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Shopping Centers Today -> February 2003
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THIS STORE LOOKS OUT FOR ITS CUSTOMERS — USING VIDEO, MIKES AND ONE-WAY MIRROR
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| Shop ... you’re on candid camera! Shoppers are warned they may be filmed. |
Last year, with many retailers hoping that a busy holiday season would put a shine on an otherwise lackluster year, one Minneapolis merchant was hardly sweating it. That’s because the year-old Once Famous home décor and accessories boutique isn’t designed to turn a profit on its sales — although it does.
The 2,300-square-foot store actually doubles as a retail laboratory used to study shopper behavior in what its creator, Tina Wilcox, calls their “natural habitat.”
Run by Wilcox’s Minneapolis-based retail brand agency Fame, the downtown store helps test merchandise lines for some of the agency’s retail clients, who use the results to decide which products they will carry and how they will price, package and market them. Because of the store’s eclectic merchandise mix, products that are being tested blend with the other merchandise, ranging from antiques costing thousands of dollars to 99-cent pewter charms.
The lab, located in Minneapolis’s skyway system connecting downtown buildings, also conducts research on consumer behavior that Fame uses to craft branding, merchandising and advertising strategies for its clients, which include Jo-Ann Stores, Target Corp. and Wilsons The Leather Experts.
Wilcox, who founded Fame in 1990, says the lab can be a far more effective way of finding out what’s on the minds of shoppers than the traditional focus group.
“For years, I sat through focus groups, and I always thought that there was a better way for retailers to actually get that kind of information,” said Wilcox, president and CEO of Fame, a subsidiary of advertising giant Omnicom Group in New York.
With its warm colors and curious assortment of merchandise, the lab is designed to get shoppers to linger so that discreetly placed microphones and cameras have plenty of time to record what they say and do. The floors are plush with layers of oriental rugs, and handcrafted chandeliers hang from the ceiling.
Agency staffers listen and watch from the so-called observation deck, a room equipped with video and audio equipment that is tucked away behind an expansive one-way mirror. They can funnel questions to sales associates, who wear wireless ear receivers, and guide them through their interactions with shoppers.
When testing is under way, a large sign with a blinking light is placed at the front entrance. The sign informs shoppers that the store is a retail lab in test mode and asks those who don’t want to be recorded to return when the lab isn’t in test mode.
The lab has gotten a lot of press recently, not only because of the concept’s novelty but also because of the growing public concern over privacy issues. However, Wilcox says very few customers complain because of the sign warning them that they may be recorded. Plus, she added, there isn’t much to complain about anyway — any tapes don’t leave her agency.
“We are not trying to spy on shoppers. We are trying to make them part of the research,” she said.
That research has been as varied as the merchandise, ranging from studies on the differences between the shopping behaviors of men and women to tests that measure how shoppers react to certain smells.
Recently, the agency installed a fake fireplace on the left-hand side of the store, complete with a videotape of a burning log, to see if it influenced how shoppers moved through the space. The goal, explained Wilcox, was to determine if retailers could use sight and sound to overcome the natural tendency of shoppers to turn right once they enter a store.
“We videotaped people for a couple of weeks, and 90 percent of the people who walked in turned left, which tells us that if you create movement or use sound, people will go to where that is,” she said.
Although the agency is still fine-tuning its research methods for the fledgling lab, Wilcox has set her sights on opening a second, even bigger lab in a location with more foot traffic, possibly at the nearby Mall of America. The next lab, she said, may be designed so that its contents are placed on sets that would rotate on a regular basis, expanding the type of testing that could be done there.
One day last December, Karen Schwartz, a downtown worker who stopped into Once Famous to browse, said she had no idea that the store doubles as a lab (testing wasn’t under way). But, she said, it’s not a bad idea.
“This is a more honest approach,” said Schwartz, who has participated in focus groups. “People in a focus group are always trying to figure out who’s the client, and who are we pleasing.”
— A.R.
 | Current Issue February 2012 |