NEW YORK — The best way to keep shoppers from abandoning an apparel store for good isn’t having the best selection of fashion or even the most convenient location. It’s giving them a good customer service experience.
That’s according to a new study from consultant Retail Forward, which found bad service is the number-one reason people exit a particular store intending never to return. More than one-quarter, or 26 percent, of a representative sample of 4,000 adults, polled online monthly during the first quarter, cited unsatisfactory service as more likely to drive them away from a store permanently than any other aspect of the shopping experience.
Nearly as many — 23 percent — decided not to patronize a store again because of an unpleasant experience with store policies.
“It is surprising that they leave altogether rather than visiting less or spending less,” said Mandy Putnam, a vice president at Retail Forward and author of the July “American ShopperScape” study. “It’s partly because there are so many places to shop these days. This is particularly true of apparel stores at the mall,” she added, referring to the large number of such shops and the similarity of the merchandise on offer.
Although apparel specialty stores have taken “baby steps” to improve customer service, said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group, “it’s an investment a lot of stores don’t want to make.
“They still fall short in educating sales staff so they can establish links with customers and prompt purchases,” he added.
Just shy of a dozen brands of casual sportswear were most likely to draw repeat purchases from women in November, based on NPD’s most recent loyalty data: Coldwater Creek and Ann Taylor led the pack, followed by Victoria’s Secret, Just My Size, Billabong and Jones New York, which tied for second place, with Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, H&M and Alfred Dunner each rated third.
Millennials, ages 18 to 27; Generation Xers, ages 28 to 34, and people with annual income north of $75,000 were most likely to have stopped shopping a store for good in December — a phenomenon Putnam attributed to the economic mobility of upmarket consumers and shopping behavior that tends to be more flexible among young adults. (Some of the information for the July study was gathered in December.) While 9 percent of adults left a store permanently in December, 11 percent of those in the upmarket income bracket did so, as did 10 percent of those ages 18 to 34.
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By comparison, 19 percent of those polled by Retail Forward said they’d stopped shopping a store altogether because their lifestyle changed, reflecting variables such as income, job status and family composition; 14 percent abandoned one because their tastes changed, and 14 percent were driven away both by changes in customer service and policies.
It turns out that changes in lifestyle have the biggest impact on how much money people spend at a store and how often they shop there, as distinct from whether or not they return to a given store at all. About four in 10, or 41 percent, of adults said they shopped less often at a particular store because of lifestyle influences and 35 percent said those considerations prompted them to spend less at a shop they’d visited previously.
Of course, financial concerns and job uncertainty can alter a person’s willingness to spend money, which, in turn, can provoke apparel marketers, among others, to lean more heavily on promotional pricing. This syndrome has contributed to the commoditization of fashion, with pricing becoming the primary basis for differentiation between brands. The result: Loyal consumers are becoming harder to develop. “When sale prices are the number-one thing driving business, it ought to give the stores some pause,” Putnam pointed out.
During the first quarter, the ShopperScape survey found sale prices were the top reason people did most of their apparel spending at Old Navy, Fashion Bug and Christopher & Banks.
The country’s volatile economy, Putnam said, “dampened consumer spending prior to June, with an uptick since then.” This spending downturn was most evident among those whose annual income was less than $22,500.
When a selling environment becomes heavily promotional, it can actually loosen its ties with the very customers it’s seeking to attract via low prices. With the erosion of profit margins that follows a spate of promotional selling, retailers grow more reluctant to allocate funds to marketing efforts, which, Putnam said, have been slow to take shape among many apparel merchants. “Apparel retailers have allowed developers to sell them on the notion that, if they build a store, people will come,” Putnam contended.
In fact, only two apparel specialty stores were among the 40 retailers people shopped most often in the first quarter: Old Navy, which ranked in the last third of the top 30 and drew 16.2 percent of shoppers, and Victoria’s Secret, which was in the fourth quartile of the top 40, with an 11.2 percent share.
In all, about 45 percent of those who shopped an apparel store in July 2004 shopped it again six to eight months later, during the first quarter. “Compare that with Target’s 65.5 percent [share],” Putnam wrote, “and it becomes clear why Target poses a daunting threat to the moderate-price [sector] of apparel specialty stores.”
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