Retail Mein Growth Kidhar Hai?

Retail brands expect exponential growth. It is the only way they can survive in a tough and volatile market. The eagerness to establish themselves and expand causes immense stress. Retailers, more than anyone else, ask the question "Growth Kidhar Hai?"

Well, the answer is simple to figure out: "Growth Idhar Hai! Customer engagement aur brand promise mein!" Wait, let us elaborate on this before you jump to any conclusions.

Shopping Experience Kya Hain?

Retailers are directly in touch with the customer and know them the best. Since, customer loyalty is dwindling in the ever changing Indian market, it is important to engage your customers in a new way every time.

Gone are the days of discounts and sales; there are too many voices in the market offering the same thing. Also, the Indian customer is too seasoned to be lured by mere promise of a discount.

What they expect now is an experience. The better the experience, greater is the possibility of them visiting your retail store again.

Excitement and Exclusivity

No one understands this better than Tj Maxx, the famous American retailer. To engage their audience, they organise amazing treasure hunts. These treasure hunts allow their customers to get offers that are exclusive to them, while at the same time ensuring that the customer gets a feel of the products that are for sale in the store. The excitement to be the first and the exclusivity of the offers creates a memorable experience for the customers. It builds a special relationship between them and the brand.

Community Ko Kya Diya?

Another great way to build your brand’s reputation is to take up a CSR venture associated with the brand identity. Of course it is important that the brand follows through with its promise. All CSR activities are a win-win of sorts. The community at large gets support, the customer gets the service he needs and the brand gets growth.

Bye Bye to Buyer’s Remorse

One of the problems that exclusive brands often face is buyer’s remorse. Customers often feel remorseful about the products they have bought. Toms the shoes and accessories retailer started their One for one mission. Under this mission the brand promises to give a pair of shoes to a child in need to every pair sold. They kept their brand promise and got an amazing feedback from their customers in return. The customer felt satisfied by his purchase because it had also helped someone. Desire often feels like a vanity but not in a Toms store.

Offline Se Online Aaya Kya?

While both the steps mentioned above are in itself enough to make an individual customer feel satisfied, the thing that makes the biggest difference is publishing these activities online.

Brand voice and identity are now built online, one tweet at a time. In this digi-verse, the best way to get amazing reach and response is to publish your offline activities. The offline activity should involve a satisfied customer in some way and should resonate with the populace at large.

Give Visibility to Gain Visibility!

People all over social media are hungry for likes. Doing a unique activity can get them just that. Reliance Smart seems to have smartly adopted this strategy. This mango season they kept a simple augmented reality game in their store which allowed the customers to pick mangoes from a virtual mango tree. With this activity, they subtly highlighted the quality of their mangoes and furthered their brand message that all their fruits were hand-picked. By sharing a video of this activity with the customer online they also ensured that the messages went across the digi-verse that Reliance Smart is a cool place to visit.

Customer engagement is the key to success in the 21st-century retail space. It is the experience that makes your store unique and builds a relationship between the brand and the customer. Retail Growth Idhar hai, customer engagement mein!