Personalization at Every Step — The new baseline expectation of today’s consumer.
With the ease of online shopping and an increasing number of brands available to choose from, customers now enjoy a level of power to easily choose brands that satisfy their needs and drop ones that don’t. And, what are these entitled customers demanding? Personalization.
After surveying 6,700 consumers and business buyers across the world,Salesforce found that 84% of consumers said that personalization — being treated like a unique individual rather than another number — is “very important to winning their business.” Salesforce also found that70% of consumers admitted a personalized experience with a brand influences their loyalty as customers.
At its heart, personalization is all about treating a customer as a human being. By allowing a customer to participate in customizing a product or experience for themselves, brands communicate to customers that they care about meeting(and exceeding) the customer’s unique individual wants and needs. Meeting the customer’s needs, in turn, leads to brand loyalty.
Nike stands as one of the best examples of a brand that’s taken the personalization opportunity seriously. True to its name, Nike’s NYC flagship store, The House of Innovation, continues Nike’s innovation by allowing customers to customize products in-store. Nike allowed customers to easily customize its products online for years,but The House of Innovation brings that level of personalization into the physical retail space in a way that marries the ease of the digital shopping with the real-life interaction of a physical experience.By using the Nike app in-store, customers experience less wait time, better in-store assistance, and increased access to product info and product customization opportunities offered, again, on location. Through its mobile app and onsite customization options, Nike finds further opportunities to cater to individual customer needs and creates an elevated and personalized shopping experience.
Following Nike’s lead, The Container Store recently opened a space in its Dallas flagship store that they call the Custom Closet Studio, which allows customers to meet with consultants to create storage solutions that fit their specific needs and spaces. The service comes free of charge and allows customers to show the on-site consultant pictures or videos of their storage spaces and then receive custom recommendations on which products to choose based on those specific needs.
With its personalized makeup kits, L’Oréal proves personalization isn’t limited to clothes, shoes, or containers. Working with microbial genomics company, uBiome, L’Oréal will deliver makeup kits that have been tailored to fit the unique conditions found on the surface of a customer’s skin. After receiving a skin swab from the customer, L’Oréal and uBiome formulate a kit based on the customer’s information that allows for maximum skin health.
In the end, these three brands realize that customization is all about elevating the user experience. Providing this elevated experience allows brands to distinguish themselves from the competition and win the loyalty of customers — customers who have more power than ever to choose alternative brands if they feel let down in any way.
That being said, what can brands do to bring customization into their retail experience? They can start by asking the following questions:
- Which aspects of our business, brand, or product doour customers want control over? Is it size? Color? Time? Shipping /fulfillment? Or, is it another factor?
- What tools can we create that allow customers to manipulate our brand using the platforms/mediums of their choice? Maybe it is a customization app or a simple in-store experience?
- How can we evolve our offerings to meet new consumer demands, desires, and needs? What other aspects of our brand experience could we let the customer control? And, would this additional customer control enhance their perception of our brand?
Want to learn more? Feel free to reach out at any time. We would love to chat!
The above piece was written by Connor Beck in collaboration with the Latitude research team.
Resources and original reporting of the above points covered by the following publications — PSFK, Retail Dive, Marketing Dive, Latitude Consumer Experience Evolution Report 2019, and Salesforce
More about Latitude
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Additional Resources
Want to learn more? Our 2019 retail report is now available and includes a long list of case studies and insights from Shopify, Dollar Shave Club, and much more.
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