Mystery Shoppers

Featured Article October '09

 

 

Yule Won’t be Sorry

 

 

We all know how competitive Christmas can be for retailers. However, in the shadow of recession consumers can perhaps be expected to rein in spending for a second consecutive year. Indeed, Retail Week recently reported that a third of consumers intend to spend less this Christmas than they did last. Consequently, with contrasting comments abounding regarding the speed at which the consumer market will pick up, the battle this Christmas could be fiercer than ever before.

Excellent customer service is perhaps more important than ever. Traditionally consumers loosen their purse strings for Christmas. However, even in the face of these contrasting claims of how quickly the consumer market will pick up, we can see no reason why many consumers won’t be spending on Christmas 2009.

What retailers cannot be so sure of is where consumers spend this money. Whilst having the right product at the right price are the basics, this does not necessarily mean profit and greater turnover. In this business, the margin for error is tiny.

Small-mid size retailers as well as independent retailers can take a battering from discount-happy large multiples at this time of year. It is more than likely many multiples will begin sales well before the traditional New Year period. Admittedly promotional feats and price cuts will assist in this battle in an attempt to encourage spending and counter any blow caused by an impending New Year VAT rise.

However, this is of little use to smaller retailers, who can’t win price wars. So we are advising a far more effective method to the lure holiday shoppers. It is our view that smaller retailers need to maintain and expand on current customer bases by keeping them away from big national chains that can offer these bargains. This is far simpler and much more possible if retailers use a major asset they have over these chains: the ability to develop one on one personal relationships that they have with their customers.

In short then, smaller retailers have the undoubted ability to deliver a far superior and a more intimate service, which will keep the consumer coming back far beyond the New Year VAT hike.

Marks & Spencer’s Stuart Rose predicts that this Christmas, although we may well experience a more settled global economic environment however fast the market recovers, ‘there will be a bit more competition’. Therefore, excellent customer service provided by small-mid scale retailers could be the difference between a merry Christmas and a happy New Year and being a Christmas turkey that might be lucky to see the cold winter ahead.

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