Despite signs that the recession is beginning to pass, research we conducted in the past week paints a worrying picture for the high street.  The run up to Christmas is the busiest time of the year for most stores; indeed many rely on this period to make any profit in the year. Results from our survey show, however, that the average spend on non-food goods this Christmas is set to decline by 15%.   As many as a third of all shoppers also believe that they will be spending less this Christmas than last year, with a little more than half believing that their total non-food spend will be unchanged. Unsurprisingly, the main reason given to explain this is that they are ‘cutting back’ in the face of the recession.

In further worrying news for the high street, shoppers project that almost 30% of their non-food shopping will be done online this Xmas, with as many as a quarter of respondents doing more so this year than in 2008.  We also found that around one in 10 shoppers say that they are ‘definitely holding back’ their purchases this year in anticipation of pre-Christmas sales.  This shows a rise compared to our previous research. A further third believe that they will hold back ’somewhat’ this year – as a group these shoppers make up more than twice the proportion of previous years.  Clothing remains the most popular category to hold back on in anticipation of sales, but toys and games are estimated to be well up on previous Xmas research, as are electrical items.

A recent survey we conducted showed that a massive 97% of diners interviewed use restaurant vouchers, thus allowing the offer to dictate both where and when customers eat out nowadays.

What is great is that restaurant operators are able to continue to grow sales by stimulating both frequency and spend with such an attractive discount offer AND as a result guests can still afford to go out for a meal in the current climate.  So commercially the concept of a discount works at many levels and even the hit on the food margin should be more than compensated by the savings in labour that will result as the volume of customers increase. 

Such is the approach from head office but one core issue is ensuring buy-in throughout the team.  Is the strategy really understood by all staff, especially those front-of-house who actually serve the guests?  For example, the waiter who is probably the least likely to spend his hard earned cash on eating out at a table service restaurant. He may wrongly perceive the discount-carrying guest as a bit of a ‘cheapskate’, who is unlikely to leave a tip and is not deserving of full-paying guest level service.

The new rules of not only surviving but thriving in the high volume world of the casual dining market are that diners want a really good deal ideally,  2 for 1 or 50% off, AND guess what, they want it with the same standards of food quality and service, if not better!  Gone are the days that it was too embarrassing to present a voucher as part payment of a bill, I would go as far to say that it is now not just acceptable that diners admit to using vouchers on a date – the new cool is getting a deal!

So will diners ever go back to paying full price once the recession is over?  I would say probably but who knows what will happen next?  At the end of the day being continually aware of what diners are thinking and expecting and adapting to maximise the opportunities of any prevailing market conditions is what has and always will be a fundamental in succeeding BUT never ever compromising on quality, standards and service.

At the end of the day the maxim that says ‘it’s about value rather than price’ is as true today as ever.

A couple of thoughts for today.  Firstly, can a shopping centre ever be more than the name of a large building?  And if not, what can be done about an existing name should there ever be a need to change? 

In the best traditions of yes, no and maybe I’ll go with ‘maybe’ in the first instance. Yes, there are shopping centre brands but they are quite a rare species.  Much of this is down to sheer scale but its not just about scale it’s also about personality, and daring to be different, but quite frankly again there are only a few centres that have the capacity to be different.  In many cases, however, I would suggest that a shopping centre brand is no more than a trading name, a badge on the front of a large building within which are housed a number of true brands in the form of shops and restaurants.  Whilst the desire to create a brand is not of itself wrong, the reality is that few centres will ever mature into ‘brands’.   Rather an arrogant statement BUT it is not about just an aspirational, clever or connected name.  It is about an experience which starts with a name and becomes synonymous with everything you do – the type of shops, the service style, the people you employ, the way you treat your suppliers and indeed your tenants. It is about every little thing and all the little but extremely clever, thoughtful touches that create a unique and memorable event.

The other issue that is related to this is the one of naming. One of the challenges for shopping centres is that once a particular centre is named it is quite difficult to re-educate shoppers into the use of the new name.  We’ve recently conducted research amongst users of a large urban shopping mall whose name was changed more than 5 years ago.  Even amongst users correct name recall was only around 80%, and that is amongst shoppers using the scheme on average once a week. 

Recent coverage was given to the decision by Wyevale Garden centres to revert to their ‘local’ brand names, on the basis that people have more of an affinity for a local centre.  I feel confident that the new Chief Exec conducted more research than just taking his Mother’s view before making such a big decision. Having driven past my local Wyevale sorry Brighton Garden Centre, the new signage did look very nice and I am sure a signage company (local I hope) is mighty relieved of the order in such hard times!  Whilst I can see the appeal of this “house of brands” approach in terms of playing the local card, which from all the research we have conducted we wholeheartedly support, people would far rather go local than a chain as long as you get better quality in terms of service and products. I wonder about the practicalities of marketing so many different locations, a single national brand would certainly give more bangs for the buck.  Or is the marketing being decentralised and are the Garden Centre Managers becoming marketing as well as Gardening experts?  

I am really excited about visiting my local Brighton Garden Centre to experience the new proposition and become more emotionally connected with all the changes they have implemented to make it feel independent/local beyond the pristine signage.  I will let you know what I find…

When I worked in health products it was certainly quite a conservative business.  Own label vitamins were still in their infancy and even in Holland & Barrett there were restrictions on the strength of different supplements.  The raciest thing we marketed under the Healthcrafts brand was a supplement called Z.E.S.T.  It was packaged in a black box with a grey top and was a vitamin based concoction including ginseng, hardly a forerunner of blue pills!

But I was some surprised, even amused by the news that Holland & Barrett are to diversify their product range into adult toys, or to be more specific ‘intimate massagers’.  The rationale in this case seems to be that this is as a result of the current recession.  In the words of a spokesperson for the retailer “People are spending more time at home during these difficult economic times.”

However the most positive way to respond to an economic downturn is to take risks, do something different when the tendency is to be more conservative, drop prices, stop spending and put your head in the sand. Why not try something new? It certainly gets people’s attention and changes perceptions of even your regular customers.  Even better, a shopper who never visits Holland and Barrett might be more tempted to see what else they have to offer and become a loyal customer. 

We know from our own research with shoppers that they are creatures of habit and visit the same shops day in day out without trying alternatives unless they have a significant huge reason to do so.

Could the actions of Holland & Barrett be enough to attract new customers and convert them to regulars buying their full range AND increase loyalty and frequency of visits of existing customers?

This is question we are often asked, “can you explain to me why you track the size of shopper parties amongst shopping centre visitors and also why you ask spend questions of the shopper party not the individual level?”

Well, we know on average that around 60% of shopper parties are solus shoppers, in other words for these people the individual spend and the party spend is one and the same, but let us consider the other shopper groups. Let us take the example of a shopper group. Mum, dad and the ‘little un’ who is only 4 years old. Let us consider £30 spent by them on their shopping trip. The £30 was spent by the mother, but the actual cash came from the father’s bank account via cash point machine and wallet. The £30 was actually spent on clothing and toys for their daughter.

So is this spend by the mother the father or the child? Is this actually £10 per head or is it more meaningful to keep this at the £30 per party level?

Party size remains a key statistic for shopping centre managers. A fall in average party size combined with constant footfall can indicate a rise in the number of shopper parties and hence it is vital to measure spend at the party size too.

The brief is the cornerstone of all research. It need not be a lengthy piece of work but there should be a written document to ensure that everyone is clear what they are expecting from the work. Whilst not comprehensive, the following ‘headlines’ should be considered, and like this post proves the brief really can be short and sweet!

1) Purpose of the research: Why is the research being considered in the first place? What hypothese do you have about your business? What questions are you hoping to get answered? Think here about who exactly will want to get access to the information provides and ultimate give consideration to just how the results are to be used in the organisation?

2) Objectives: Map out the specific topics that need to be covered, in short you need to be clear on just what it is you want to find out?

3) Target group profiles: Ideally as tightly defined as possible, with some thought to where these people might be found. One challenge we are sometimes faced with is that of wanting to find non-users. Non-users of a new or a niche brand may be very easy to find, and as such they may represent a potentially large segment to target. However we’re sometime asked by shopping centres to find non-users of their scheme. Bearing in mind that the centre itself may have existed for many years, and may potentially dominate the town centre the chance of finding non-users i.e. never users may be the equivalent of looking the needle in the haystack so perhaps you can focus on lapsed users – those that have been but have made a decision not to return – an incredible source of rich material on the areas your business may need to focus. Especially in these challenging times where sales are all important – every person in a focus group (no matter what they look or sound like) that has an opinion based on their experience has a valid and important insight into the performance of your brand and may be more helpful than you think.

4) Required feedback: How do you want or need the information, for instance this can be a ‘book of the film’ approach, more of a presentation format, an executive summary report, the full blow by blow transcript of the focus group or a video of the groups from start to end

5) Timing: Not forgetting of course to be clear just when feedback is actually needed!

So there it is. Not too hard after all.

It is not often that a phone call to a call centre puts a smile on my face but the last call to my bank did just that. With my home PC being particularly slow the other evening and wanting to make a payment in case I forget it, I picked up the phone to my bank. I have to admit I do have a soft spot for first direct and am more than happy to recommend them to any one who wants to listen. Anyway having gone through security I was quite taken a-back when the lady on the other end of the phone wished me ‘happy birthday’. Strangely enough I found this actually rather nice and even made a point of telling my wife. I must say at this point that it was indeed my birthday!

So what are the lessons here?

Well for one thing I felt that I was being treated as a real person, not just a person on the end of the phone. Secondly it reinforced all that ‘good feelings’ I get from a brand I trust, and thirdly I’m sharing that with you and that has to be good for first direct.

Cost of two words negligible, value to the brand immense. I suppose the question is what can we all be doing in our own respective businesses to create the holy grail of complete and utter brand loyalty?

An article caught my eye the other day about a major high street chain. The headline read ‘Carphone Warehouse decides now is the right time to be especially nice to customers’. Now this is an interesting one. On one level this has to be good news. A major player on the UK high street appearing to embrace a customer service strategy. A retailer having the courage to build a sales strategy around customer feedback. The way it works for those who didn’t see this story is that employees will be judged on whether customer would recommend the company to a friend, and this will be used as an indication of their ability to generate repeat business. Charles Dunstone was quoted as saying “We believe that over time it will create even greater trust in the brand in the eyes of customers.” To reiterate this has to be good news, not just for Carphone Warehouse, but also for their customers, however it does beg the question just exactly what Carphone Warehouse have been up to all these years? Should they have been being nice to their customers all along. After all isn’t that part of what customer service is all about? At the end of the day it is never to late to start and the wonderful thing about any customer facing business is the second that you implement change on the front line you immediately create an impact on the future of your business. Good luck Carphone Warehouse and if you need a hand – at Business Blueprints we run a unique programme called Magic. The three day programme allows participants to recognise their innate talents and potential through a process which enhances their self esteem and therefore desire and confidence to deliver great service. It is a fact if you feel bad about what you do it is almost impossible to give a memorable service experience

According to the now accepted story, the concept of the brand manager was invented in the early 1930s by a young Harvard Graduate by the name of Neil McElroy when at Procter and Gamble. The core of his approach was that clearly focused attention should be given to individual ‘brands’. There should be a nominated person who would take charge of the brand, and to go with this there would be a team of people devoted to thinking about all aspects of the marketing of that brand. This dedicated group should attend to one brand and one brand only. The concern of these managers would be the brand, which would be marketed as if it were a separate business. In this way the qualities of every brand would be distinguished from those of every other brand in the business.
An interesting history lesson certainly, but is there something here to take on board today? In today’s shopping centre world there appear to be a plethora of individuals taking on any number of roles – advertising and promotion, asset management, leasing, development, operations, to name a few as well, as the centre managers themselves. In fact we seem to have a veritable number of people in any number of committees and working groups all ‘working on the shopping centre’. If we assume that the shopping centre is a ‘brand’ and I am sure I can find enough people who will tell me that indeed it is, the logical question is where is the brand manager?

Is it for instance the asset manager, since he or she invariably has a role to play in the product mix? Possibly, but they often have no role in the day-to-day running of the centre itself and in these current times act very much in a business to business sales function rather than getting close to end consumers.

So is it the centre manager? Possibly, but they conversely don’t always have personal responsibility for the marketing of the centre, which is certainly a core function of the brand manager, and that role usually sits quite logically with the marketing manager.

So is it the marketing manager? Possibly, but they are often the junior member of the team and have to defer to either the centre manager or the asset manager on many matters.

We could also argue that the architects and the development team have a brand management role since they are often the ones who design the centre in the first place but who after a successful launch, somewhat like a midwife hands their newborn over to the centre management team.

Now I’m not saying that this is a problem but some of the most successful marketing organisations in the world have used the brand management model to this day, and whilst the brand manager is nearly 80 years old I still think there is life in there for many years to come. So the question for shopping centre owners is ‘could you learn something from the model and would it help your schemes to become real brands if indeed that is what you are really trying to build?’

It is always pleasing when a client actually quotes us, and in the Daily Telegraph recently we read just that. In an article about Liverpool, Iain MacGillivray, Centre Manager for St Johns Shopping Centre, quoted some average spend figures directly from surveys that we have undertaken in his centre. This helped to show that even in the midst of a recession and with the recent opening of Liverpool One, the new 42-acre shopping centre on their doorstep, average spend per shopper party had risen by around £2 per trip from £24.96 in Spring 08 to £27.05 in Spring 09. This is great for Iain and St Johns since it proves independently of anything he thinks what has actually been going on. It is critical at this time with only footfall as an indicator of performance which has a +/- accuracy of 10% and random feedback from retailers that you know how well you are performing – especially when the pressure from underperforming retailers is probably at its peak. There is nothing more effective and powerful than being able to confidently talk about your business and be able to quantify your customers behaviour and their opinions and thus help the retailers in your centre to understand their context and their potential.

No hunches, no gut feel, no finger in the air, just good solid facts direct from your own shoppers. On a personal level it is particularly pleasing to see just exactly what insights we can bring through our unique brand of shopping centre research. I can’t think of a better advert for us, thank you Iain.