Several years ago, my consulting firm worked with a large retail shopping center company. At the time this REIT owned over 300 shopping centers around the country. The question my firm was asked to determine was this: Will the customer experience in the shopping center drive increased revenue in the stores? They knew they could put a carnival in the middle of the mall and get traffic…so the issue was not just mall attendance; it was increased revenue. This was particularly important since the mall company made money from rent as well as a percentage of the retail sales of their tenants.
We created an experimental and control model that paired eight malls in various parts of the country. Each pair had a similar size, geography, traffic, revenue, etc. We then determined each mall’s primary target market—e.g., under thirty soccer moms who read certain magazines, had a certain educational level, worried about mall safety, lived in specific zip code, etc. We determined the kind of unique mall experience that would appeal to that unique target market without being off-putting to the remainder of the mall traffic. One mall in each pair got the experience transformation; the control mall in each pair was left alone.
The carefully chosen metrics for this year-long experiment proved the point. The customer experience, if properly designed for the proper audience, would increase revenue in the mall stores, not just greater traffic to the mall. It also dramatized the importance of knowing your target customer as opposed to assuming all customers are generally alike.
Success starts with deciding what you want your customer experience distinction to be. That requires a clear-eyed assessment of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It means going to school on the population most likely to be attracted by your distinction, and building your emotional brand around that combination. And, it means recognizing that marketplace victory lies in being uniquely special to a few rather than generally ordinary to many.
Last week I spotted a clever billboard ad for Seagram’s Canadian whiskey. It read: “For those who see ‘club’ and think ‘sandwich.'” It was a smart statement of target market appeal on display.