Less is more

I came across a very interesting white paper by Kaon Interactive on how to create a "wow" factor in the retail customer's experience. The paper begins with citing some very common obstructions to achieving this in the retail stores. A summary is given below

1. When too many product features or categories are available, customers find it difficult to understand and evaluate options. This results in them either choosing the cheapest product as price is something they can easily evaluate. This leads to them being dissatisfied at a later stage due to lack of features.
2. The space available on the shelf is insufficient to provide a informative presentation of the product assortment to the customer leading to an underinformed customer
3. While overcoming customers’ inconsistencies in decision making and physical space limitations are both challenges for retailers, finding the sales support to help customers make a purchase, and more importantly, make the right purchase is perhaps the retailer’s greatestconcern.

The paper talks about generating a positive emotional response in the customer while shopping - "Emotional response is also kindled when consumers better understand and appreciate the product they are about to purchase. While providing product information that details how a product is used, or clearly explains why a feature is present sounds obvious, it’sactually a rare occurrence in the retail world"

The first factor cited by the paper is corroborated in a recent presentation "Re-imageering Retail" given by Thom Blischok of Information Resources Inc. As per Mr. Blischok "84% of shoppers are fully satisfied with 23% of the merchandise at a typical store". This is also seen in terms of a trend towards "express" store formats which is expected to "grow from around 20 locations today to 4,000 by 2010"