Mystery Shoppers

Featured Article November '09

 

 

An Enhanced Brand Experience?

 

In the IRC monthly newsletter we usually concentrate on small-mid scale retailers and restaurateurs. Indeed many of our previous articles have been tailored in such a way. Yet shopping centres full of big multi-nationals have caught my eye recently, with two new shopping centres opening just two weeks apart in Cardiff and Bath.

This then, got me thinking. Will the increased competition around the region, and indeed around the country as more shopping centres and retail destinations than ever compete for your money in an economy still officially in recession, mean a more enhanced brand experience?

As Christmas approaches we are already flooding in even greater numbers than usual to these shopping centres. Yet the multi-nationals that make up most of these centres are perhaps not the ideal place to gain that customer service that would make our purse strings stretch even further. The 2009 Customer Satisfaction Survey found that 56% of respondents would actually leave a shop before making a purchase if they received poor service and an independent email mystery shopper study of 372 shopping centres produced an average score of 41%.

Yet the recent postal strikes have arguably dented confidence in etailers of late. Does this not provide an ideal opportunity for these shopping centres to capitalize on improving their customer service standards, especially considering more figures suggest that eight out of ten shoppers get better service in store than on the internet? David Reynold’s of FOM also acknowledges that shoppers will pay a premium for ‘enhanced brand experience’.

So, as it seems some smaller-mid scale retailers are picking up on the ability of improved customer service to improve profits perhaps the more major brands in these shopping centre residents are missing a trick.

However, I think we need to cut some slack on at least some of these multi-nationals residing in the shopping centres we all love to frequent. In my personal and perhaps more importantly, professional experience, customer service can be of an increasingly high quality in these centres. Every month at IRC I see such brands increasingly improving, providing quality service to their customers, knowing exactly what they want and exactly how to give it to them.

Therefore, this extra competition, including increasing concentration of smaller brand’s focus on customer service coupled with faltering confidence in etail, could be the ideal opportunity for these shopping centres to enhance the experience of their brand further.

 

 

< Back