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04.26.2002

“HartBeat” is The Hartman Group's FREE online newsletter, providing insight, analysis, information and strategy to give business leaders the knowledge and vision to build sustainable brands.

This issue of HartBeat is excerpted from a recent N|sight Magazine, The Hartman Group's bi-annual publication exploring the dynamics of the health and wellness arena.

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Sometimes An Experience Is Just An Experience

SECTION ONE. The retail shopping experience.

The Hartman Group wasn't the first to point out the importance of the retail shopping experience to marketers, but there's something fascinating about how this experience has affected shopping in modern America that even we have failed to mention. You can witness this new behavior at any of the more successful experience retailers. For example, on a recent expedition through our local natural foods store, an employee in the produce department casually explained that the crowd of shoppers making it nearly impossible to move was not actually there to buy. ("No thanks, just looking"). I was surprised. Not at his observation, but at the nonchalance with which he volunteered it. Was this just employee apathy? No, far from indifference his reply conveyed a sense of accommodation. You see he'd seen it all before.

The shopper as tourist phenomenon is no longer confined to regionally progressive enclaves either. In Kroger's Cincinnati backyard is a grocery store called Jungle Jim's, "Where grocery shopping is always an ADVENTURE," according to their website. Don't believe what you read? Reserve a spot on their one-hour store walking tour and see for yourself. What I find amusing, aside from the Jungle's life-sized mechanical bears belting out The King's, "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog," is Kroger's response to the local consumers' overwhelming endorsement of this Cincinnati upstart. Whereas Jungle constructed thematically interesting ethnic quarters to display a mix of familiar and exotic foods from around the world, Kroger's spin was to plant a miniature Italian flag next to the spaghetti sauce shelf, a little Union Jack next to the marmalade, etc. You won't find curious shoppers scrutinizing the Kroger display of dill pickles any time soon. At least not in the same way they go foraging for exotic Indian pickles and chutney at Jungle Jim's. Still, to its credit, Kroger knows it has to play the retail experience game.

Every retailer should play the game in order to stem the exodus of their customers to the stores that get it, but, and this finally is my point, even retailers who successfully market the wellness experience risk losing customers. Providing an experience is all well and good, consumers clearly love it, but at the end of the day stores still need sales. Consumers who just look, who just experience without buying anything, represent lost sales as much as consumers who never stop in. Experience retailers definitely have the foot traffic, but too many of their shoppers continue to spend their cash elsewhere.

SECTION TWO. Taking the retail tourism out of retail experience.

To add injury to insult, we know that many of the consumers who fail to buy certain wellness products while shopping in particular stores go on to purchase those very products elsewhere. I'm not merely describing the ubiquitous multi-channel shopper. I'm talking about someone who goes to the grocery store every week to buy food and sundries, yet still finds it necessary to check out from the grocery store, load up their car, negotiate traffic, and fight for another parking spot at some other store, only to buy something they could have found at the grocery store they just left. Is this a rare phenomenon, isolated to the peculiar habits of (hard) core wellness consumers? Hardly, our research shows this pattern of shopping behavior is now widespread, affecting every major channel for every major wellness product category.

Has homo economicus suddenly turned insensatus? Probably not. I suspect it really has something to do with retail tourism, but I can only guess at why. My suspicion is that retailers have only partly nailed down the wellness experience. Shoppers still carry expectations about what wellness products particular channels should carry or, more importantly, what wellness products they will purchase. If, for example, the experience encountered in a particular grocery store does not create the feeling that organics belong, then consumers will not buy organics from that store. They'll go elsewhere until the grocery store experience fosters the expectation that it's okay to buy organics at the grocery store.

Not only does the experience have to be relevant to the shopper, it has to relate to the products as well. A wonderful experience can easily wind up as a terrific attraction, rather than a reason to buy. Likewise, stores that successfully capture certain aspects of wellness by providing specific experiences necessarily miss any aspects not contained in those experiences. Does this mean retailers now have to be all things to all consumers? Only if they want to sell everything to everybody. In the meantime, it means expect to see consumers just tour stores as retailers develop and refine the experiences that encourage buying as much as shopping.

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