measurement/metrics to track the consistency of product being in-stock at every store?
If you can’t answer these questions decisively you are likely bleeding money at retail.
Interested in this topic. Download our free whitepaper How Smaller Brands Can Overcome Cause and Effect at Retail in Canada. Looking to ramp up your people effect at retail, visit www.marketsupport.ca.
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