Display and Design Ideas - May 2009 - (Page 48)

48 | Shopping with Paco Rubber-soled revelation I can’t remember the exact moment when it dawned on me that tactics were more important than strategy. But the janissarian passion with which I embraced the idea was tied to a pair of shoes. I was in my late 40s when I ﬁnally left my prep-school shoe habits behind. Until then, it had been Bass penny loafers, in brown or black—and if I was feeling a little risqué, some low vamps with a tassel. I owned a pair of tie shoes and sneakers, but loafers deﬁned me. My politics might have been liberal, my social conscience Libertarian, but my feet were conservative Republican. My podiatric transformation came when I bought my ﬁrst pair of Ecco classic slip-ons. With elastic sides and rubber soles, the shoe, quite simply, ﬁt. For my traveling lifestyle, they were formal enough to wear on stage, yet perfect to spend the day walking city streets and country roads in a pinch. They were the closest thing to universal footwear I had ever experienced. It was a “bro-mance” between a man and a pair of shoes. I began closing my speeches and presentations with a line about the connection between thinking standing up and wearing comfortable rubbersoled shoes. My thesis was that whether you ran a store chain, were the CFO of an airline or marketed a brand of shoes, some real-time exposure to the point of sale was essential. Strategy was about thinking sitting down; tactics were about thinking on your feet. For that ﬁrst pair of Ecco classic slip-ons, I paid the full retail price of $155. Two years later, my signiﬁcant other dragged me into a DSW, the discount shoe chain. While she tried on boots, I wandered through the men’s section and found my beloved shoes at the bargain price of $79. I left my aging pair at the cash register and wore the new shoes out the door. Almost every day thereafter, that pair was on my feet. They got polished regularly, traveled more than 400,000 miles on airplanes and worked in more than 26 countries. Last Christmas, I bought (from the same store) my third pair of the exact same shoes, on sale for $23.99. As happy as I was at the price—I reﬂected on what I paid for my ﬁrst and second pairs. Even though I loved the shoe, would I ever be willing to pay full price again? And will I ever feel the same way about the brand? An early girlfriend once explained to me that once you got to French kissing, it was hard to go back to just holding hands. Our North American addiction to sales has undermined our understanding of value—whether it’s the price of gas, the cost of a home, a new Chevy or a pair of black Ecco slip-ons. Once we’ve seen what you were willing to sell it to us for, can we ever go back? At an electronics store around the corner from my ofﬁce, the Garmin GPS unit I wanted was on sale for $899. As I stood in the store, I checked the price on Amazon.com using my Web-enabled mobile phone and found the same product for $649. As delighted as I was to get it at a lower price, I began questioning anything I’d ever bought at that chain before. We can talk about the conﬁdence crisis in the credit markets, but where America is hurting is the conﬁdence in our store aisles. While many of us have slammed our wallets shut because we’ve had to, some of us have slammed our wallets shut because we have chosen to. There is something very wrong these days at the point where people, products and services meet. In any corporate headquarters, the farther away from the front door you sit seems to deﬁne your seniority. For management in America’s very troubled business communities, my prescription starts with rubber-soled shoes and a trip to the point of sale. Paco Underhill is the founder of Envirosell and author of the books “Why We Buy” and “Call of the Mall.” Considered to be the retail industry’s “ﬁrst shopping anthropologist,” he shares some of his insights with DDI in a bimonthly column. | May 2009 www.ddimagazine.com http://www.Amazon.com http://www.ddimagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Display and Design Ideas - May 2009

Display and Design Ideas - May 2009
Contents
From the Editor
Newsworthy
Consumer Insights
Greentailing
Editor’s Choice
Design Snapshot
Channel Focus: Convenience/Drug
Michaels
Shopping Malls
Right Light
In-Store Technology
Product Spotlight
GlobalShop Coverage
Trends
Booth Winners
Conference Sessions
Products
Calendar
Advertisers
Classifieds
Shopping with Paco

Display and Design Ideas - May 2009