There’s Something In My Pocket I’m Dying To Give You.

Here is a shocking truth. Shoppers go out to spend money. They don’t visit a shopping environment to waste their time walking around for no outcome. There are much more aesthetically attractive and physically uplifting places to do a power-walk.

They are called shoppers for a reason.

They have a pocket full of pesos and are dying to dance with you – if only you know how to fall in step with them.

More and more retailers are falling out of step with what is driving shoppers. Increasingly shoppers want to be excited to part with their money. Call it seduction; call it salesmanship; call it customer experience; call it value proposition. The shopper doesn’t care what you call it, just make it fun for them to part with their money.

Globally retailers are finding that discounting and promotional pricing on their own are becoming less and less affective and producing lower and lower yields. Yet highly seductive category leaders are finding they are growing market share, turnover and profit while their competitors struggle.

Understanding what will make shoppers part with their money is the key to success. In a world increasingly dominated by emotional and multi-sensory triggers, pure price stimulus is an extremely rational attribute. If you insist on reminding the customer that they need to think rationally about the price and remind them of the financial context of their world right now, don’t be surprised if the result is that you have shaken them out of their dream state and made them take their hands out of their pockets.

Retailers, it is said, have short arms and deep pockets.

Being smart about costs is how you run a successful retail business. But it is a mistake to think that all shoppers think the way retailers do all the time. Counter intuitively, the more negative the media mood is the greater the level of escapism into the emotional and away from responsibility and rational context.

Shoppers can still afford to spend large amounts of money as disposable household incomes continue to rise and employment still sits at historical highs. Shoppers still show – at every demographic level – a willingness to spend on items that are not rational. In the face of depressing global retail markets and so-called financial market meltdown, Apple still sold 1 million iPhones in the first weekend.

Shoppers everywhere are crying out.

“I’ve got the money. Excite me to spend it!”