This supplement to Aftermarket Business and DealerNews magazines is chock full of good ideas, tactics, and techniques to achieve those goals. With its information about a multitude of things in-store from the simplest merchandising aids like sign frames to the most sophisticated planogramming systems for in-store assortment planning, this booklet, which can be pulled out for longtime reference, is a virtual treasure trove of information and resources which can guide you to greater success in-store!
Focus on customer needs
That said, the discipline and practice of in-store merchandising and marketing must focus on the customer’s needs so that his or her shopping experience will be a pleasant one to be repeated. I’m not talking comebacks here because a customer walked out of the store with the wrong or incomplete merchandise to do the job he or she came in to buy equipment, tools, and supplies for.
I’m talking about the happy customer who comes back another day to buy more, or perhaps just to see what’s new in-store.
Customers make 70% of their final buying decisions in-store, according to industry research.
What’s more: nearly two out of every three customers who have come to a store can be stimulated by good in-store merchandising to make a purchase they hadn’t intended before they came inside. Think of your own behavior when you’re let loose in a hardware, grocery, or other big-box category store!
So there’s excellent reason for paying attention to every little detail on your store floor, behind your parts and/or service counter, and at your checkout locations. You know that from your own personal shopping experience in other product categories.
Otherwise, if every detail doesn’t receive adequate attention, you’ve left money in your shoppers’ pockets.
Or, worse, you may have left an unmet customer need which will be fulfilled elsewhere ... at another retail location which could become that particular customer’s automotive specialty store preferred destination -- because that store does a better job in-store than yours.
“Friendly” Stores Do Better
Whether your in-store stars are truck interior accessories or the latest in helmets, the general tactics for an effective in-store merchandising program are the same.
The tactics include:
- A friendly store atmosphere (there’s more to this than greeting every customer who walks in)
- Good lighting which makes shopping and merchandise choice easy
- Well thought-out and orchestrated traffic patterns to help customers walk through the store’s entire merchandise selection and find things they need or want
- Merchandise properly placed through the use of planograms, with visible easy-to-read pricing. Good planograms increase profit because they present product to customers in logical fashion. They produce higher turnover, higher profit per stock-keeping-unit (SKU), and good use of in-store shelf and fixture availability. POS data-driven planograms help prevent wasting money on stocking unnecessary inventory levels.
- Appropriate in-store star products which are easily spotted, easily bought
- Inventive use of every bit of space the store contains, including ceilings, empty walls, space above wall fixtures and windows
- The best checkout area in town
- “Talking” the same in-store as you “talk” out-of-store in your ads, commercials, Web sites, and outside or event promotions
What’s a friendly store atmosphere? Every store has a personality. Some are boring, shy wallflowers; others are not well-groomed -- offputting because of their thoughtlessness in layout or their obvious neglect of tidiness and cleanliness.
Then there are those stores which are the outgoing, welcoming type. They are warm, open, well-thought-out to make customers feel welcome and at home. They are a pleasure to shop in.
Their merchandise is well placed for customer ease, their store associates are well trained, their special offerings pertinent to the customers’ needs, whether seasonal or special interest.
A friendly store is well lit, so middle-aged customers can read small print on labels and see prices easily and young customers feel at home in a bright atmosphere.
A friendly store is well laid out so that customers can easily find what they came in to look for, but can also see other attractive products which they will consider buying.
Customers always ask, when they enter a store, “What’s here? Where is it?” A well thought-out retail store has the easy answers to those questions.
On the other hand, a store can be laid out so that customers MUST go, unwillingly and inconveniently, hither and yon, to get to their intended department destination.
Attractive “experiences” which distract customers and provide them with a pleasant surprise are one thing: making shoppers find their way through a complex floor maze to get to the parts counter is another, undesirable tactic.
A friendly store has star power. It lifts some product offerings heads above the other merchandise --through special merchandising tactics which draw customers to the stars’ display. These stars may be products which customers are seeking (Beanie Babies, several years ago!), or may be products which the customers don’t know they are seeking but which satisfy an unconscious need or want.
A friendly store doesn’t waste space. It uses floor, gondolas, wall space, even ceiling and above-display space to inform and educate shoppers about merchandise and specials.
But a friendly store doesn’t abuse its space with clutter and junk. Its planners have drawn the line at “enough” merchandising, specials, promotional areas. This considered drawn-line results in a shopping experience which doesn’t tax the customer’s mind, but which provides the opportunity for some pleasant adventures, or side trips, into areas not on the customer’s shopping list.
Last of all, the friendly store doesn’t make promises it can’t keep. Its external messages, in direct mail, print advertising, commercials, Web site information, and at special events, gibe with what’s in store.
Saying A Friendly Goodbye
Your last impression to the shopper is at the checkout counter.
This is your chance, while your customer is in a paying mode, to offer additional value-added suggestions, whether it be a functional sell-up (“Do you need a filter to go with that oil?”), a special (“Did you know that you can save money today by buying antifreeze at this special price?”), or some well-placed impulse items near the cash register.
Your point of sale location should be spanking clean, uncluttered so that your customer can put his or her buys down easily, and furnished with one or two more ideas about things to buy before she or he departs the store.
Some do it better than others, as that James Bond movie theme song says. With this guide and its resources, your store can be one step closer to being the store which “does it better than all the others.”
Stephen J. Alexander, president of Automotive In-Store Marketing, Inc., is a member of Aftermarket Business’s Retail Advisory Board and a contributor to DealerNews. He can be reached at his Sanibel Island, Florida headquarters, phone 239-395-9203, or e-mail salexander@autoinstore.com. His Web site is www.autoinstore.com.
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