And for those companies that prefer a human touch to the full-speed-ahead automation of a Walmart, the need to examine the frontline will be especially potent. While part of any company’s efforts to embody these traits will bear on marketing/branding/advertising, we have to ask: what can frontline sales training do? How might operations and other workforce leaders adapt the frontline without making major extra investments?Īfter all, now that companies are in cutback mode, it’s important to remember that the frontline is already there, and not a new cost to be taken on, as with an ad campaign or rebranding, which requires external consultancy as a rule. Thus, this up-to-date research suggests, at a time when consumers are faced with a glut of retailers selling overlapping products at similar price points, retailers and brands must reflect positive characteristics: genuineness, sincerity, sophistication (with the first two, according to Kuo, being the most effective). This is because many consumers look to their shopping decisions as reflections of their own identities and values. This helps them achieve what the researchers describe as "self-congruity", validating their positive ideas of themselves. The inference here is that these "positive dimensions", and especially what Kuo calls genuineness and sincerity, matter so much because in buying from such stores, consumers affirm positive qualities in themselves. The researcher, Ya-Hui Kuo, concludes that it "is crucial for retail practitioners to understand how their target customers understand their personalities as being aligned with a retail brand personality that is perceived in consumers’ minds as having positive dimensions." Sophisticated was another positive quality associated with retail brand personalities, usually used by research subjects to describe specialty stores. Retail Brand Personalities: The Latest ResearchĪccording to a 2022 article in Frontiers in Psychology, research suggests that there is great importance in "establishing a retail brand personality that is perceived in consumers’ minds as having positive dimensions, such as Genuineness or Sincerity". ) Or, retailers can use automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to supplement their human, frontline workers, helping them become better at what they do, enabling rather than replacing them. Before we talk about frontline enablement and eLearning, let’s think through what consumers in the post-pandemic world want to see before they open their wallets. (Walmart plans to include automation in 65% of its retail stores by 2026. First, large retailers can take the Walmart route and seek to replace human workers, by and large, with robots. They are not absolutely separate and they do intertwine, but they present relatively distinct paths. With almost as many bankruptcies already as in all of 2022, and the latest consumer data showing retail sales falling by 1.0% in March 2023, many firms are, no doubt, questioning their future and planning cutbacks. There are two roads available for retailers in the future. Using Tech To Make The Sales Force More Humanīy any measure, retail’s present is a mess.
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