Getting to 'Wow': Consumers Describe What Makes a Great Shopping Experience - Knowledge@Wharton

Good report out of Jay H Baker Retailing Initiative about what makes consumers feel they've gotten a "wow" experience. I was actually pretty surprised to see that 35% of the people surveyed felt like they've gotten a great experience in the past six months. I think the most important, but obvious, part of the report is that it's the combination of everything that you do that impacts on how people feel about your brand. It's a huge help that an organization like Wharton is telling brands that it's all about the total experience. Some highlights below and you can click on the link to see more from the report.

A report based on the research, titled "Discovering 'WOW' -- A Study of Great Retail Shopping Experiences in North America,"points to five major areas that contribute to a great shopping experience:

• Engagement: being polite, genuinely caring and interested in helping, acknowledging and listening.
• Executional excellence: patiently explaining and advising, checking stock, helping to find products, having product knowledge and providing unexpected product quality.
• Brand Experience: exciting store design and atmosphere, consistently great product quality, making customers feel they're special and that they always get a deal.
• Expediting: being sensitive to customers' time on long check-out lines, being proactive in helping speed the shopping process.
• Problem Recovery: helping resolve and compensate for problems, upgrading quality and ensuring complete satisfaction.

In all, respondents mentioned 28 elements of a great experience, such as salespeople who "immediately acknowledged you" or "could easily explain a product to you" or "seemed genuine."

Retailers can focus on creating a "bedrock," or platform, based on the five major pillars of retail satisfaction to increase the probability of creating a wow experience. According to the research, four in five shoppers will tell an average of three other people about a wow experience.

Brand experience and engagement are the strongest drivers of loyalty, according to the survey. The top response was related to engagement, with 63% of those reporting that during their great shopping experience, store employees were "very polite and courteous." Salespeople who were knowledgeable about the product in the store got the second-highest response at 55%. As for execution, about half of those experiencing a wow shopping trip stressed store employees' familiarity with products, their advice and the level of interest in the customers' needs as essential to a great shopping experience. Slightly fewer -- two in five -- pointed to surprisingly great product quality and store representatives who go out of their way to check stock as crucial elements of exceptional shopping.

Brand experience includes store design and atmosphere, consistently great product quality, making customers feel they're special and the sense that customers always get a deal. Hoch says this element is somewhat "fuzzy" because chain stores, which account for the majority of shopper visits, often provide trendy merchandise and stylish store environments, but also run the risk of projecting sameness. Earlier research by the Baker Center and Verde found that shoppers reported "mall malaise" -- boredom with the similarity of specialty chain stores. "Most chains are cookie-cutter," says Hoch. "Even if the stores themselves are different from each other, the same store is in every mall. It's probably a lot easier for a small merchant to provide this brand experience. Unfortunately, if people see the same look over and over again, they find it mundane."

Getting to 'Wow': Consumers Describe What Makes a Great Shopping Experience - Knowledge@Wharton.