The Retail Experience: Suffering from shopper's block? Maybe here's a reason why.

About a week ago I found myself at one of my frequent retail haunts... The Lego Store. Being the mom of a Lego-maniac, it's quite easy to determine what to get my 10 year old son for Christmas, his birthday, Groundhog's Day, Earth Day... basically ANY day. If it involves bricks, he's a happy boy.

Anyway, this post isn't about my son's Lego love, but my continuing analysis of how retailers are using technology to improve or enhance the shopping experience with one simple end goal - increase sales.

About a year ago I blogged about a kiosk that our local Lego Store had set up where the sales manager was actively deterring my son from using it to look at the online Lego games. It's purpose, as he explained it, was for us "moms" to go online while in-store to purchase items that weren't in stock or only available online.

Fast forward to this last trip. The adult eye level kiosk was gone and in it's place was a circle of four monitors and keyboards on a child-high table with a bin in the middle containing Legos for kids to build with. I was caught in a long queue waiting for my turn to buy my son's birthday present so I used the time to observe how this table crowded with kids was using the technology that was intentionally there for their use. Guess what? NOT A SINGLE CHILD WAS USING THE COMPUTERS. They were instead vying for space around this table cluttered with keyboards to get at the bricks to build with. They absolutely IGNORED the technology. Huh. Now Lego WANTS them to go online, but now they kids don't? How could this be?

I'll tell you why I think this is the case and I was only able to articulate this thought after watching a wonderful slide presentation "The importance of brand in the digital media environment" by Helge Tenno, It was a simple quote found on slide 13 that really resonated with me...

‎"Even if people are technologically available, it doesn't mean they are behaviorally available."

So here it is retailers. You want to influence me in-store aided by technology  to make a decision purchase. The big word today is "multi-channel" and it's your goal to capture me any way you can. Well, here's where it gets challenging and you make huge investments on installations like the one I observed in the Lego Store and they don't do as you intend. Technology as a SOLUTION misses the mark. What shoppers desire isn't more gadgetry, but a seemless experience NO MATTER THE CHANNEL that supports their desire to purchase. What those small children wanted around that table was the tactile experience of playing with Legos, not gaming. What many parents standing in the long line appreciated was that their kids were being kept busy without their need to intercede while they waited to make their purchase. The bins of Legos alone in this instance were perfect enough.

Where improvement in the experience needs to be made by retailers is to rethink the means to achieve the desired outcome. This means creating an experience that is what the shopper is looking for at that point of interaction, not what YOU want them to do at that point of interaction.

Shopping styles have certainly been influenced more than ever by digital, but the simple truth still holds that shoppers have the same core needs that they have always had: value, convenience, and most importantly service. When technology is deployed to support those core needs, it can bring scale and efficiency along with higher customer satisfaction. But when tech is simply plunked down in front of shoppers, they'll do the same thing they do when confronted with any other unappealing retail experience: ignore it.