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In his speech, Stephens said retailers will
have to shift their thinking beyond being a
place to distribute products and focus instead
on selling the experience along with the
product.
“Retail has to become less static,” he said.
“The future will be less about dragging
things home and more about the value of
the experience.
“Smart companies will re-deploy employees
to become ambassadors – awesome people
that add value to the in-store experience
as nutritionists, sommeliers or chefs, for
example – people who interact one-on-one
with customers. People trust other people.”
Even millennials, who depend so much
on personal devices, “are hungry for
physical experiences that do not involve the
product itself as much as the brand,” he told
conference attendees.
Whole Foods’ 365 stores, which are
tailored to millennial tastes, “are about the
experience,” he pointed out.
For many retailers, however, the major
obstacle to creating the right kind of
experience is their obsession with four-wall
productivity,” which has been the primary
operating principle for a century or more,
Stephens said.
“It’s a hard pill to swallow, but in a world
where we can get anything we want with a
single click, no one needs what you sell. But
what you sell is the only value differentiator
left, so you must create a different experience
around what you sell by getting innovative,
cunning and crafty – not by starting with
technology, though leveraging technology
could add value to the experience, but by
understanding the customer experience in a
different, deeper way, then de-constructing
that experience.”
That may be the only way to meet “the very
material threat” posed by Amazon, Stephens
said, “but too many retailers will recognize
that too late because they are myopically
obsessed with the inner workings of the
business but unaware or unwilling to see
what’s happening outside the walls.
...the major obstacle to creating
the right kind of experience is their
obsession with four-wall productivity.
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