You assume I’m a
real customer. I browse like customers do. I talk to your sales staff. I fiddle
with the merchandise: be it top end TV’s, pairs of shoes or tennis racquets. I
ask about price. Then I leave without buying anything.
And you think “Well,
perhaps, he wasn’t a real shopper. Perhaps he was a window shopper.” But what
you didn’t know, what you’ll never know, was that I was a real shopper. But I
was also a show-roomer. I was dead serious about buying that 55-inch LCD TV. I
was just never going to buy it from you. All I wanted from your store’s TV was
to see the picture quality for myself. Make sure I liked the finishes. Play
with the dials. Smudge the screen. And then leave.
Why should I buy
it from you? When I can just hop onto a price comparison website, like
pricecheck.co.za, and enter the brand and the model and 20 online retailers will
pop up that will sell me that same TV, complete with the same manufacturer’s
warranty, and deliver it to my house for thousands of rands less than any major
bricks and mortar retailer.
They’re lucky
those online retailers. They don’t have to pay for that vast floor space in
that pricey part of town. And they don’t have to hire any of your sales
assistants. All they need is a website and a warehouse in the cheapest
industrial zone.
Though show-rooming
isn’t as common in this country as it is overseas, you can bet your rand it soon
will be.
So you’d do well
to have a strategy in place that combats it. You can’t compete on price.
There’s not enough margin. You have to add value instead. Make your shopping
experience the very best it can be. Ensure your store is as attractive as it
can be. Train your staff to be friendly and uber-knowledgeable. Go the extra
mile after the sale. Give customers more. Because it’s proven that people will
pay more for more.
Otherwise,
they’ll pull out their smart phone right in your shop, right there in front of
you, after wasting your time and punch their credit card details into another
shop.
Now that won’t be very nice at all.
Now that won’t be very nice at all.
Hilton Alexander Rose
Your Brand Agency | Director
