THE ART & SCIENCE OF POEPLE PLEASING

Brands are needing to evolve into being people pleasers to reboot their retail objectives from delivering great customer satisfaction to enabling ultimate shopping pleasure in their environments.

– by Surender Gnanaolivu

Today’s consumer expectations are creating new opportunities for new age brands, and established brands to reboot and demonstrate that they are people pleasers with their consumer-centric strategies in delivering shopping experience in their retail environments. It’s an established fact that modern consumers demand more than just great products or services; they seek meaningful experiences, emotional connections, and values demonstrated by the brand consistently across all touchpoints and channels. This takes the objective of shopping experience beyond mere ‘great satisfaction’ to utmost ‘pleasure’. Five humanized tenets are helping deliver this.

Feeling the pain

Today’s well-informed, socially conscious, and value-driven consumers are seeking brands that deeply understand them enough to offer them solutions through experiences that align with their lifestyle and beliefs. They expect brands to understand their pains and align the gains, their core offerings, with their life goals and delivery empathetic experiences in their physical environments. This necessitates serious efforts in understanding them deeply in-person by observation, listening, dialogue and feedback or remotely by using data analytics and social listening. Feeling their pain, however little it may seem, would surely help in converting them to pleasure.

4Ps Pizza, an artisanal pizza place originated from Vietnam, offers baskets to guest to place their personal belonging to enable a pleasurable hands-free dining experience.

Making Emotional Connections

Emotional connections are at the heart of being a people pleaser. Brands are having to engage consumers at a personal level, crafting narratives that resonate emotionally. This involves the use of participative storytelling as the main medium to communicate the brand’s purpose, values, and heart behind the business it is in. Studies clearly show that consumers are more likely to be loyal to brands that evoke positive emotions and demonstrate empathy and authenticity in the relationship they build with their customers.

At the 4Ps Pizza store entrance, guests are greeted with a testimonial gallery of handwritten notes from the brand community. An invitation note from the brand encourages guests to participate in their values and beliefs

Crafting the journey

Understanding and predicting customer journeys and shopping rituals is as important input when crafting the experience in a store. Every brand touchpoint needs to be planned to be intuitive, seamless, enjoyable, and memorable resulting in excellent pleasurable customer service. Technology, when used purposefully, is a powerful enabler of customer empowerment in the journey.

The Jaguar experience center enables the customer to use a phy-gital station that enables them to make informed choices in the journey of selecting a car customized to their driving pleasure.

Adding the personal touch

Every person is unique, and this uniqueness should be acknowledged and valued. Enabling personalization of in-store interactions can make customers feel understood and valued resulting in shopping pleasure and loyalty.

Consumers appreciate brands that recognize them as individuals rather than just another customer. Personalized experiences, tailored recommendations, and customized products or services enhance consumer satisfaction. Data-driven insights are pivotal in achieving this level of personalization, enabling brands to anticipate consumer needs and preferences accurately.

Decathlon’s Design Shop enables customers to engage with the brand and create personalized products. Interactive screens help filter and personalize the browsing experience in the store.

Behaving responsibly

Actively demonstrating commitment to social, environmental, and ethical issues are more likely to win consumer trust and loyalty. Here being a people pleaser means ‘walking the talk’ by adopting ethical and sustainable practices that care about people and the planet. Measurable initiatives add authenticity and trust in the brand’s ability to keep its promise and appease amidst all the geopolitical and environmental challenges faced today.

Lush’s new store in Shinjuku, Japan, has replaced all signage, ingredient lists and price tags with digital packaging. Customer point their phone at the product to get information and insights | Photo source LUSH Japan

A punt on pleasure

By focusing on being people pleasers, brands can build strong, lasting relationships with their consumers, ensuring loyalty, making this world a more pleasurable place and helping businesses sustain and succeed.

Written exclusively for Storai Magazine by Retailers Association of India Jun 2024 issue