No, this is not a trick. And 3% is more significant than might be immediately obvious. This is what any retailer can do: changing your staff scheduling program (or spreadsheet) from 30 minute blocks to 15 minutes blocks. The jargon is ‘granularity of scheduling’.

John Anderson from Kronos calculated an example assuming normal constraints of trading hours, length of a legal shift and so forth.

Assume ideal labour hours required:     360.7

With 30 minute scheduling:                392.9 hours will be booked

15 minute scheduling:                       382.0 hours will be booked

This is a 2.8% improvement. And all you need to do is a change a number on your spreadsheet/ in your software!

A 100-store chain trading from 9am to 10pm, paying $10 per hour could conceivably save almost $4m per annum.

An added benefit is that the number of potential shifts increase from 135 to 297. This affords the retailer amazing flexibility to give staff shifts that better suit their requirements, resulting in happier staff.

Dennis

 

 

The most current research (Hurst, 2007. Fine Food Network) has developed four plausible scenarios for the future (2022) of retailing/ marketing. Each of these scenarios has been developed by incorporating all current trends and developing the possible outcomes that would be internally consistent.

My way - an individualistic society with the internet and other technologies held in high regard; consumers are demanding and unpredictable, often buying directly from producers rather than big chains.

Sell it to me - buoyant economy with confident people, happy for big business to take the lead in meeting their needs and expectations rather than taking personal responsibility, handing over personal information so that they can be supplied with products tailored to their specific needs and preferences.

From me to you - subdued, uncertain economy with people concerned about climate change; young people building debt, older people worried about surviving on small pensions resulting in less disposable income, a contracting retail sector and an increase in co-operative behavior, growing and swapping goods rather than buying.

I'm in your hands - low consumer confidence, high reliance on government and big business for security and solutions resulting in a highly structured, centralized, supervised society with many of their needs supplied automatically and shopping done online with bricks & mortar stores primarily turned into showrooms.

• The obvious question is to ask which scenario is most likely.
• The interesting question to ponder an actual outcome that may be an amalgam of any/all of the above.
• The million dollar question is whether anyone of us are prepared for any of these futures?

My guess is that most (small retailer) businesses are only ready for, and operating upon the presumption of 'more of the same'. And whilst no one can predict the future, the one thing I can guarantee is that it won't be more of the same.

Dennis

 

The following stats are all from respectable academic journals. The research reveals the tricks of the trade applied by waiters and bell boys to increase their tip size:

Bell boys DOUBLE their tip size (increase by 99%) if they do the following:

• Open the drapes
• Bring ice
• Show the guest how to operate the TV & AC

Waiters increase average tip size by:

• Bending down at the table when introdcucing themselves (+17%)
• Offer a second piece of chocolate - on top of the initial complementary one - (+21%)
• Being pretty (not quantified)

I personally don't meet to many of these 'smart' operators in Sydney - but I wonder about elsewhere?

Dennis

      Below are a few stats about the Indian Retail market. I have been reading about it in the papers, but these hard numbers just blew me away:

•   Market size (total) 2006: US$ 300 bn/annum
•   Market size (total) 2015: US$ 637 bn/annum
•   Market size (modern retail) 2006: US$ 9-12 bn/annum
•   Market size (modern retail) 2011: US$ 60 bn/annum
•   Annual rate of growth (modern retail): 35%
•   Number of retail outlets (total): 12 million
•   New Investment by 2011: US$ 30 bn
•   No. of persons employed (total): 21 m
•   No. of new jobs in next two years: 2 m.
•   No. of dollar designated millionaires in India(2006) 100,015
•   Typical space per outlet: 100 to 500 sq.ft.
•   Space occupied (modern retail): 35 m sq.ft.
•   Operating Malls 2007: 114 (35 m sq.ft.)
•   New Malls under construction: 361 (117 m sq.ft.)

 

 

Dennis

 

Just had the privilege of spending the day judging entries for business-of-the-year submissions. Doing what I do, I naturally observed the retailer entries closely and saw a few common ‘mistakes’ or misjudgements repeat itself in almost every submission.

1. Everybody thinks customer service is a way of growing the business. Many don’t want to spend money on marketing, and then proclaim that they rely on word-of-mouth generated by good customer service. This is naive and wrong on so many levels; I should blog about that another day. (For now: Service is great for keeping customers, not getting them.)
   
2. All but one submission had any idea of the risks the face. Almost everybody identified ‘losing staff’ as the key risk. Occasionally one might mention OH& S as a risk. Nobody had any risk management strategies (or even just some awareness) of the risks associated with loss of a supplier, competitor activity, fraud or a zillion other things that send businesses broke everyday.
3. Rare was the retailer who understood the potential of networking as marketing tool.  It reinforced the belief that a number of retailers have a passive approach: open the doors - wait & see what happens. Retailing is tough and someone has to mind the till, but networking is how a sandwich shop wins the contract to supply sandwiches to the local council meetings – and so on. Time and opportunity must be created for networking opportunities. (They all say customer service is about relationships, but if the relationship can only happen on your terms in your shop, that isn’t really a relationship, is it?)
4. Their biggest concern is staff retention, but they explain in detail how they tell staff at the beginning of every shift about… whatever. The extent of training and personal development was almost exclusively limited to cross-training. They pretend they care, but they really just want to make sure they have all the jobs covered when someone leaves. If it comes through on a paper submission, how much clearer is it in the flesh?
5. Very, very few could identify a true, sustainable competitive advantage. In 95% of the cases they opted for ‘great customer service’. Invariably this was simply the only option they identify, because nothing else was evident in the submission. (And of course nothing the 'judge' would be able to disprove anyway.)
   

I am all for competitions like these; I think it gives contestants something to think about and also present some marketing opportunities in their own right. But it can also be a sad reminder of why so many businesses fail.

Dennis