I’ve been reading a lot lately about branding, and how the ultimate aim of a brand/consumer relationship should be akin to love. There are many articles advising marketers on tips to get shoppers to fall in love with their particular brand, and the tips tend to involve vague propositions like originality, consistency, social media, stand for something, and so on.  \n\nMartin Lindstrom, author of Buyology, claimed in 2011, that we may be in love with our mobile phones. This was the first real instance I read of people being in love with products. His theory began as he had conducted a series of neuro experiments, measuring brainwaves of participants as they were being shown advertisements to see which areas of the brain were being activated. \n\nHis conclusion at the time was that direct advertising does not have as large an effect on people as brands and marketeers believed. However, this led him to experiment further with neurological assessments, one of which involved measuring participants as they saw, heard, or held their mobile smart devices. \n\nThe subjects’ brains responded to the sound of their phones as they would respond to the presence or proximity of a girlfriend, boyfriend or family member. In short, the subjects didn’t demonstrate the classic brain-based signs of addiction. Instead, they loved their iPhones.\n\n\n\nWhile this is a genuinely fascinating study, our phones are not simply pieces of hardware with a value of $400-800 designed to simply make a phone call. Important parts of our lives exist on these phones. This is the connector to your family, friends, spouse, or the device you use to talk to potential partners on dating apps. A huge amount of business now needs to be conducted on your phone. Any time I walk into my local bank branch, the most common response I have to a query is to go on my app and figure it out there.\n\nThe portal I use to speak to my work colleagues is on my phone, and if there were a single day where I left the house without it, a huge number of potential problems could occur. I would undoubtably return home after 8 hours of work to find several messages and missed calls, updates and notifications, to tell me that I’ve missed a very busy day of events which required my attention. \n\nLindstrom is talking about an extension of ourselves in his study on how we react when we are using our phones, but I’m unsure if I ever really think about my phone’s brand. I have an iPhone and am obviously very used to the functionality (so much so, that another phone’s UX would annoy and baffle me) but I’m not an Apple lover or defender, and I don’t pay attention to their product launches, marketing, or additional products. I have an iPhone and the Air Pod headphones, and that’s it. I never browse their website and I never even argue with people who say Android is better. I assume it probably is better due to the fact it can pair with all other sorts of tech that Apple refuses to interact with. \n\nMoving the discussion away smart phones, I fixate now on brands that we may or may not love. Are people in love with Nike, Starbucks, Helly Hansen, Bang & Olufsen, Nerf Dart Guns? I think to times where I may have vehemently defended a brand, that I feel is being misunderstood by others. I remember showing up to a gathering while wearing new Ecco shoes and received some ridicule for wearing what some asserted to be ‘an old person’s shoe’. I began convincing everyone around me that they were the most comfortable shoes I’d ever worn, and in so, became quite defensive of my purchase, transforming into a battle hardened micro-influencer for Ecco. \n\nI recently got into an argument with a very close friend who mocked the fact that I had Chef ketchup in my house. He said it was basic, and a sauce for low level people. Does this kind of argument make me want to steer away from Chef, or does it make me double down and become a Chef stan? Do I now want to shout the merits of Chef from the rooftops without even understanding its merits, or having tried enough other supermarket ketchups to form an objective enough opinion?\n\nMaybe, rather than fall in love, the ultimate goal of a brand is to make its customers feel spiritually connected to it, or as if they couldn’t live without it. If you’re a retailer who sells shoes, you want your shoes to be a part of that persons every day, and when one pair eventually falls into disrepair, you want them back in your store to buy your next pair. Similarly, with apparel, cosmetics, snack foods, you can make your customer fall in love with you by being a constant in their lives. \n\nWhere things can take a darker turn is the tribalism, the likes of PRIME, Stanley Cups, Ugg Boots, or any other brand where you’re either in or you’re out. These are the brands that tend to divide, leave a bad taste in certain people’s mouths, and ultimately become dated very fast. The initial rush is remembered, and suddenly with even a year or two of time passing, those brands then suffer from their aggressive marketing and loud-mouthed champion consumers. \n\nInterestingly as well, from my research, it seems the most common reason for falling out of love with a brand is poor customer service, which can almost be seen as a sort of “breaking of the spell”. Oh, this product I love is being represented by a person who is making my life difficult and filling me with angst. Much like a breakup with an actual partner, the love starts to dissipate. \n\nI don’t truly believe you can fall in love with a brand. People fall in love with people, not objects. But I do think about the importance we attribute to certain brands and the plinth we hold them on, especially when our buying decisions are questioned, or we’re told to explain our affinity. Love is probably the wrong word… Maybe co-dependence? Becoming comfortable? Being tired of the chase and now you want to settle down with the brand you know best?\n

Martin Lindstrom's "Buyology" suggests we love our phones due to their crucial role in our lives, questioning our true attachment to brands like Nike.

Can you fall in love with a brand?

In the United States, there is now a trend amongst the likes of Target, Walgreens, and other grocery/pharmacy convenience chains to put items behind lock and key, using plexiglass barriers, to prevent petty and organised retail theft. \n\nAnti-theft technology has been very prominent in the retail landscape over the last few years with the Retail Technology Show in London and the National Retail Federation in the U.S.A having many dedicated stalls showcasing anti-theft companies.\n\n\nIn the United Kingdom, 2023 was the worst year for shoplifting according to the Office for National Statistics, with more than 430,000 cases recorded. This is an increase of more than a third from the year before.\n\nPaul Gerrard of the Co-op Group in a foreword to their report “Stealing with Impunity” stated\nIt doesn’t matter what data point you look at, which retail business you talk to or which retail worker you listen to, they will all describe a state of lawlessness on the UK High Street which has never been seen before; at times, many resemble the Wild West.\n\nPoint 4 in the report states that there has been diminishing confidence among retailers in the police response to crime, stating that “the British Retail Consortium found that 55% of respondents thought the police were doing a ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ job in tackling and responding to the retail crime they experienced.” With statistics like this, it would not be surprising to see UK brick-and-mortar retailers adopt the US tactic of putting items behind lock and key. \n\nBut are plexiglass barriers the best form of anti-theft and how adversely are they affecting retail sales?\nI’ve spoken to many retail operations teams who’ve told me that an effective anti-theft technology would be a top priority and must-have for all brick-and-mortar retailers, if there was a perfect solution on the market. Although, when considering any type of shelf lock option, there’s an additional burden on the floor staff to now operate as personal shoppers for any number of potential customers, simultaneously. \n\nFrom personal experience, when I’ve been in supermarkets and browsed items like alcohol or shaving razorblades locked behind glass, I’ve very rarely approached a staff member to open the case for me, even if I actually am interested in purchasing the item(s). Usually, this type of security has led me to buy my whiskey from an off licence and my shaving razors from a pharmacy, rather than the supermarket. \n\nReports from US shoppers appear to back up my own personal view. Just weeks ago, Marisa Gerber in the LA Times, interviewed shoppers on locked up items. One particular shopper told Gerber that he “Had to wait 15 minutes for an employee to unlock a case” at a Target location. Amusingly, the shopper finished their interview by saying “I’ll just give Daddy Bezos my hard-earned cash”.\n\nHow drastically does theft need to be occurring for a retailer to want to consider plexiglass barriers?\nJoe Budano of Indyme, a San Diego based retail security company, stated that “Inevitably, anything that adds to “the friction to the buying process will reduce sales”, a point commonly echoed around retailers globally and especially by shopper scientist, Herb Sorensen. In his 2009 book, \nInside the Mind of the Shopper\n. Sorensen famously stated that “Shoppers are spending more than money in the store. They are also spending time and racking up angst.” \n\nJames Klug, an American retail commentator, noted in 2021, that when his local Walgreens in San Francisco installed plexiglass security, the staff reported that retail theft in that store had been reduced from an average of 50 times per day to 6 times per day. \n\n\n\nWhether or not shoppers in the United Kingdom will see more items being locked behind glass or encased in plastic protective shields really goes back to the Co-op Stealing With Impunity\n \nreport. If the law isn’t in a position to assist retailers in protecting their goods, then retailers will do whatever makes the most sense to protect it themselves. \n\nSean Poulter and Dominik Lemanski in a September 2023 Mail Online article wrote that “Generally, officers do not attend and prosecute reports of shoplifting if the value of items taken is below £200.” Because of this we are now seeing “everyday essentials such as washing powder, milk, baby formula, butter, laundry gel and coffee” being placed behind protective barriers. \n\nFrom research Lemanski and Poulter gathered, centring around London boroughs in particular, “it emerged that home furnishing store, Dunelm, is locking up its duvets and pillowcases in pin-protected cabinets” and “Iceland stores now have rows of roasting joints, Persil and other laundry products in security cases.”\n\nUntil a better method of protecting goods comes along, it seems that the lock-and-key plexiglass method may become more appealing to retailers as it is clearly the most effective anti-theft “technology”. Whether its use can be justified against overall loss of sales and decrease in shopper satisfaction is another story, and one for retailers to consider. 

Exploring if Europe retailers will adopt plexiglass barriers to combat rising theft as seen in US stores like Target and Walgreens.

In Europe, will we see more retailers putting items behind plexiglass?

 Several news publications like the Irish Times and Irish Examiner have been commenting on lower interest in Black Friday this year, citing mistrust in the products themselves and uncertainty over whether the deals are really all that beneficial. The elongation of Black Friday could lead shoppers to think, why buy now when the deal will probably still be there in a week or two anyway?\nBrands like Primark, Home Bargains, Mr. Price, and other famously low-cost or discount retailers, choose to opt out of Black Friday, highlighting that their shoppers will get amazing deals all year round. Next emphasises that it is their January Sale (Or December 26th onwards sale) that is their big sale event and that Black Friday just muddles up that set-in-stone process. \nMany retailers choose January 31st as their end of fiscal year, meaning that there are a lot of reasons to have a sale in this period. Shoppers may have extra cash to spend, as they may have been gifted it over Christmas, retailers have leftover stock from Christmas that they wish to clear, and throw into the mix that a lot of people have time off before they go back to work. Some people may not return to work until January 10th or thereabouts, leading to a perfect storm for retail shopping.\nSo, why the need for a sale on Black Friday? \nThe explanations I look through are mostly that it occurred by accident, because there was a particular Friday before Christmas that American retailers noticed had a large spike in sales. The reason being that a lot of out-of-town folk would come into the cities and get their shopping done early. Some would even take extended vacation or sick days around Thanksgiving to get their Christmas shopping out of the way. It had more to do with avoiding the rush of crowds, than taking advantage of discounts. Incredibly ironic, considering how we now picture retail shopping on Black Friday. \nIn Ireland, our Christmas shopping phenomenon was always around December 8th, when people from across the country were known to flock to Dublin in particular, to get their Christmas shopping done early. It’s now quaint to think that December 8th qualified as early Christmas shopping when Black Friday is set two weeks prior. \nIt is interesting as well to see that the Black Friday sale begins a week before Black Friday. Maybe over the next years, we’ll see Black Friday begin mid-November. Maybe ten years from now, we’ll just have a pre-Christmas sale that begins on November 1st, making Black Friday an irrelevance.\n\n\n\nLarge retailers like B&M and TKMaxx have in the past ignored Black Friday but have recently dedicated an entire month to special deals, in order to participate in the shopper frenzy, but in more of an uncommitted-to-the-bit way. Essentially, this could amount to putting up some signs and directing people towards a section of the store that is normally reserved for discounted items anyway. \nNBC News detailed Black Friday’s impact in 2024 with Zoe Malin interviewing Barbara Kahn, professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University School of the University of Pennsylvania. \n“Retailers used to compete with one another to see who could open the earliest on Black Friday, and some even welcomed shoppers into stores on Thanksgiving. “Everyone wanted to participate in the rat race to see who could get people to run to their stores first,” says Kahn. This transformed Black Friday into a five-day shopping weekend beginning on Thanksgiving and ending on Cyber Monday. Now, because so much shopping happens online during that period, experts named it the Cyber Five. But as these five days expanded into a week and then multiple weeks, experts dubbed all of November “Black November.”\nAs mentioned at the start of the article, some retailers choose not to participate at all in Black Friday, as from the outside, it could be seen as a sale period that is spiralling out of control. We are seeing however, different takes on the Black Friday phenomenon from certain brands. \nMany retailers are contributing to “Green Friday”, considered in some ways to be an antithesis to Black Friday. Rituals, for example are running a sale where you can buy their refills for a certain percentage off, to help promote non-wasteful shopping habits. Dille & Kamille, Kilkenny Design, and many others all have their own Green Friday shopping alternatives as a way of attracting in shoppers. \nKeela, the Scottish outdoor brand has what it calls “Bright Friday”, where there are some small discounts to stock, but the major offer for the consumer is that 15% of all of their online sales will be donated to the charitable group Cash For Kids, who have an annual Christmas Appeal. \nRetail charts are still showing a surge in sales at this time, but the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission noted an overall decrease in sales of about 30% between Black Friday 2022 and 2023. So, if this year sees another drop-off, we could be exiting the golden era of Black Friday and settling into something a bit messier and disparate for all retailers. 

Explore the evolving relevance of Black Friday in 2024 as mistrust in deals grows, and brands like Primark and Next opt out. 

Will Black Friday Become Black November?

I wanted to write a piece on this topic, as it’s falling into that buzzword territory in retail. We all love the idea of a personalised shopping experience for ourselves, but the world is full of millions of other people, so how can a single brand or store be personal for everyone?  \nHyper-personalisation is the 2020’s version of the previous decade’s standard “personalisation”. At its core, hyper-personalization in retail is the process by which retailers utilise shopper data and AI to anticipate, predict, and deliver upon the needs of customers, before the customer themselves. \nSteve Jobs, former CEO of Apple, stated \n“Our job is to figure out what they [customers] are going to want before they do… People don’t know what they want until you show it to them… Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”\nIn this Steve Jobs quote, he is not really talking about the customer as one unique special customer out of several million. He is probably thinking of the customer as one homogenous hivemind, broken down into maybe 10 or 20 easy to understand chunks by age and gender profile. There are teenage customers, middle aged, and older, and products should be brought out tailoring to each, in order to remain relevant cross-demographic, region, and economic stratum. \n\n\n\nMost retailers today are rich in data. A brand’s E-commerce and Social Media teams should have a great understanding of their shopper through cookies and clicks, purchases and feedback through the website, but also how the public perceive your brand through social channels, in contrast to your competition. Big data combined with AI has, in the last decade, been seen as the answer to hyper-personalization. Our brand has all this shopper data; let’s now use AI tools to compartmentalize everything and this will show us who we are and where we need to improve. \nSocial media savvy consumers (excluding paid influencers) will highlight brands for their best products, the overall vibe of their in-store experience, the impact of staff, and much more. This is the power of the connected world and many brands suffer from a perceived lack of customer care in the eyes of the modern clued-in shopper. People will generally tell you what they think of you online. Are you a cool brand? A responsible brand? A cost-effective, yet good quality brand? A brand only for higher earners? A brand where older people feel younger if they buy from you or vice versa? \nJack Stratten, director at Insider Trends and RETHINK Retail Top Expert has an interesting take on the future of retail, in which brand loyalties may decrease amongst the next generation. As Gen Z and Gen Alpha, hit the working world with their disposable incomes, he feels that a new generation is likely to brand hop rather than remain loyal. He believes that “Retailers need to look more closely at the wider culture in which we now live” and that “younger customers have an insatiable appetite for new brands.\n\nCan hyper-personalization be done without AI?\nShops have evolved, for the most part, through “hyper-personalisation” but in a more natural and slowly evolving way.  A shoe shop from mid 20th century may have initially just sold shoes. But if that shop is still around today, it will probably sell socks, insoles, cleansing sprays, wax oils, polish, rain and stain protectors, different coloured laces, and many more footwear related paraphernalia. Because these are all things that people buying footwear will think about as add-ons to their shoe-buying mission. This would spawn from customer feedback, competition, and common sense; all of which require just the “I” from AI. \nSo, the short answer is yes, but what is lacking is the ability to measure, analyse, and act on your shopper data, other than merely patting oneself on the back for all of that intelligent product purchasing you did. Through the rapid onboarding of AI tools across the retail spectrum, it’s clear that AI tools are a necessity in order to quickly assess your shoppers’ behaviours, habits, and buying patterns as well as a way to eliminate wrong information, hearsay, and error margins from a business strategy approach. Members of different teams within organisations should really be singing off the same hymn sheets, rather than making decisions based off gut-feeling or a belief that the tried and tested will ring true again.\n\nBut does the shopper even really know what they want?\nFood shopping is my most regular form of shopping and I tend to visit one of three large brands, once a week. When shopping I have universal basics I need to get, many of which I am happy to buy supermarket’s own brand at the lowest price, but for most other items, I am watching for discounts.\nSo, I am not necessarily buying the same items each week. I will fall for the yellow stickers again and again and the 3 for 2’s and the 50% off’s and will end up with new selections of quite random items like sauces, ice creams, ready meals, vegan options, all because the prices were good (as far as I’m aware).\n\n\n\nWhen shopping in fashion retail, I generally have an idea of what I’m looking for, but again I’ll be very tempted by the sale section and will only buy full price if the item I need does not have any good variants in the sale section. So, for me, it’s always sale first, full price items later. This isn’t obviously how everybody shops, but if you were a Tesco, a SuperValu, a JD Sports, a Boots, or a UNIQLO, you’d have a pretty good way of manipulating what’ll be in my basket through your yellow tags and stickers.\nHyper-personalisation, in theory and by definition, is a way of predicting and delivering a product range to your shopper that will delight and surprise them into purchasing, as you have delivered a need to them, they have yet to anticipate. Depending on your store, this can mean many things. A store selling groceries may want an aisle fully stacked with every additional add-on a shopper could think of when it comes to pasta or noodles, but does this mean that every packet of peanut and oyster infused mix in flavouring will be sold off your shelves? Of course it won’t.\nIf you’re a suit retailer, and you buy in pink shirts to go with your popular navy suits, does this guarantee that every man buying a navy suit will then also buy a pink shirt? Of course it doesn’t. There is obviously a balance between hyper-personalisation, and I guess “hyper-generalisation”, but it’s clear that a store with the tools to measure and predict their shoppers’ needs will have an edge over their competition, even if it’s a resource they only lean into for certain key retailing decisions. 

How AI and shopper data are transforming retail with hyper-personalization to anticipate customer needs and enhance experiences.

VisionR Blog

Can you fall in love with a brand?

In Europe, will we see more retailers putting items behind plexiglass?

Will Black Friday Become Black November?

What is Hyper-Personalisation in Retail?