The notion of conversion is very interesting. It seems that stores just try to get people in the doors, which I'm sure helps their bottom line, but without knowing their target demographic it doesn't seem that they are using their full potential.
WalMart seems to be really harnessing the power they wield with their "Always low prices" campaign. In one of the documentaries on the store (I can't remember if it was this one or one on CNBC), they talked about how the only products that were really the lowest prices were the ones in huge racks in the middle of the aisles. But WalMart didn't put them there for you to buy them; they put them there to get you thinking about microwaves or DVDs or hand lotion, so you will head to that section of the store for your preferred brand or a movie that you actually want to see. Once there, the idea is already planted in your head that "those DVDs were only $7.88" and while you are marveling at how low the prices are, you just paid fifty cents more than you would have somewhere else. I don't shop at WalMart - but I can bet that Paco Underhill's students have followed quite a few people around the store to figure out that somehow, seeing a good deal on one item translates to "everything is such a steal!"
I think the first step is getting shoppers in - Underhill clearly states in his book that the stores he is helping are doing well to begin with, and are getting the shoppers in, but somehow are failing in the conversion department. In thinking about all of the Apple articles I have read today and hearing about the iMac, iBook, iPod, iTunes for the past however many years- they are very good at design, marketing and hype but I would have to say that about a quarter of the people in their stores at any one time actually buy anything. The Apple store in Columbus is always swirling with people - I have been in there probably about a dozen times, and I have only bought something once. My boyfriend has probably been in there twice as much, and has purchased something twice.
The idea of conversion makes me kind of sad, to think that we all are so easily influenced to buy things based on their strategic placement within the store or creative signage. As I am typing this, a Target commercial is on the TV and the song playing in the background says "Wanna gotta get it gotta get it right now" over and over. Not very subliminal...
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Your comment about the amount of "traffic" in the Apple Store vs. the amount of "actual sales activity" is interesting. The Prada Store in New York by OMA/Koolhaas cost an estimated $40,000,000 to fit out. A lot for a retail interior. Yes. A lot for an advertising campaign. No. (Prada spent $37,000,000 last year in print advertising.) In an interview with Miuccia Prada, she said the store was paid for completely out of the advertising budget. She does not expect that single store to ever do so well that it would recoup the expense of the fit out, but she stated that it was the best $40,000,000 that the company ever spent on advertising. The store has been: host to numerous social events, appeared in music videos, had (numerous) books and articles written about itself, etc. and reconfirmed the notion of "luxury" to its clientele.
It is a retail store that was developed with the notion that it (as a single, isolated store) will in fact lose money.
A very ingenius appraoch to marketing I would say - a 3 dimensional advertising.
on the topic of conversion, being so overt about it almost seems like consumer exploitation.... this all rings of that old zombie movie "Day of the Dead" or "Dawn of the Dead" or one of those...the one that took place in the mall... all those consumers just stumbling and bumbling around like mindless machines.... I think that Underhill approaches it differently... he isnt calling the consumer a zombie as much as he is calling the consumers tendencies predictable and, therefore, able to be manipulated........ exploited, to be blunt
Chris - I think New York can be considered a commercial in itself. It indescriminately gets the intended message to the masses just like a TV add.
When Abercrombie and Fitch was fitting out their 5th Avenue store last year, they utilized the storefront barricades to display multi-story high billboards of partly dressed young and buff models in the guise to market to passersby the soon to open store.
But they had a more devilish intention in mind. The billboard of the ripped young man focused on the midsection (no face shot at all) and clearly showed his "package" underneath. A&F's true intent was to cause an uproar and get into nespapers across the country, which they did.
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