Retailers desperately trying to lure holiday shoppers
Retailers desperately trying to lure holiday shoppers
Store visits lower delivery costs, develop brand
By DANIELLE WIENER-BRONNER Posted: 6:47 AM, November 20,
2017 Updated: 8:20 AM, November 20, 2017
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) - With Black Friday just around the
corner, retailers are getting creative to lure customers into stores.
Walmart is throwing 20,000 parties in November and
December. Sears is putting its entire store on sale for the month of November.
Macy's has a Samsung pop-up store in its flagship New York City location and
virtual reality headsets for furniture shoppers in some stores. JCPenney is
giving customers coupons worth up to $500 when they shop in stores on
Thanksgiving Day.
The stores are desperate to get people to put down their
phones and drive to the mall.
Here's why.
The Amazon effect
When you can't beat 'em, join 'em: Retailers are taking
cues from Amazon this holiday season.
Amazon has been building up its retail presence by buying
Whole Foods and striking deals with traditional retailers, including Kohl's.
Getting customers into stores helps Amazon reduce delivery costs, notes Tim
Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.
"Delivery is incredibly expensive," he said.
"It is much more efficient if customers actually pick up the items
themselves at the store."
Better for the brand
It's much easier to inspire loyalty in customers who actually
visit stores, Calkins said.
"It's very tough to develop a brand online," he
said. "A physical store can be a very powerful branding tool."
If you have a good experience at a store, you'll probably
remember it fondly. If you get a good deal online, you probably won't feel the
same. That's why, Calkins said, retailers will try "very hard to make that
store experience appealing and interesting and exciting."
So Macy's will hold holiday-themed events at stores
throughout the country, Walmart will deploy its reindeer-hat-wearing Holiday
Helpers, and JCPenney is airing ads showing real JCPenney shoppers cooing over
holiday savings as they shop.
"You just have to feel like you're getting added
value from being in the store," said Russell Winer, a marketing professor
at NYU's Stern School of Business. Otherwise, you may as well hunt for deals on
Amazon.
Plus, if retailers get people into stores, they buy more
impulse purchases, Calkins noted. Even if customers are just coming to return
an item, they might pick up something they didn't plan to.
Older and wiser
Retailers are learning lessons of the past.
Department stores across the board have "done a much
better job of keeping their inventory levels low," said Bridget Weishaar,
a retail analyst for Morningstar. "It should allow them to have more
control over the promotions."
In years past, retailers way overestimated how much
success they'd have during the year, and they ended up putting excess products
on clearance sales during Black Friday, she said.
In addition to flashy promotions, retailers are luring
customers with more mundane treats, including free shipping and loyalty
programs.
Retailers are also taking advantage of shoppers'
procrastination by allowing them to buy online and pick purchases up in stores.
Shoppers who need something right away probably won't
have time to wait for an Amazon delivery.
And by picking items up themselves, they'll help
retailers save on those pesky delivery costs.
Copyright 2017 by CNN NewSource. All rights reserved.
Comments
Post a Comment