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home : hartbeat : 2006-07-19

07.19.2006

“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.

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For more Hartman Group articles on SHOPPER INSIGHTS, click here...

02.23.2006 "It's More Than Just the Shopping Channel; It's the Shopping Occasion"

08.11.2005 "Extending Shopper Insights: Understanding Cultural Dynamics"

02.03.2005 "Shopper Insights: Moving Beyond 'Need States' and 'Trip Types'"

02.03.2005 "What Is 'Home Experience'?"

01.06.2005 "5 Myths in Consumer Shopping Behavior"


For more Hartman Group articles on EXIT EXPERIENCE, click here...

05.06.2004 "Beware of Self Checkout and RFIDs"

07.19.2002 "The Science Behind Irrationality"

Archives »
Click here for an archive of past HartBeat articles

The Role of the Exit Experience

We've all been there before. We're heading to the register thinking largely about what we have to do next and, abruptly, we stumble onto an exit experience that is excruciating, awkward, rude or just plain soul-withering.

What's a bad exit experience?

• Stores that don't keep long lines from forming or know how to staff up to pick up the pace
• Clerks who don't know how to ring up our not-so-unusual items
• Clerks who literally grunt and can't speak in full sentences
• Clerks who use the receipt, not their memory, to wish us a great day by name
• Register product sets that assault us with junk food and trashy magazines, lowering the bar to unforeseen new depths

Each time we suffer through these kinds of exit experiences, we groan. Sometimes we get angry. When it's really over the top, we complain to the first humans we have contact with and spread negative buzz widely within our social networks. Poorly crafted exit experiences may not immediately hurt the underperforming store locations in question, but they generate cultural buzz about how certain brands and entire categories of retail experience consistently under-deliver. This buzz slowly erodes perceptions in the entire category. This is what has happened to conventional grocery. Kroger, Albertsons and A&P are virtually indistinguishable in the unremarkable, if not lame, exit experiences they create for shoppers.

It astonishes us again and again how many conventional retailers feel that the most critical added layer to the exit experience is generating impulse sales in candy and gum. Rather they should view this as an opportunity to elevate the shopper's view of the entire brand in a theatrical crescendo of impeccably improvised human interaction and aspirational merchandising that encourages discovery, empathy and a deep symbolic connection to the brand's core values and reason for being.

Exit experience woes point to a category of truly relevant unmet needs among shoppers - a seamless, if not uplifting, transition "back outside" or back into the real world. They also represent a critical opportunity to create an enduring brand impression through real human interaction, not mission statements and static communications. Very few retailers, though, invest in the time and in the human capital necessary to craft a truly brand-specific exit theater that sends shoppers off with a positive, and positively clear, message, about what makes them unique and worthy of a repeat visit.


Exit Experiences and the Destination Shopping Occasion

Crafting a unique exit experience works very easily for many retailers catering to Destination Shopping Occasions. These are niche players who have crafted a unique, coherent theme around which to build their product portfolio (e.g., Best Buy for cheap gadgets, Trader Joe's for foodie discovery, Origins for natural body care experiences). They are often so unique they become worthy of 30-45 minute car journeys...hence they are Destinations.

• Specialty foods stores have figured the exit experience out a long time ago, transforming the feeble grocery store register aisle into the thundering climax of a sensual journey through what often amounts to a food carnival. They have cashiers who love food, who understand exactly why shoppers are there and who revel in sharing their own experiences with 1 or 2 carefully selected items "discovered" in the shopper's basket. They build deep empathy and come off as long lost friends. Shoppers leave feeling affirmed and jazzed.

Even bulk discounters have done the exit experience fairly well. They've just done it a bit differently.

• Costco figured out their own unique exit experience by getting rid of anything that would distract shoppers or slow down the checkout process. Costco knows that, despite all the wandering and searching, they aren't selling things that require much explanation or learning to comprehend. And they know that no one sees them as experts in any of the product categories they sell. They understand that they are selling wholesale value (in commodities and specialty goods). So, they focus on getting shoppers out the door with insane efficiency. They remove register merchandising sets that waste space needed for enormous pallets and large carts, use lightning fast tag teams to grab large items and scan them with guns before shoppers know what's going on, and refuse to take personal checks (that slow down the line). They focus on one simple goal: moving large amounts of goods through the registers as fast as humanly possible with a cool efficiency that shoppers have come to appreciate in the chaotic world of warehouse retailing. Efficient coordination of warehouse chaos is what we want from Costco's exit experience, where lines are frighteningly long but move much quicker than they would in any grocery store with a similar load at the registers.

Unfortunately, though, Costco undercuts its efficient human interaction experience with an insulting one right after it, by perfunctorily asking to see shoppers' receipts before they can leave the store.


The Foundation of Good Exit Experiences is Understanding The Role of Human Interaction

Too often we encounter retail clients who view cashiers as a mere "labor cost" and not as a critical marketing engine. We find it difficult to understand how the one guaranteed site of human interaction in retail environments, checkout, isn't seen as the critical site in which to communicate what a retail brand stands for.


How can a retailer strategize their human interactions at the exit?

Know First Who You Want to Be as a Retailer: If you want to be seen as a low price leader, then lofty exit theater may simply be out of place. Focusing on efficiency, politeness may be most critical. If you want to be seen as a specialty player, then inspiring cashiers to display their knowledge of the category will help sustain credibility and authenticity as a valued editor of that category of goods.

Cashiers that Improvise Within a Role: We firmly believe that human interaction is critical to crafting an exit experience that builds positive buzz and, moreover, prevents corrosive gossip. It doesn't mean that cashiers need to have Ph.D.s or be world travelers with harrowing tales of game hunting in Africa. They just need to be playing a consistent role of some kind, a role that connects symbolically to the heart of their retail experience. But they need to be improvisational performers, not scripted robots repeating stock phrases issued "from corporate." One interesting role for general retailers to consider is that of the neighborly gift-giver (handing out apples or cookies to shoppers as if by their own personal discretion).

Cashiers Literate in Cultural Occasions for Shopping: For generalist retailers (e.g., drugstores and grocery stores) that attract shoppers on many different cultural occasions for shopping, the trick is to have cashiers adept at the art of conversation who can figure out how to connect with shoppers based on the cultural occasion they are enacting at that moment. This kind of flexibility allows the same cashier to demonstrate empathy with a broad set of shopping tasks that these kinds of stores attract.


Provide Automated Checkout Technology, Only if Convenience is Your Brand Foundation

Not all retail environments cater to cultural occasions for shopping that involve expensive or other high-stakes goods. Convenience stores are a good example. In these retail environments, where efficiency is key and basket size is often low, automated checkout, even with RFID tags, may actually resonate with the brand and how shoppers use it to complete their tasks. In a specialty environment, though, self checkout would send a problematic message inside stores that highlight more aspirational shopping tasks than getting more trash bags for the kitchen quick before the trash can overflows.

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