This week for Thursday, we were assigned readings on retailers, one of them being this article on The Wall Street Journal. According to the article, Home Depot, Sears, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart – famous “Big Boxes” are all going for smaller stores. From my perspective, when the Box is too big, people get distracted or irritated – focus on the customer expectations (which does not equate to their wants or desires). I agree with what this post on the Canadian Marketing Blog which says, “the new generation has different needs.” Recent demographics (Boomers – Gen X/Y) and economic changes (downturn) have had a big impact on the way people shop now.
To add on to the post, I think it can be disadvantageous at times when there is too much choice. When there is too much to choose between, it can be hard to know where to start at times and it generally ends up taking more time to choose. Like the Wall Street Journal article mentioned, these big box retailers don’t need to have every variety of pens for a customer to be satisfied. Customers are not likely to be browse-shopping (with leisure time) in, for example, Staples to find a preferable pen. There just needs to be a few basic pens and a few special ones of a reasonable quality and design and price in the store when they get there. This way, retailers could eliminate decision and finding time for the customer and rent and inventory (as well as other associated) costs. The rest can be bought from a Big Box or online (especially since this type of product does not require trying or personal observation like clothing and cars do).
The Canadian Marketing Blog post brings up a good point. The market has been saturated with Big Box retailers and now it needs to change. “Small is back in style.” This blog post was written two years ago in March 2009 whereas the article was written March of this year, and according to it, there are big plans about to emphasize smaller stores by 2012.
An example I can especially relate to (I’m a bookworm!), a large bookstore like Chapters versus the ebook readers and sites like Amazon.com.
Source: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/ereading/devices/kobo-ereader-onyx/
as opposed to
Source: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SIn9ea2W6HQ/ScOr1EQ57SI/AAAAAAAAAWg/xCkBK4qNvn0/s1600/PT%2Bin%2BChapters.jpg