Empiricism in Aisle 11

Apple Store lavishes service on disgruntled iPhone 4 user

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:34:00 +0000

The customer enters a teeming Apple store one week after the release of the new iPhone with a head of steam built up over a seven-day period of unalloyed product frustration.

“I want my money back,” the customer says to the first associate by the door. “This phone is a complete failure on every level. And don’t even try to tell me I’m holding it wrong.”

The associate in harm’s way, a maybe-at-most-23-year-old woman, changes her bright smile into a look of sorrowful concern.

“That’s terrible you’ve been having trouble. I’m so sorry. Let me help you right here if you want to return it and get your money back,” she says. “One thing, though--you don’t have to, but would you mind telling me what’s been going on with it? I’d really like to know.”

This initial rejoinder is a pitch-perfect response. She apologizes before doing or saying anything else. She is immediately acknowledging there is not going to be an argument or hoops for the customer to jump through to get satisfaction—in this case wanting his money back. She then does a quick verbal pirouette to express genuine interest in what the problems have been.

After the customer finishes his description of dropped calls, email issues, lost data, and more, the associate again apologizes, sympathizing with the customer’s plight. “I know that must be really tough when you’re on a business call or sitting waiting for an important email,” she offers. “If you have a minute, there’s something I can do that might help quite a bit by just resetting the connection—you won’t lose any data—want me to give it a try?”

The customer, now not wanting to be an impediment to a sincere attempt at correction, agrees to the idea, and at least has temporarily abandoned the idea of getting his money back. The associate returns a few minutes later with a manager—he’s maybe all of 24 years old.

“I’m Andy,” he says. “I hear you’ve been having trouble. We’re going to do a couple of things.”

He tells the customer they’ve done the reset, explains how some of those people who bought the phone in its first few days have experienced connection issues (“it’s about one in 20”), that he wants to give the customer a complimentary “bumper” to surround the outer antenna (“should you want to give the phone another chance”) and that he’d like to do a phone call and email test. The customer obliges and the phone performs perfectly in both sets of tests.

As the customer departs, happy, Andy tells him he still has 21 more days to return the phone, but to watch it carefully over the next week to see if it’s performing as it should.

There are plenty of amazing lessons here. It’s possible the customer happened upon the two greatest sales people in the known universe, but it’s unlikely. It’s also unlikely these two 20-somethings had the years of experience to know exactly how to handle this difficult situation. More believable is an unequalled set of training protocols and logical steps in a selling model that have made Apple stores the envy of retail.

Getting these glimpses into customer and associate interactions is critical to success on the sales floor. One of the reasons we are brought in is to give our client partners the full measure of activities and actions within the environment, and to help them understand enterprise-wide opportunities and persistently occurring barriers to the sale. Video and audio enabled behavioral analytics is our prime methodology for doing so, and it’s often a fascinating way to see how loyalty can be built or ruined on one turn of a phrase.

Cruel, unusual and effective?

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:10:00 +0000

In our assessments within retail stores, we often see the actions of shoplifters through our video cameras. Though shoplifting is not typically on the list of behaviors we look to capture and code (we only half-kiddingly say our cameras are placed for the business purposes of good - like pinpointing barriers to the sale and identifying new opportunities to increase performance and the customer experience), it’s an activity that is impossible to ignore. These shrinkage incidents have become so prevalent, in fact, that we’ve developed an expertise in the observable assessment of how dishonest people behave when they’re in a retail environment—often in interesting ways that suggest an earnest attempt to look honest. This is, of course, its own tell.

The old rule of thumb that potential shoplifters get spooked when approached by an associate (unwilling to look them in the eye, for example) stays true — but not always. We’ve seen a new breed of brazen behavior that almost reads as sociopathic: chatty, superficially charming customers who show no fear in front of associates, almost “selling” themselves as a way to throw off the scent or any hint of wrongdoing, like they’re just that jovial long-lost friend coming across the lease line.

But if certain stores have their way, even these wily coyotes might take up another hobby. The New York Times reported yesterday that a number of stores in the region which cater to Chinese immigrants are now adopting shoplifting procedures borrowed from mainland China retailers. Essentially, if you’re caught, the stores seize your identity cards, and you pay the retailer a steep fine (up to hundreds of dollars) in return for getting your cards back and to insure your picture does not get displayed on a prominent wall of shame for all to see. While there are a host of civil liberty issues at play with these tactics (it would be hard to imagine chain stores playing this style of hard ball), it will be interesting to see if retailers do adopt more aggressive approaches to the problem.

Science of the Churrascaria

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:47:00 +0000

If you’ve visited Chicago recently, you may have bumped into the burgeoning churrascaria movement—where at last count four of these Brazilian-style steakhouses manage to thrive within a five-block radius. They’ve splashed themselves over cities and suburbs alike, beckoning diners with an all-you-can-eat concept far removed from the buffet chains and those sometimes frightening strip mall Chinese joints. If you haven’t been, the different churrascarias are remarkably similar. $50 gets you dinner, which includes an over-the-top salad bar (think prosciutto, hearts of palm, smoked salmon, and artichoke hearts—not cottage cheese with pineapple chunks) and at least a dozen varieties of steak, chicken, lamb and pork—all brought to your table on giant skewers and sliced to order by servers dressed in gaucho garb. Cheese bread is brought to your table first (irresistible, but the centerpiece of a fill-you-up-early-fast-and-often consumption strategy on the part of the house). Dinners are accompanied by equally rich whipped potatoes and plantains. Patrons can select the salad-bar only, generally about half the price. But nobody goes for this option (it’s less than two percent of all diners, which may seem low, but since the show is all about the meat, not a complete surprise).

For what are higher-end restaurants, it’s an amazing formula to behold, and works on a broad volume of business. Where you might think the table of 10 college-aged guys would eat the place out of house and home since there is no end to the high-cost food offerings as long as you continue to want more, such a table doesn’t cause a ripple. In fact, restaurant managers and chain executives of these places never look at the behavior of individual tables—they’re looking at the 2,000-odd covers per week per store. They want to make sure 32.5% of guests order dessert (who are these people?), that the average tab per head stays constant at $67.50, and that there’s no variability across days and weeks when it comes to per capita meat consumption (2.25 pounds per). In fact, they’re quite happy to seat “we’re-going-to- stuff-our-faces-and-get-our-money’s-worth” revelers since, in the end, they’re outweighed by lots of customers (especially women) with dramatically less robust appetites—especially after a few helpings of cheese bread and mashed potatoes.

Volumetric understanding of real customer behaviors in situ is the secret to any business. Much can come from the hands-on experience of retailers, store operators and restaurant execs who discern important patterns and lessons over time. One way we’ve been able to help them drive business to greater success is to be their eyes and ears across multiple locations, days, day parts, and weeks, with video and audio enabled behavioral analytics—giving them deeper looks and insights into the bricks-and-mortar realities of their stores. There’s no doubt a reality-driven behavioral segmentation study of customers on premise is a meaty treat—no matter what business you’re in.

When the execs come to visit the store: what’s real and what’s typical?

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Sat, 15 May 2010 12:38:00 +0000

Parents’ Day at summer camp is usually a kid’s first lesson in the art of spin, optics, presentation, veneer and varnish. This is the day the food is better, cabins are swept, and everyone’s smiling. As soon as the last car leaves, the gussied-up, rustic Eden reverts to its usual repose as juvenile hellhole.

It’s still shocking how many times we’re in the field on store visits with retail executives and hear how great this particular location is—only to see later the abyss that it truly is when we’re reviewing video that’s been captured with “mom and dad” not around. When a regional manager happens to be in the store, customers are magically lavished with help and praise and good cheer. There’s a bustle about the store, with purposeful professionals doing the Lord’s work of selling and stocking and just being busy and fussy. Products are laser-lined on every shelf. It’s all quite—what’s the word?—lovely.

Until it isn’t. Which is usually the next day.

We see lots of non-sales winning behaviors as soon as stores return to “normal.” The customer greetings are weaker, contact interactions on the floor are less effective, and products look sloppier. Rote recitation often takes hold, where associates go through the motions.

It’s no wonder when we’ve asked retail executives how much time they believe their associates are in direct contact with customers, giving assistance, the answer is sometimes in excess of 40 percent—a belief the staff is spending almost half its time attending to the needs of the shopper. This is their experience, and may well be what’s occurring when they’re in the field observing. But when we show them the day-in and day-out reality—sometimes at 12% or less—it’s an eye-opening experience.

Kind of like sneaking a peek at camp the day after Parents’ Day.

Engaging with the customer

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:37:00 +0000

“Can I help you?”

“Doing okay over here?”

“How’s everything?”

We’ve all been on the shopper’s end of these low-value contact questions in stores, restaurants and whatever chain retailer trains its associates with the blunt instrument of “engage the customer.” It’s gotten to the point where such expressions are so empty, they’ve become little more than verbal tics on the part of employees—rote recitations they almost cease to be conscious of even asking.

And there’s a perfect synchronicity to this, since customers are barely conscious of these low-impact greetings, either. In our work with retailers, we hear this literally thousands of times. As an example, associates are typically trained and expected by management to greet the entering customer. Too often, this requirement gets translated by employees into saying “hi.” From a courtesy standpoint, this may sound better than no acknowledgment at all, though we’ve yet to see a higher buy or conversion rate when comparing customers who get a “hi” to those who enter with the absence of any greeting. Not surprisingly, most customers don’t even acknowledge this greeting and walk right beyond the associate saying it—not even saying “hi” back. That’s a big bowl of nothing for a key component of a customer engagement initiative.

“Doing okay over here?” is another low-percentage expression, a perfect invitation for the customer to say yes, fine, just looking.

Once we diagnose how interactions like this are working or aren’t with video and audio behavioral analytics, we provide retailers with the approach to make contacts count more—not in a theoretical, one-off way, but with a selling model that can be scaled.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on how retailers are pushing enhanced sales tactics to drive top-line growth. The realization to bring about more sophisticated training is sinking in, which comes from the realization these chains have a way to go before they can gain more traction on the sales floor.

Home Depot is doing something simple and smart by training cashiers (sometimes the only store personnel who shoppers interact with) to ask customers if they found everything they were looking for—and if not, to call the aisle to determine whether the item is in stock (the secret to success will be if the cashier has better luck finding someone than the customer perhaps did—but the idea of the cashier backstopping the sales process is a good one). While “did you find everything you need?” runs the risk of becoming a new verbal tic at Home Depot, it certainly has a fighting chance of success because the inquiry is offered at an important moment of truth, and requires a specific action step for the cashier to take should the customer be wanting.

The pleasant shopper

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 00:55:00 +0000

A casually dressed but stylish woman enters the store with her pre-teen daughter and stops to say hello to the associate who’s stationed near the entrance. She’s extremely friendly, and has a large shopping bag of items from a neighboring store. She tries on many things during her hour-long visit. This woman is quite a shopper! She leaves her daughter in the store to run out to the car because she had forgotten her checkbook. During her visit, she approaches a salesperson at the cash wrap several times with questions about various items, and asks about returns.

When we looked at the videotape, it was clear she had stolen five items during this visit, totaling about $350.

From the moment we saw her cross the lease line, she sold herself repeatedly and extremely convincingly to the store associates. Unlike most customers who are greeted at the entrance but keep walking to some real or imagined destination point within the store, she actually stopped to return the salutation and exchange pleasantries. She carried her shopping bag proudly – almost flaunting it to make sure it was in full view of everyone, as if to say you have nothing to worry about with me or my bag or my previous purchases or even my credentials as a spender. She sold herself by speaking with three different associates -– for her, there was no hiding or skulking around in the aisles like some common shoplifter.

With more than a dozen cameras positioned throughout the shopping environment, we caught her every move. We watched as she waited to see where the associates were positioned, biding her time to make sure two of them were occupied with other customers. We watched her use the empty boxes in her shopping bag to conceal each item she stole. We watched her leave the store with the now-full shopping bag to put the loot in her car before returning.

Who would suspect? She was nice, she looked associates in the eye, and even entrusted them with her daughter for the three minutes when she ran to her car. And what was suspicious about leaving with the same shopping bag she came in with? She was, after all, going to return to finish her shopping and get her daughter.

While our studies are typically designed to increase conversion, items per basket, or sales per square foot—we call them the "forces of good" -— we often encounter shopper behaviors like this one and work closely with our clients to diagnose the problems and prescribe solutions.

What do you think are the most immediate lessons to be learned from this woman’s caper?

Mmm, mmm, soup shopping

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:58:00 +0000

Last week, The Wall Street Journal ran “The Emotional Quotient of Soup Shopping,” an interesting behind-the-scenes piece on Campbell’s redesigned soup labels. Campbell, in an effort to connect with customers (and boost sales), uses new neuromarketing techniques to measure physiological reactions to their marketing. A few years back, the company uncovered the idea that customers’ reported reactions to ads bore little relationship to actual soup sales. Campbell is hoping that biometric tools measuring factors like perspiration and heart rate, combined with deep interviews, will more accurately measure the effectiveness of the company’s package design and advertising. Based on this new research, Campbell will hold onto the iconic red and white label for its three biggest sellers, but other varieties will feature “larger, more vibrant pictures of soup.”

We’re a little skeptical about the benefits of neuromarketing research alone, since it measures emotional intensity without content or context. However, Campbell’s is onto something here. By combining biometric data with carefully crafted deep in-store interviews and store observations, they have been able to zero in on how customers really perceive their cans. As Campbell and other companies are increasingly realizing, there is no substitute for in-store research and moment of truth observation, questioning, and analysis. After all, when asked why they eat more soup or not, people tend to “say they don't think of it,” according to Doug Conant, Campbell's chief executive.

Other methods, like focus groups and surveys can also provide valuable information, but they often need to rely on the shoppers’ unreliable short-term memory or their projection of future behavior and intent. When companies rely too heavily on focus groups and survey data and neglect to closely observe how shoppers interact with their designs in the store, like Tropicana did with their short-lived redesign, they run the risk of damaging their brand and alienating consumers—or simply half solving the same question year in and year out.

What do you think--will customers respond to Campbell's well researched redesign? Or will they clamor for a return to the familiar red and white label?

Want to do something fun? Sorry, not today.

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:39:00 +0000

We’re a few snowy days from February 27, otherwise known as Open That Bottle Night. The night was invented by the two Wall Street Journal wine columnists -- in their words, “You know that bottle of wine you've been keeping around for that special occasion that never arrives or because the wine is always going to be better tomorrow? Open that bottle!”

Curious, because you might think we wouldn’t need to be prodded into taking part in something as pleasurable as a bottle of wine.

A recent New York Times article by John Tierney explored the surprisingly widespread human tendency to procrastinate pleasure. We wait to use gift cards, wait to redeem frequent flier miles, and endlessly put off visiting our own hometown tourist attractions. According to a study conducted by Suzanne B. Shu and Ayelet Gneezy, professors of marketing at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, San Diego, people who have moved to Chicago, Dallas and London visit fewer local landmarks during their first year than the typical tourist visits during a short stay. The only time Chicagoans run around visiting local attractions is just before they are about to move out of town. The same professors gave people gift certificates for movie tickets and French pastries. Some of the certificates expired in a few weeks, while others didn’t expire for two months. The people who got the longer term certificates were more confident they would redeem the gifts, but less likely to actually pull the trigger. It turns out we overestimate how much free time we’ll have in the future. And we become overly focused on imagining idealized scenarios, in which we paint pictures of achieving maximum value and pleasure from miles, gift cards, or bottles of red—without acting to turn these “magical thinking” thought processes into realities.

The Times suggests consumers learn from this research and quickly cash in gift certificates and miles, and that we stop procrastinating pleasure. There might be a few lessons for retailers as well – while customers (and legislators) say they want gift cards that don’t expire, deadlines are actually in the customer’s best interest. Also, this counter-intuitive behavior among gift card holders suggests there might be new, interesting information to be discovered in how shoppers use gift cards. Interesting insights could be well be found in a study using video analytics and shop alongs among gift card users vs. other shoppers to determine particular shopping styles, store penetration, freneticism, overbuying, and more.

Retail guilt trip

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:04:00 +0000

If you’ve gone to Safeway recently, or Brooks Brothers, or CVS, or any number of other retailers, you’ve been hit up for donations at the cash register. In an article on this retail arm-twisting, The Wall Street Journal’s Eric Felten wisely observes, if he does not donate, “there's the reflexive twinge of shame. Are these the emotions businesses want to produce in their customers?” According to Felten, he talked to a number of retailers and was “assured time and again that customers like being solicited for donations and that no one ever complains about being asked to give.”

Really?

Isn’t there a chance that making customers uncomfortable could send customers running to shop online instead? Retailers are taking a pretty big gamble by not rigorously studying the effects of their charitable efforts on shoppers at the moment of truth.

There’s no doubt these efforts successfully raise funds, and hence provide a tangible benefit. They’re certainly well intentioned. Still, isn’t it a little creepy and invasive? Stores are essentially saying we just saved you some money (maybe as a way of getting you in here to shop in the first place), and now we’re going to ask you to give (and give it) back. Also, as customer, am I going to be a little suspicious of the money actually getting to the right place? Do I know if the retailer is going to deduct some kind of administrative fee for handling the transaction? Or perhaps pocket a healthy tax deduction for their customers’ contributions?

If stores want to encourage customers to give back, why not offer customers the opportunity to contribute without the hard sell? What would happen if a store said we saved you some money today—here’s an envelope (or a number to text), and we’d like to encourage you to send it to St. Jude’s Hospital—or wherever?

Spend this holiday season with Hilbert’s Paradox of the Grand Hotel (and other tales of the precious customer)

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:17:00 +0000

19th century German mathematician David Hilbert described the concept of infinity this way: first, you must picture a hotel so vast, so overwhelming that it has an infinite number of guest rooms. This hotel is not only large, it is also full, with every guest room occupied. One evening, a sojourner enters the lobby, seeking a room in this hotel with absolutely no vacancy. Despite being sold out, the traveler gets a room, since the hotel is not limited by any finite number of accommodations. So the guest in room 1 is moved to room 2, the guest in room 2 is moved to room 3, and so forth, ad infinitum. The newcomer is put into room 1. The hotel can repeat this procedure any number of times whenever new clients happen to show up.

Would that this were so for retailers—a steady line of customers snaking out the door, waiting to come in, every section packed, every aisle occupied, a hub of activity 24/7/365, one shopper after another after another with no end in sight.

While this isn’t real, we’ve often observed sales associates who believe that customers are an endless resource. Like it’s no big deal if they don’t sell customer 1, because a customer 2 will be right behind. There’s always one more and one more after that. Take this incident at Best Buy, in which an employee told a customer, without checking, that a hard drive was out of stock. When he ordered the same item online for in-store pickup, less than an hour later, it was miraculously available. Or this customer service fiasco at Men’s Wearhouse, in which a saleswoman insulted a customer with lines like “I don’t know why you’re here,” and “I can’t help you now.” Even in the best of times, it’s foolish not to treat every single customer as if they are critical to the success of the store—because they are. And to do otherwise in this economy, it’s deadly. If enough customers are lured away, whether it’s by lower prices or better service, stores that treat customers as expendable will find themselves on the road to oblivion.

The Crowds of Black Friday

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:35:00 +0000

2009 has been another rough year for the retail sector, as it continues to be battered by rising unemployment, pessimistic consumers, and newly thrifty shoppers. As Black Friday, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season approaches, retail observers are placing their bets. Will customers continue to sit on their wallets, refusing to budge until they see massive discounts? Or will they capitulate in a Christmas shopping frenzy as retailers try to hold the line on prices?

One thing is certain: come Friday, stores will be mobbed as about a quarter of American households shake off their tryptophan-induced stupor and hit the stores (latest one-upsmanship schtick: Old Navy stores will open at 3 a.m., maybe because you can never know the extent of the pent-up demand for cargo pants at that hour of the morning). Last year, Black Friday was marred by a tragic death when a Wal-Mart worker was trampled by an out-of-control bargain-seeking horde. This year, writes the New York Times, stores are taking steps to better manage crowds. The Times reports that Wal-Mart is taking a page from experts who manage throngs at major events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics to prevent crowding. There’s a poetic irony in the fact that as consumers are purportedly pinching pennies, they literally can’t storm the stores fast enough.

Time reports that this year, retailers and shoppers are engaged in a game of chicken as shoppers wait for discounts and retailers try to dig in their heels. But do you think this game of double-dare is the new normal? From now on, might the contest go something like this:

Phase 1: people sit at home on their hands, stubbornly refusing to consume.
Phase 2: retailers put deals and discounts lower and lower and until they finally hit the "magic” percentage off number;
Phase 3: floodgates open; aisles full; cash registers sing; everybody happy; life is good.
Phase 4: retailers quickly repeal the dramatic offers because—oops—they’re too costly.
Phase 5: consumers go back to being unhappy—give retailers the cold shoulder and sit at home, waiting them out until the next time.
Phase 6: see Phase 2.

Agape in the aisle

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:45:00 +0000

It all became clear in an interview a few years back with a man named Sherwood Schwartz, the television producer who created the dubious passel of 1970s-era comedy shows like Gilligan’s Island, Beverly Hillbillies, and the Brady Bunch, among others. The interviewer asked him to explain why every one of his shows always began with an expository theme song---a song that would explain in vivid detail the premise of the show (“So this is the tale of the castaways….” and “Come and listen to my story ‘bout a man named Jed….” and “Here’s the story of a lovely lady…”). Schwartz said he believed this was the essential week-in-and-week-out ingredient to the success of his television comedies because, as he put it, “the puzzled cannot laugh.”

Cut to the aisle of your local supermarket. We use video systems to capture and code shopper styles and behaviors in retail stores. This lets us see thousands of repeated behaviors, many of them eye-opening to ourselves and our clients. But whether the study is about diapers, dog food or analgesics, we too often see a hidden segment of shoppers perhaps best described as “the puzzled.” These shoppers stand perfectly still. They stare at the shelf and—I’m not kidding—their mouths are usually open. When it seems like divine Providence will not explode off the shelf to help them find the brand answer they seem to be looking for, the following sequence usually takes place: they reach for a product, they heft it, they turn it over in their hands, they return it to the shelf, they reach for a competitive brand and go through the same “heft, read and regard” routine before putting it back. Then they walk away, shaking their heads ever so slightly (this is one of the reasons we also do intercepts—a way to learn what that whole last bit was all about.)

Obviously marketers need to make sure they’re not losing sales because something about the product or the package or the brand is causing head-scratching in the aisle. But it’s never a bad idea to apply the Schwartz Admonition to the point of sale because of a truth we’ve documented too many times: the puzzled cannot buy.

Fiddling while commuters rush by

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:13:00 +0000

A young musician is in a Washington DC metro station. He wears jeans, a long sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. It’s Friday morning. A violin is in his hand. The case is open at his feet. A few coins and dollar bills are inside as seed money to stimulate contribution. At 7:50 am, he begins playing. He continues for 43 minutes. During this time, he plays through six classical pieces, including the stunning Bach Partita in D minor. His music resonates through the entire metro arcade.

About a thousand people pass by. Almost all ignore him. Twenty three of them glance momentarily and wait. Seven people stop to listen for more than a minute. He collects a total of $32.17.

The violinist is Joshua Bell. He is one of the great musical virtuosos of our time. He sells out concert halls. He plays to capacity audiences all over the world . Now, here he is, in the Washington Metro, playing an 18th century Stradivarius violin, and just seven people stop to listen for more than a minute. (Interestingly, according to Washington Post reporter Gene Weingarten, who concocted this Pulitzer-prize winning experiment, every time children walked by the performance, they tried to stop and listen. And each time, a parent swooped them up and kept walking.)

What does this experiment show us? It depends on your perspective. Are we too busy to appreciate beauty? Was Bell just a bad busker?

One lesson to draw from the story is how much we can learn from well-designed, rigorous real-world experiments. When the reporter first proposed the experiment, he anticipated that the music would draw a throng, perhaps even create problems with crowd control. Instead, he learned that only a very few classical music fans (and children) would stop to enjoy the music. No focus group or interview would have provided the same insight. More importantly, the experiment demonstrates the central role of context in generating a reaction, whether it’s a crowd of commuters or shoppers. Humans have a hard time assessing product quality on its own merits; rather, the environment powerfully shapes decision making. Imagine if someone were to set out a cheap folding table in downtown Chicago displaying piles beautiful couture shirts with a hand-lettered sign selling them for $10. Most likely, people would ignore the display on their way to Macy’s or Nordstrom, because there would be no cues, such as designer labels, admiring sales associates, or piped in classical music, alerting them that these shirts were in fact valuable. For stores, carefully designed research could help figure out what in the environment causes shoppers to line up and what makes them walk on by.

Back to the hedonic treadmill?

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:03:00 +0000

What happens now that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has officially declared the recession “ likely over?” Consumer spending, still sluggish, is finally on the rise. Nobody is yet breaking out the champagne – and as bloggers and cartoonists among others have warned, the economy won’t truly rebound until jobs return, and right now it’s still not a pretty picture. But is a new frugality here to stay, or will we soon return to some of our old ways? It may depend on your rung on the ladder. While working stiffs grabbed private label bread and took staycations, the rich curtailed their purchases of fine art and sold off the private jets. Sure, the recession slammed the fortunes of rich and poor alike – Bill Gates is out $3 billion -- but the families who had $20 million before the recession and then found their assets depleted to $14 million were never in jeopardy of going hungry. To some extent, the wealthy went on a time-limited spending diet because of a jarring hit to their balance sheet, and because for at least a while it appeared unseemly to flaunt lavish purchases when so many people had fallen on hard times.

But here’s a truism which bears repeating: the rich can only hold out for so long. They really do need, or at least, really, really want what others may call non-essentials , like couture, art, and second homes. Once the stigma lessens, as Michael Silverstein of the Boston Consulting Group says, “…the rich will realize they're rich again and start to spend.” According to the 2009 Mendelsohn Affluent Survey, nearly a third of wealthy households purchased fine jewelry and a fifth purchased artwork or collectibles in the past year. As the recession slowly begins to thaw, the rich are very likely to go back to their old acquisitive ways, driving the recovery further and faster.

Luxury brands are salivating at the prospect they can woo affluent shoppers as they trickle back into the store. MarketWatch reports that at the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship store, the personal-shopping service area is ready and waiting and lavishly appointed with stunning views. In addition, the store is limiting stock and focusing on exclusive brands and lines. High-end brands are also focusing on offering top-notch quality and design; for example, Restoration Hardware has hiked prices 20 to 30 percent to distinguish its offerings from its lower-quality competitors. Exclusivity and great design have also kept Louis Vuitton and Hermes growing impressively, even during the recession. Some luxury retailers are toning down the flash a little, such as Fabergé, which has launched an online venture to allow shoppers to participate in “inconspicuous consumption.” While some have criticized these attempts to lure back the luxury market with high prices, exclusivity, quality, and discretion, we think they just might be enough to get the rich spending again.

Any chance the well-heeled are going to help spend us out of our troubles?

Reports of Sears’ death slightly exaggerated (for now)

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:25:00 +0000

Not many people are seeing the softer side of Sears these days, or the harder side for that matter. Tech Ticker reports that Jeff Matthews of hedge fund RAM Partners says the much anticipated Sears turnaround story may never happen because Sears Holding Corp. Chairman Edward Lampert doesn’t know how to run retail. Barron’s recently ran a story pointing out Sears’ many problems -- sagging sales, shabby stores, inattentive service, uncompetitive pricing – and suggesting the company’s stock price could fall another 50%. Beyond frightening. Credit Suisse analyst Gary Balter wrote an earnings note titled, “Put A Fork In It.”

Are the naysayers right? Is Sears done?

Sears has certainly gotten close to the max in cutting costs – there have been reports of only one sales associate per floor. In a world with where national big box stores provide competitively priced appliances on the one hand, and local dealers lavish personal attention and customer service on the other, Sears needs to be competitive on some dimension to survive, since there’s no net over the abyss of the middle.

Sears could focus on a smart reinvention its stores. The company still has some fabulously reputable brands, like Kenmore, DieHard, Craftsman, and Land’s End. Sears has actually made a number of good decisions lately – a plan to start selling toys and to offer a Christmas Club card, where consumers add value beforehand and get a 3% bonus on the funds. This has some old-fashioned, Big Book Catalog-style appeal. On the 21st century front, Sears’ MyGofer experiment, which merges online shopping and the ability to pick items up at a brick and mortar location, might allow Sears to unlock some value of all those Sears and Kmart stores. (But note to Sears: if you’re going to position yourself as a serious Internet player, make sure pranksters can’t rewrite your content and punk the living daylights out of you.)

It’s always hard to see around corners, but it’s an interesting question to ponder: what would a successful Sears look like in five years?

Shhh… Abercrombie is Cutting Prices

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:57:00 +0000

Last night at the mall, we saw what it looks like when retailers who don’t want to discount do the dirty deed in hushed tones. Just a few feet inside the lease line at an Abercrombie & Fitch store, we saw fleece tops at 50% off—a whacked price put onto a tasteful little sign no bigger than a postcard. We saw this throughout the store, motivating price points on merchandise clearly meant for the upcoming fall/winter season. This A&F store even had a sign at the entry announcing a back-to-school sale (odd, since prime back-to-school shopping season is behind us). Deep discounts? On current season merchandise? Is this really “we will not become promotional” A&F? Since the onset of the recession, shoppers have flocked to low-price retailers like T.J. Maxx and Ross. Nearly every clothing chain has aggressively discounted to try to win over penny-pinching shoppers. But in the face of all this discounting, A&F has stubbornly held onto its loftier price structure to protect its “aspirational” brand.

Last week, A&F announced that its sales dove a frightening 29 percent in August – the eleventh straight month of double digit sales declines for the retailer. Sure, times are tough and the teen (and parent) clothing budget has been squeezed, but rival Aeropostale, with its less expensive, but still fashionable, apparel managed to increase sales a very respectable 9%. A&F has finally, reluctantly, quietly capitulated to shoppers’ demand for a deal (while still clinging hopefully to the idea of an aspirational brand). “It (discounting) is not the primary vehicle nor will it be the primary vehicle for driving business, but it is part of the balance at this point… but it is not the driving force of this business. The driving force is fashion, quality, aspiration, and will continue to be so,” Chief Executive Officer Michael Jeffries said on an Aug. 14 conference call.

A&F may have done its job of creating a high-priced brand image a little too well. Despite a current move to more price cutting, the company’s success ultimately depends on the willingness of teens to drop $50 on “Perfect Butt” sweatpants once the economy rebounds. Still, now that teens have learned that for the same $50 they can get a pair of sweats and jeans at Aeropostale and still have money in their pocket for a couple of tickets to a movie, it may not be so simple to get them to return. Habituation is a tough monkey to overcome.

Sara Lee’s bread is making less dough

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:11:00 +0000

Somebody doesn’t like Sara Lee. It almost seems unfair. After finally recovering from the low carb diet craze of the 90s, the company is feeling the squeeze from private label, especially in the bread aisle. Thanks to the recession, customers are shunning name brand loaves (and cakes) in favor of cheaper private label starches in order to stretch their grocery budget. Sara Lee must also compete with price-slashing name brand rivals.

Not to pick on Sara Lee – other packaged-food companies are getting pinched – but you have to wonder whether Sara Lee fully understands the customer motivations and behaviors played out at the shelf that might be causing sales to plunge. The company knows profits are down, but competitors Kraft and Kellogg are turning in respectable numbers as shoppers trade takeout for meals at home. Does Sara Lee know why buyers are reaching for the doughy store brand whole wheat instead of Sara Lee’s innovative Soft & Smooth loaf? Does the company understand on a volumetric basis those who have come to the store fully intending to buy the brand, but then bail in the swirl of the last three feet? And why they bail? Is it price, promotion, packaging or an intriguing blend of yes to all that? Or maybe is it some other lure or allure?

Sales are an important, obvious, but crude measure of how shoppers interact with brands. If companies hope to stop the slide toward private label, they need to be where the in-the-moment calculations of the shopper occur. They need to take hold of the in-aisle thinking of shoppers who buy the brand, don’t buy it, and most tellingly, the ones who intended to do so and then decided in favor of another.

Gilly Hicks – We’re Not Sold

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:26:00 +0000

When it comes to Gilly Hicks, the lifestyle lingerie emporium aimed at teens and the newest brand in the Abercrombie stable, there’s one thing we can all agree on: the store itself is beautiful, luxurious, and sexy. The look of the space has won raves from fashion bloggers and stock analysts alike. The branding is brilliant, although entirely fictional: Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries concocted an elaborate Australian back story for the entirely American underwear brand (who knew “down under” had other meanings?) A portrait of “Gilly” hangs in the stores, to add a faux vintage feel to the shop. Gilly Hicks hopes to be younger and hipper than, but just as successful as, Victoria’s Secret.

The opening of Gilly Hicks has been controversial. Although Citigroup analyst Kimberly C. Greenberger praised the store’s “cute and sweetly sexy” image and said, “We believe Gilly Hicks could be a more wholesome alternative (to Victoria's Secret), and mothers would not mind taking their 15-year-olds to Gilly Hicks to shop,” an assortment of critics have attacked the whole notion of trying to sell sex to teens. Everything from the store’s racy ad campaign, featuring 7-foot-tall posters of naked men, to the website, which broadcasts a video showing women swimming topless, and the effort to sell sexy lingerie to teens has drawn complaints.

But the ultimate question, indeed, the only question is, will it sell? Gilly Hicks represents a huge per store investment, from the home-like front porch exterior to the dimly lit Ralph Lauren-on-steroids interior, with a huge amount of square footage dedicated to selling a tiny passel of products that would fit comfortably inside the closet of a New York City studio apartment. On the one hand, other companies have made big profits using edgy, sexy ads to sell to the teenage set. The other companies in Abercrombie’s stable, Abercrombie & Fitch, abercrombie, and Hollister, have deftly won over their target markets. Unfortunately for Abercrombie, we think it’s highly doubtful that Gilly Hicks is going to help the company bust out of a recession-fueled slump, despite the store’s gorgeous environment. Luxury undergarments for teens are not a natural sell in the best of times, and right now, the retailers that are thriving are mostly value brands aimed at the prudent. Add in the store’s sales crew – the young-side-of-20-something associates look as great as the store, but are without the years of experience in fitting bras and selling intimate wear – and it seems like an even bigger, and more expensive, misstep. What do you think?

Drop a quarter in the jar if you like this post

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:56:00 +0000

Maybe I wasn’t in an especially charitable mood, but I thought I had seen it all when I recently spotted a styrofoam cup duct taped to the delivery window of a Dunkin’ Donuts, a sight which gave off the weird vibe that drive-through customers should offer a reward to a forearm for handing them a bag.

There are a few topics that are guaranteed to generate heated arguments on the internet. Is it rude ask people to take their shoes off in your house? Is it tacky to have a cash bar at your wedding? And today’s subject, should behind-the-counter employees solicit tips in a jar next to the register? Anywhere you see counter service, you’re likely to see a jar or cup filled with dollar bills and coins. Cold Stone Creamery has raised the tip jar to an art form – workers break out into loud goofy songs when you drop a bill into the jar. Even teachers have gotten in on the act – one instructor conducted an informal experiment by setting a tip jar on his desk, and found that a few of his students threw in some (promptly refunded) change. Nowhere is the tip jar more ubiquitous than the coffee shop, whether it’s the indie rock dive around the corner or corporate behemoth Starbucks. There’s a certain logic behind the coffee shop tip jar; after all, say baristas, bartenders get tips, and making a latte is at least as complicated as pouring a draft beer.

Tip jars have their supporters. Counter service employees are delighted to get a few extra dollars for their efforts. Store owners and managers are happy to have their employees rewarded without having to raise prices or wages. And some customers don’t mind the jars, or even find some of the more creative hand written signs amusing. But other customers are angered by the creeping spread of tip jars. According to internet tipping guru James G. Lewis, “most people hate” the jars, and “tip jars are out of place at any food-service establishment that does not actually bring the food to your table and keep your drinks refilled.” According to a study by the Emily Post Institute, only 30% of respondents feel obligated to deposit money in a tip jar.

There’s been plenty of research on tipping – we know that younger people tip more than older Americans, people in the Northeast tip more than Southerners, and that people tip more when it’s sunnier outside. But the tip jar is a bit of a black hole. We have some anecdotal observations -- according to business psychologist Larina Kase, “Patrons can feel uncomfortable when there is a tip jar for services they feel do not deserve a tip.” But does the tip jar’s potential customer discomfort outweigh the morale boost for employees? It may be time for a well-designed study on tip jars that could determine whether they help or hurt the top and bottom line.

The not-so-gullible consumer

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:23:00 +0000

Imagine a patient who goes to the doctor for help with sleeplessness. If the doctor were to prescribe a medication saying, “this may or may not do any good, it’s not especially strong, but let’s give it a try to start out with and see if it helps,” it’s not very likely that the patient’s sleeplessness will be remedied. But if the doctor were to prescribe the same medication with the admonishment, “This is very powerful, so make sure you don’t leave the bottle on your nightstand. You can’t take the chance you might take an extra one while you’re half-asleep. Keep it well inside your medicine cabinet” -- it’s much more likely the patient will get to dreamland.

The power of suggestion can be surprisingly effective. For example, research on placebos has found that they can alleviate pain, depression, and anxiety, lessen the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, and have even shrunk tumors. John Tierney's recent New York Times article ”Calculating Consumer Happiness at Any Price” explores the power of suggestion in the consumer realm: do we place a higher value on items that we’re told are more costly? According to social psychologists’ and behavioral economists’ research, it depends.

In the lab, there’s evidence consumers respond better to items they’re told are more expensive. If you tell participants the wine they’re tasting costs $90 a bottle, the reward centers of their brains will light up more than if you tell them it’s a $10 bottle. But when customers are spending their own money rather than the hypothetical dollars in a laboratory, it turns out to be difficult to sway people from following their own tastes. Two behavioral economists in Tel Aviv monitored the choices of people who ordered from a prix fixe menu where the actual cost of each entrée was noted next to the items. After three months of testing various combinations of prices, the researchers found they couldn’t sway the customers. They were no more likely to select the entrée with the highest perceived value than any other entree. As one of the behavioral economists said, “Maybe when it comes to food, people do have reasonably stable preferences. Some people like shrimp and some don’t, even if it’s worth a lot of money.” (The fact that Israeli researchers were testing pork shank and shrimp gnocchi as part of the menu experiment is another story…..)

Despite the mountain of laboratory evidence that variations in sticker prices sway consumers, the effect fell apart in the real world test at the restaurant. That should serve as a warning to those of us who study customer behavior. While techniques such as focus groups and virtual reality shopping may provide some insights, it’s vital to watch how consumers actually behave when they’re spending their own money in the store, not just in the lab.

Judge a book by its cover at your own peril

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:36:00 +0000

One hundred and ten years after its 1818 founding in New York City, venerable retailer Brooks Brothers opened its second store, in Boston, on that city’s famed Newbury Street. A cautionary tale for the ages happened one morning when a man entered the store in tattered clothing, wearing rubber boots, and smelling a bit rank. The “up” salesman would not wait on him (the associate whose turn it was to help the next customer). The other salesmen looked away, busying themselves with anything else to avoid the unwelcome stranger. When the man finally asked for help from anyone within earshot, he was pawned off on the most junior salesman, who had no choice but to offer some assistance. Then, in the next two hours, the stranger ordered up $10,000 in custom-made suits, shoes and furnishings. (As you might guess, the “up” man tried to claim the sale as his own, to no avail). When the young salesman began asking the stranger about himself, he learned the man just arrived in town from his home in Vermont, where he was the owner of a highly successful hog farming business.

Fast–forward to the reverse situation. What happens when customers are the ones judging salespeople? According to a recent article in the New York Times, a new study found that people give higher customer satisfaction ratings to white male employees than to women and members of minorities, even when their performance is the same. In one test, about 12,000 patients in an HMO rated their doctors. The number of follow-up email messages doctors sent to patients increased their patient ratings only when the doctor was a white man. In another experiment, students watched videotaped interactions between a bookshop sales clerk and customers, and were asked to rate the customer service. Three actors played the part of the sales clerk—a white male, a black male, and a white female. All used the same settings and scripts. The subjects shown the white male clerk rated the bookshop’s service 19% higher than subjects who viewed the other two actors. Even women and people of color gave white males higher marks. Since over 60 percent of employees have at least some of their pay linked to customer satisfaction results, these biases are not just socially undesirable, they hit female and minority employees squarely in the pocketbook.

According to David R. Hekman, the lead author of the study and professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, “Someone needs to call customers out on their biases.” Hopefully, if people are made aware of their subconscious biases through coverage of studies like these, they will be less likely to penalize female and minority employees on satisfaction surveys. Another possibility would be to create employee evaluation tools that are truly objective. Techniques such as video analytics can deliver a bias-free analysis of the customer experience. Any other ideas on how we can eradicate the hidden biases that occur when shoppers evaluate employees (or vice versa)?

Hyatt’s random walk down service street

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:28:00 +0000

Last month, Hyatt Hotels’ C.E.O., Mark Holamazian, announced that Hyatt Hotel employees will be performing “random acts of generosity” for some customers, such as comping a bar tab or waiving charges for a family breakfast. Bloggers have noted that conducting a publicity campaign around gestures hardly seems random, and runs the risk of angering those who don’t receive the largesse.

Rob Walker’s Consumed column in this week’s New York Times Sunday Magazine points out that the Hyatt campaign is an effort to leave the customer grateful. Walker cites a coming paper in the Journal of Marketing which argues that a customer who is made to feel grateful is likely to become “enduringly loyal.” Humans enjoy reciprocating out of gratitude, and we feel guilty when we don’t, which is a phenomenon that businesses can exploit. But, as Walker writes, in order to inspire gratitude, favors must be performed “as a function of free will,” not merely in service of company rules. Loyalty programs sponsored by hotels and airlines do not automatically inspire gratitude; instead, frequent customers feel entitled to the free flights and hotel nights, and strategize to gain the most generous rewards for the points they’ve earned.

It’s not wrong for Hyatt to be ramping up customer service, especially now. Service has always driven loyalty, especially when customers are giving more thought to how they spend each dollar. One recent study found that nearly half of all customers feel service has declined since the recession started, and more than that said they’ve recently cut ties with a company due to a service lapse. It’s no coincidence that Nordstrom, with its legendary customer service, has recently trounced competitors such as Macy’s and Saks in terms of sales and stock performance. But we question whether Hyatt’s scattershot, random approach is the best way to go. Hyatt, and other businesses, might be better off building a reputation for top-notch customer service available consistently to all customers. What happens to customers who – having read about the plan – expect but then don’t receive any random generosity? And what about those who receive it a first time but may not “randomly” ever get it again? What happens to their loyalty? What do you think?

Saturday morning at the hardware store

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:17:00 +0000

I walk in and a clerk approaches to ask if I need help. I tell him I need a flashlight, just something basic. He walks me to the appropriate spot in the aisle, and begins describing the selection.

“We’ve got your Eveready. $3.95. Not the greatest, but does the job,” he says, starting at his lowest price point. “Then there’s this Energizer. Better grip. $6.99. Or we’ve got a Sylvania. Good for the garage. It’s $12.99.”

He takes a step to the right, moving toward something else, as if he’s signaling that we’re about to enter a special new universe.

“Of course,” he tells me with a knowing look, “you could get this.” He begins hefting a powerful looking cylinder of silvery black metal and then starts thwacking it slightly menacingly on the palm of his other hand.

“This,” he pronounces, “this is the one the cops carry.”

Of course, he had me at the product demo, but the law enforcement piece put me all in. I buy two of them……at $49.99—each.

There are a number of lessons here, not the least of which is the incalculable sales value of story in the store. This was a pitch-perfect bravura performance, and in case you’re thinking today’s workforce isn’t trainable in this skill, you need to know that this associate was not some old-timer hardware store guy—but a 20-something “kid.”

Starbucks goes “sophisticated and upscale”……?

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:40:00 +0000

In the you’ve-got-to-be-putting-me-on file, MSNBC and Starbucks just announced the launch of a special marketing initiative between the two companies whereby the Seattle chain will become a name sponsor of the cable news programmer’s “Morning Joe” show, with Joe Scarborough.

The deal allows for on-air Starbucks brand plugs, announcements, and visual references within the body of the weekday news-and-talk program. Future remote broadcasts may take place within Starbucks locations around the country.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, in commenting on the deal, said the “Morning Joe” show makes great sense for his company, calling the audience “sophisticated and upscale.”

Let’s get this straight. With its business suffering in profound ways, with hundreds of stores closing, with its reputation as the place where the urban elite go for lattes, with millions of consumers forced to cut back on even small indulgences and others avoiding even the hint of conspicuous consumption as bad manners in a reeling economy, with the company doing everything it can to say its $4-per-cup image isn’t deserved, with all that……they’re now ballyhooing a deal to reach the posh and polished?

I'm only slightly kidding to wonder if they'd be better off doing a deal with NASCAR.

Would you like pantyhose with that ceiling tile? (and other retail oxymorons)

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Halverson, Ph.D., and Bill Marks) — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:37:00 +0000

Perhaps you were taught this instructive “stick-to-your-knitting” story of some years ago. It starred an over-eager Home Depot executive who came up with the idea that millions would drop to the bottom line if only the company could see its way to introducing L’Eggs hosiery displays at checkouts in all its stores. After making his case to the top ranks of the company with a convincing argument about potential financial gain and a not-very-convincing plea for the company to use this as a response to the increasing presence of female customers, he was quickly asked to abandon the idea—of course, right after being told to abandon his seat from the meeting. The teachable moment—seized on by the chairman—was that just because you could sell it doesn’t mean you should sell it.

Apparently not everyone has heard this entrenched business lesson—including some more recent Home Depot executives, who two years ago brought about losses with a similarly ill-fated decision to sell flat-screen televisions during the holidays.

This week, Best Buy announced plans to sell patio ware—furniture, fire pits, grills and heaters. It’s their attempt to make up for lost sales in bread-and-butter categories like movies and music.

This has all the makings to be the pantyhose story of 2009. We’ll be watching this one especially closely, as this is a retailer which has done many things right.

Supermarkets used to fall prey all the time to the allure of selling higher-margin items—that turned out not to sell, like television sets.

A recent sighting of candy bars at the checkout of a garden center store struck me as a stretch, and a rather sad attempt to presumably get something back from a decline in boxwood sales.

Unexpected products in the assortment can delight customers. Urban Outfitters does serendipity masterfully. Probably until it was deemed illegal or immoral, Sears stores used to create endless Easter excitement with displays of live baby chicks…..for sale. But these examples are schtick—not fundamental assortment strategies.