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11.15.2006

“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.

For more Hartman Group articles on SIMPLICITY, click here...

05.03.2006 "Transparency: What's Really Inside the Package...and the Company"

03.22.2006 "Simplicity: It ain't as easy as it sounds"



For more Hartman Group articles on RETAIL, click here...

10.27.2005 "Retail Experience on the Front Lines"

08.25.2005 "Costco vs. Wal-Mart: Getting Beyond Utility"

05.19.2005 "The Myth of One-Stop Shopping"

05.12.2005 "Building Community: the Lost Art of Hanging Out"

04.07.2005 "Trader Joe's: Cracking the Code of Lifestyle Brands"

05.06.2004 "Beware of Self-Checkout and RFIDs"

11.01.2002 "Mom & Pop: What's in a Memory?"

08.02.2002 "The ABCs of Experience"

07.26.2002 "The Retailer as Brand"

06.28.2002 "Experience, Expectation and the Shopping Trip"

04.26.2002 "Sometimes an Experience is Just an Experience"

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Simplicty At Retail

Simplicity is a big trend. We think of simplicity as more or less the desire (and corresponding behaviors) to simplify certain parts of busy, stressful lives, in order to make life a little better. People use the phrase "body, mind, and soul" to describe what "wellness" means to them, and in this sense, simplicity is part of the latter two. A sense of comforting simplicity certainly does enhance well-being for many.

In retail space, cultivating simplicity isn't, well, particularly simple. The trick, it seems, is to be both simple in some ways and yet still be quite engaging. Simple, after all, modulates quite readily into "boring" without proper attention.

Why simple?

Modern (or postmodern if you believe in such things) life is stressful. Work takes up increasing amounts of time. There's no more standard 8-hour day (which really seems to have been nothing more than a brief historical blip), and work comes home, invading what was once your life. Experiences are often intense but shallow, and lack satisfying resolution.

Imagine one afternoon...

You spend 24 minutes moving approximately 300 yards within the cruel confines of urban (or sometimes worse, suburban) gridlock. You're hungry, and expect that you'll experience blood sugar "crash" shortly. There's nothing in the fridge or pantry, but you don't feel like a restaurant. It would be better to grab something quick, go home, don more comfortable leg wear, and stretch out in front of the tube. But you've run out of kitty litter, and your favorite carry-out place doesn't sell kitty litter... and the list goes on. The 10,000 things, as a Taoist might tell you, are swinging out of balance. You feel overwhelmed. But, an hour later, you find yourself on a cardio machine, engaged only with the physical challenge. The pumping music streaming from your iPod helps hold your concentration on keeping your arms and legs moving. You can focus on something simple, and the complications of life melt away for the time being. You emerge, sweaty and stinky, but refreshed and renewed.

Cultivating simplicity in retail space

There are four major aspects of an effective experience of simplicity at retail:

• Having a critical mass of the right products that are uncomplicated, basic and largely self-explanatory.
• Ease of movement through the store, to make for a less stressful experience.
• Information integration - or clear signals - in the sense of intuitive product sets and processes (e.g., interaction at the deli counter), to where the customer's is able to effectively engage the store, and understand all their options, without it seeming like "too much."
• Aesthetics that stimulate and convey a sense of relaxed elegance, without the distraction of being "too busy."

Giving off the "simple" feel

Simplicity becomes real to consumers through various signs of it. Just as a combination of attributes in a cleaning product such as "biodegradable," "non-toxic," and "all natural" may be the signs of a good, kid-safe product, simplicity has it clues, its signs. Some are easily tangible, and some are more abstract, a "feel" of sorts. Below are some of those signs, organized by the categories of product, movement, information integration, and aesthetics. They are presented along with counter-examples, as often things - particularly abstract things - are more easily understood through what they are not.

ProductIn products, simplicity is transparency. It's being able to understand what it is and what it came from without thinking about it too much. Fresh fruits and vegetables, of course, are perfect examples of simple - they recognizable as exactly what they are, and are generally unproblematic (unless you're worried about things like methyl bromide). There's little struggle in figuring out what an apple is. Packaged goods are a little more complicated, but they, too, can be simple. Instead of the opaque, often obnoxiously-colored packaging often used by traditional CPGs, a product may utilize matte brown or transparent packaging, to suggest that the product is more natural and therefore more easily understandable for what it is. Big, chunky, visible and obvious ingredients (in whole grain bread for instance) are good. A short ingredient list, say, five ingredients or less, is very helpful. What is not so good for a "simple" feel? Products that smack of simulation in any way, such as "krab" meat, obviously artificially flavored goods, anything that is curiously shelf-stable (shouldn't that be refrigerated?"), or any products that fall into what consumers think of as "processed." This is not to say that none of the latter types of "non-simple" product should be in a store, just that there needs to be a noticeable representation of the former type.

Movement Simplicity is a clean, unimpeded path through store spaces, a leisurely stroll through wide unfettered spaces that flow easily from one to the next. It is unobstructed. It is hampered by narrow aisles or aisle-blocking displays full of pre-soaped dish pads or near-expiry tomato catsup that shoppers frequently run into with their carts. It is impeded by narrow aisles, and sharp turns through constricted spaces. When shoppers are crowded and uncomfortable, stress increases, and "simple" has left the building.

Information IntegrationSimplicity is not getting confusing (i.e., stressful) mixed signals from a) store layout and organization, or the b) people that work there and their procedures for handling customers. In the first sense, simplicity is clear and unambiguous organization, where items are found where they should be found, having been arranged in intuitive ways. It is not excessive signage that serves to distract more than inform. It is not confusing categorization of merchandise that prompts consumers to ask "what were they (retailer) thinking?" When you find yourself wading through pet food while trying to find toothpaste, the retailer needs to refocus their efforts. In the second sense, simplicity is aided by clear signals from people or through procedures. The meat counter should be easy. "Who is next?" should not be a stress-inducing guessing match. Simplicity at retail is finding things where they should be, and the pleasant experience of a store with all its minor operational details smoothed, at least as far as they are experienced by the customer.

AestheticsSimplicity is elegant, uncluttered spaces and shelves in a store. It's the right amount of variety, neatly arranged, without becoming too much. When shelves are stacked high and deep, with more SKUs that someone can easily choose between - especially after a long day - simplicity is ruined. Consumers are highly sensitive to the "overflowing shelf," that may not literally be overflowing, but certainly "runs over" in a visual sense, with walls of variously brightly-colored packages all asking for attention, but effectively serving as massive distraction or perhaps camouflage for what you're actually trying to find. Simplicity is not, to use consumer language, "junk everywhere" in a store, analogous to the stereotype of a hillbilly backyard, with discarded appliances and random household goods dotting a hill descending into a ravine. Simplicity at retail is tightly and tastefully managed aesthetics, with clean lines, preferably with softer lighting and more soothing materials (e.g., wood instead of tile flooring), and stimulating but not overwhelming color and variety.

Convenience stores serve as a convenient example illustrating what simplicity is most certainly not.

• Product: Products in convenience stores are of obscure origins. They are often quite opaque, with a long list of ingredients that is largely undecipherable though somehow indicative of a long, complex production process involving big hoses, conveyors, vats and perhaps, somewhere far down the production line, a hair-netted human. Trying to find something healthy to eat is a challenge.
• Movement: Aisles are narrow and unable to accommodate multiple shoppers. If it's a busy time of day, shoppers are getting in each others' way. The line at the register trails off disruptively.
• Information Integration: Product is stacked up on shelves in what seems to follow only a very loose organizational scheme. Ever try to find something specific in the center portion of a C-store? It is anything but "simple."
• Information Integration: There's nothing there to explain product to you. The employees are not particularly engaged with the products in the store, and despite any good intentions, aren't much help. A C-store may be faster than many channels, but it's certainly not the mix of relaxing and engaging that in some instances defines simplicity-done-well at retail.
• Aesthetics: C-stores tend to have bright lighting, stark flooring and metal shelving that are anything but relaxing in feel, but rather cold and utilitarian, in a way that says "get your stuff and hurry out."

Conclusions

Pulling off simplicity at retail takes quite a bit of work and attention - it's not particularly easy to do and in many ways, it flies in the face of traditional retail techniques that are focused more on moving product and back-end operations, but tradition must be overcome, quickly. The thousands of consumers we've spoken to about retail make it very clear. They want more attention paid to shopping from their point of view. The types of experiences framed as "simplicity," above, through product, movement, information, and aesthetics, show those consumers that someone is listening, that someone cares about their preferences.

As a final note, there's a very notable overlap between what's being forwarded as "simple" here and what we already see in specialty retail. Well, specialty retail - in being more consumer-focused than traditional retail - is leading the trend, so this is no surprise.

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