Whats in It for Me? – Improving Customer Experience – Entrepreneur.com.

Her 5 elements include:

1. what customers see,
2. what they hear,
3. what they smell,
4. what they touch,
5. how they are physically affected (e.g. temperature)

According to Barrows, “The feeling this combination of elements gives customers at the moment, or leaves them with, has a profound effect on sales.”

Visual impact, environmental comfort and auditory stimulation are all givens.  But smell and touch have been a challenge for retailers.  Some places have it easy in that area.  The coffee smell in a Starbucks definitely sets the mood.  The smell of chocolate in a candy store.  But smell is harder to capture in a mass retailer or a clothing store.  What smell will appeal to the customer?  Overdoing it risks averting some customers.  I have friends who have a really hard time spending too much time in Bath & Body Works.  The combinations of scents can be overwhelming.

No matter what your opinion about what those 5 things are, one thing can be agreed upon — the customer is king.  More than ever, the customer is focused on being the star of the show — not the brand, not the product, the customer.

Store manager Joe Cardamone is interviewed in DDI’s piece and identifies price, style and service as the hallmarks of the new JCPenney.  Although this was heralded as JCPenney coming to Manhattan, the video does a good job of capturing the Manhattan style elements that have been incorporated into the store environment.

So much so that ABC Nightly News deemed their chain worthy of a full feature segment on how cleanliness and meticulous attention to their store environment has made the gas station convenience store a destination for loyal customers. The success they’ve had in the Texas market has been tremendous.  It’s a shining example of the power of the retail environment — literally.

Last week, AdAge’s 3-minute video segment featured a story on a new digital out of home network called Wall Street Journal Office Network.  The company, headed by CEO, Jim Harris, operates a network of LCD screens mounted in office building lobbies throughout the country. The screens stream news from the Wall Street Journal as well as advertising from media partners.

What makes this a unique proposition is that Harris coordinates the marketing messages on the screens with live events that are staged in the building lobbies.  For instance, while ads are running on the screens for Blackberry, there is a live Blackberry demon being held in the lobby of the same building. According to Harris, this integrated marketing scheme has led to a 51% increase in purchase intent and 16% sell through up to 120 days after the events take place.  “The bottom line on this is sales.”

The results that the network has been able to achieve are very encouraging for the future development of in-store programs, particularly in digital.  It demonstrates the value of integrating digital with other marketing elements, in this case events, to present a continuity that will stick with the consumer as they relate to the brand.  Harris has effectively taken digital beyond a vehicle for running looped commercials to a tool that triangulates the communication between the shopper, the digital message and the other marketing messages that are presented in the selling space.

Brandweek quoted Kevin Higgins, Burger King’s new president of Europe, Middle East and Africa, as saying, “Shining a spotlight on our core brand equities through our 20/20 design provides us with endless opportunities to enhance our guests’ experience, help drive sales and propel the brand forward.”

Burger King appears to be making a move on the territory currently occupied by restaurants like Chipotle, which offer fast cuisine in more of a QSR environment. This attention to experience seems to be working for Chipotle as they were named one of the few franchises beating the odds in the recession.  Apparently, BK is going to try and follow the leader.  But will it work?  Is the BK brand too closely linked to the McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s class of food experience for people to consider it in another way? Or is Burger King tuning into the next trend in retailing?

In Pamela Danziger’s book Shopping, published in 2006, she forecasted that the next decade, 2010’s, would be “The Decade of Experience.”  She goes on to explain what she calls “the experiential shift.”

“Due to the experiential shift, making a retail concept work today is far less about the tangibles or objective aspects of the business — product, location, price — and all about the intangibles that color and flavor the shopper’s experience in the store.  In retail the bar has been raised. In order to be successful a retailer must offer an enhanced, truly memorable, and distinctive shopping experience to its customers.”

Surely the economy has exacerbated this shift.  Danzinger’s prediction attributed the change to the proliferation of choice.  However, the recession has made shoppers ever more choosy because of limited discretionary funds.  So what should a retailer do? Train up the sales force to be more helpful for the time being?  Or is it time to make a long-term, capital investment in design before they get left behind the shift?