Have offline retailers forgotten about marketing?

Walking around the mall a few things struck me. One was how many
stores have closed down, or look as if they are about to. It is a
natural result of the economy, of course, but it seems too have
gone even beyond that.

You see, the other thing that struck me was that the stores that
are trading are, in general, not fighting for business. It seems
like they have either given up or decided to hunker down and hope
for the best. Although there are lots of people here, they all
seem to be wandering around. Look inside the stores and in nearly
every case you’ll see a vacant-eyed assistant or two staring into
the middle distance while the tumbleweed blows around their legs.
They don’t have any customers to serve because the throngs of
people outside aren’t customers until they cross the threshold –
and nobody is doing much of that.

Where are the great offers? Where are the ‘today only’ deals?
Where are people hustling you to come into the store?

Almost every store has a sale on – up to 80% off in some cases –
but all those sales appear to be canceling each other out.

Sure, you can’t turn one of the biggest shopping malls in Europe
into a bazaar, but surely a bit of marketing wouldn’t go amiss?

Over the years I’ve lived through several recessions and a lot of
very tough times, and the thing that has always characterized
them is that they bring out the entrepreneurial spirit in folks.

When making a dollar is tough, you hustle up every dime.

But this time, that spirit seems to have gone into hibernation.

That, in my opinion, is why 2010 will continue to be a tough
year, even though the official figures tell us that we are no
longer in recession. The canny, clever, tricky, wily, ducking and
diving folk have gone to ground. At least on the High Street and
the great offline world.

Even when you do go in a store things don’t get any better. I
went into a big electrical retailer to ask if they sell RAM –
memory for my computer. Although this particular store didn’t,
they are part of a major chain that does, so getting it in for me
should have been easy. But no. The assistant looked at me as if I
was crazy for asking and said, “You do know you can save a
fortune by buying them online.” And then he recommended I look on
a well-known compuer memory website, nothing to do with the
company that pays his salary.

Buying online is a more obvious course of action, apparently,
than buying offline – even for people who work in offline stores.

Online, it seems, things are different. Online we have increasing
numbers of people taking chances, chasing dreams, making
mistakes, making money and keeping the spirit of entrepreneurial
dynamism alive and well and peeking through a browser near you.

All good stuff, but I do wish the offline world wasn’t wearing
such a defeated expression. For every store in this mall, I can
think of endless ways they could scare up more business and
increase their profits. The simplest way of all would be for
complementary, but non-competing stores to ‘loan’ each other
display space. That way they could all increase their footprint
and window space without any particular cost penalty.

Or how about the mall itself creating a promotion among
participating stores?

Or how about a group of stores getting together to give out books
of discount coupons?

Or have door prizes for every 100th customer to increase
footfall?

Or free muffins with every purchase (okay, that one may not make
too much profit, but I’d personally love it!)

The economy IS in turmoil. Consumers ARE tightening their belts.
But retailers have faced this before and by fighting, have won in
the end. This time shouldn’t be any different – IF the fight
hasn’t been kicked out of them already.

Now I’m off to spend some money and have lunch. See you later.

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