Why We Buy (18 page)

The publishers of children's books do a fairly lame job of making their product appealing for its main audience—adults. If you're buying books for your own child, whose tastes and reading level you know well, you probably don't require much direction. But what about all
those grandparents and aunts and uncles and friends of the family who wish to buy books for the kiddies? They need some clear indication on the books (and maybe on the bookshelves and other displays) about for whom each book is intended—which grade (or age) reading level, mainly. But few children's books or book displays carry this important information. This is a classic example of a product's designers and marketers having no idea sometimes what shoppers require. You'll see potential buyers standing in the stores reading, as though they'll find a clue there, and then, fatally uncertain about their choice, they put it back and decide to get Junior something else instead. It may also be important to find a way to let shoppers know about the focus of a particular book—whether it's meant to teach relationship building or imaginative play—as a way to signal a book's appropriateness as a gift.

Here's another way publishers fail shoppers at gift time: Kids' books tend to be relatively inexpensive, meaning that if you're buying, you may buy more than one. But even in the successful children's series, such as Goosebumps or Lemony Snicket, you'll find few boxed sets, despite the fact that collections of four or five books would make a perfect present.

Though technically adults are the ones who select and buy toys, the kids are the real decision-makers. Even if Junior is still preverbal, you'll see his parents take a toy from the shelf, consider it, and then dangle it in the little one's face to get the opinion that counts. If he bites, they'll buy—it's why most toy packaging now allows you to push the buttons or pull the string without opening the box.

The principle, then, is simple: If adults are highly tactile shoppers, kids are uninhibitedly so. As Balzac's buns discovered, kids will touch anything. You've just got to watch them in action and then plan accordingly. But there are at least two troublesome aspects there, both of which require common sense on the part of the retailer.

First, you've got to realize that the degree to which you are successful at getting children to see and touch and pick up and then desire items is also the degree to which you will frustrate and annoy their parents—the ones who brought the children in the first place. Like those adults who avoid the cookie aisle or the checkout piled with candy and gum
and toys inspired by the latest Nickelodeon hit, for instance. Shopping is much more difficult when you're chasing after a child who believes he or she is the one doing the shopping. After a time, the experience of a store with too much kid appeal becomes one the adult wishes only to avoid. There's a balance there, one worth striking.

Second, if you're going to merchandise your store for kids, you've got to protect them from it as well. In other words, baby-proof it the way you do your home—wander it with your eyes trained on the area from the floor to about three feet off it, seeing exactly what kind of mischief can be created by an energetic four-year-old. The obvious dangers like electrical outlets and sharp-edged shelves should be easy enough to spot and address. But you've also got to make sure that heavy items can't be too easily yanked or toppled. We spent a day at a Burger King that controlled the line at the counter with a “hard maze”—a waist-high running ledge that doubled as a planter. In eight hours we counted a total of fifty-two boys and girls who climbed, clambered over, walked or jungle-gymed on that hazard, and I have no doubt that some kids have taken nasty spills there.

In one of my first assignments, before the popularity of cell phones, I studied three AT&T phone stores in different parts of the country. All were attractively designed. All had the same number of employees to handle roughly the same number of customers. One store, though, had a much lower shopper interception rate—the percentage of potential customers who were spoken to by a salesperson—and a much lower average time spent with customers. What made that store so different when all of the other numbers were the same? It took us a while to figure out that our underperforming store was the only one to employ a “waterfall” display system—a row of pedestals of descending height on which the equipment was shown. We watched various videotaped angles of the sales floor, and after a while a pattern emerged: In the underperforming store, staffers were constantly having to run to the rescue of phones and fax machines that were within easy reach of children in the store with their folks. The salespeople would be involved in a conversation with a shopper but with one eye always out to see what the little darlings were about to grab from that waterfall display. It wasn't just for the sake of
neatness, either; the store only had one or two of each model in stock, so, for instance, if an expensive fax machine fell off its pedestal and broke, there were no replacements to sell. The poor clerks spent more time rescuing expensive telecommunications equipment than talking to shoppers. It was smart to place phones within reach of curious shoppers, but not so smart to put them within striking distance of children.

I sat one afternoon with a highly regarded designer of interactive video fixtures as he unveiled his latest prototype, a video game station to go in the play area of a fast-food restaurant. The first two kids sat in the contraption and played it without incident. The third boy took off his shoes, leaned far back in the seat and worked the touch-screen with his toes. The next child took the hard plastic toy that came with his lunch and began pounding the video screen with it.

“My God,” the designer gasped, “look what he's doing!”

“He's interacting,” I reminded him. Wasn't that the point here? The fundamental lesson? Any technology that's located on the floor of a store, and that's accessible to kids, has to be built to combat standards—as if it were headed to Kabul or Baghdad.

 

You don't have to be a Wiggle to keep kids relatively entertained. But especially in businesses where customers have to remain in one spot and pay attention, providing child diversion is a must.

That thought will seem painfully obvious to any parent. So it's amazing how few businesspeople make any allowance for it. I recently watched a two-year-old run wild while her mother tried to shop in an establishment that really should be aware of the presence of children in the lives of its customers: a maternity clothing store. Diverting a child can mean simply setting up a TV and some Disney videos in a little alcove, as is done in French hypermarkets. (I'm always amazed to see that of all places, video stores frequently fail to run kiddie programming on at least one monitor, leaving parents free to browse a few minutes longer.) Placing some plastic toys in a five-foot-square area where Mom and Dad can glance from time to time can suffice in a small store. Ikea is famous for its kiddie pen, the avalanche of colorful plastic balls having
become a friendly icon. No surprise that a Swedish chain would be at the forefront here; Europeans—in particular, Scandinavians—are less paranoid about the safety of their children and will leave them in the custody of store personnel while they shop. A few years ago there was a ruckus in New York when a young Danish woman parked her sleeping baby in a stroller just outside a restaurant's window, then went inside (to a window table) to enjoy lunch. Police were called, child welfare workers descended and the woman very nearly had a custody battle on her hands.

For whatever reason, American parents
are
paranoid where their kids are concerned. Here, Ikea has had to institute a rigorous ID check for adults trying to retrieve their children from the play area. Many parents simply refuse to leave their children in play areas that can't be seen from the rest of the store at all times. A few years ago Blockbuster built a clever little drive-in theater for kids, complete with big-screen videos and tiny cars where the tykes could sit and watch. Unfortunately, it was positioned in a corner just inside the exit, giving most parents the willies. We don't really have much experience with public day care here. So it's no surprise that children end up traipsing through our stores and banks and other retail businesses.

We did a study for Wells Fargo a few years ago showing that 15 percent of all those entering its branches are under seven years old.

“What's your most effective selling tool?” I asked a loan officer there. She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a lollipop. She said it could usually be counted on to buy her two minutes of uninterrupted face time with a parent, all she needed. The bank also offers a coloring book starring a puppy who lives in a Wells Fargo branch. That and a handful of crayons can add up to a brand-new home equity loan, no question. In New York, Citibank produces an activity book for children. In both cases, the banks are buying quiet today and—given how we like to fetishize our happy childhood experiences—loyal customers of tomorrow.

There are just a few principles of designing a good area (as opposed to a holding pen) for children. The sight lines must allow parents to see their children at any time, so it must be in an open area, unshielded by
walls or obstacles. It must be safe. It must be large enough. And ideally, it would allow children of different ages to be segregated. Otherwise, the older kids will always dominate, making it an unhappy experience for the small ones who get in their way.

Car dealers tend to do a lousy job of diverting children, which is disappointing, when you think about it, because kids are already disposed to liking cars—toy ones, at least. A lot could be done, but the car business is far behind most. As a result, shopping for a car is more difficult for families than it needs to be. If no car dealer addresses this, then all are safe. But the minute Ford or Chrysler starts acknowledging the reality of kids in dealerships, the rest will be forced to respond. In Japan, Nissan is divided into Blue and Red dealerships, each selling different lines of cars. But both feature beautiful toy car displays in the front of the store that showcase the models and colors the dealership sells. Since a lot of the dealerships are small and don't have the sprawling parking lots we find in the U.S., the toy cars serve as an easy way for people to preshop. I tried to get Nissan to stock enough toys so that dealers could hand them out like lollipops. It's good, cheap, instantaneous advertising, and in the twenty-first century, even a six-year-old has a voice in the family automobile purchase.

Another place where children must be amused is in the pharmacy waiting area. There, among sickly adults waiting for prescriptions to be filled, the charm of youthful exuberance wears thin. Many of those children are likely to be ill themselves, which doesn't do much for their dispositions. Drugstores can easily stock toys or coloring books and crayons near the waiting area, creating an efficient adjacency. That's another great way of amusing children—give them something to shop while their parents do the same thing just a few feet away. Especially given how many parents resort to bribery as a way to quiet their progeny, this could be a smart strategy all around. Since women still do most of the shopping, it makes sense to place products for children near sections being shopped by their mothers. Is this child exploitation, or is it doing a mother a favor? Maybe it can be both.

 

A few years ago I read a news report about a convenience store that was having problems with teenagers loitering in the parking lot at night. Hiring a security guard to stand out there and scowl was an expensive solution. So here's what the store did: It began piping the smooth, suave sounds of Mantovani through the loudspeakers. No more loiterers.

Teenagers are still young enough to be total suckers for image, for all the blandishments of advertising, identity marketing, media messages, trends and labels. They still believe in a brand name's power to confer status, cool, charisma, knowledge. They construct their identities by the shopping choices they make—they're a lot like adults were back in the '50s, before we all became so wise in the ways of image hucksters. Kids also have fewer media choices than adults, so messages come through to them in concentrated form. They love to scour the world for icons or any other clues that something—some product, some store—is intended for them. They'll flee easy-listening music as if it were anthrax, while we can tolerate just about anything.

Which should make them fairly easy marks in the marketplace. But they have some built-in limitations, too. During a study of how jeans are sold, we noticed an odd pattern to adolescent shopping: Teenagers in groups spent a relatively long time in the jeans section (three minutes, fifty-two seconds) compared to teens with parents (two minutes, thirty-two seconds). And teens in groups examined one third more product. But the percentage of teenagers with parents who bought jeans was nearly double the number of teens in groups who bought, 25 percent to 13 percent. Then we realized: They come with their friends to browse—to preshop, as it were. Having made their choices and gained the approval of a jury of their peers, they return with Mom or Dad—the wallet bearer—and make quick work of the transaction, wishing not to risk the humiliation of being seen in public buying clothes with their ancient caretakers.

Does this not suggest that commerce in general and banking in particular can do a better job of serving young shoppers? How about inaugurating direct deposit of allowance, accessible by ATM/debit cards? Does any retailer still offer layaway, and should it become common again, but aimed at young shoppers? We've done some research
for Crédit Agricole, the French financial institution, which is building branches for customers in their late teens and early twenties—the Gen Y bank. It won't look like a bank or sound like one; the design, graphics, operating hours, staffing, music and so on will all reflect its Gen Y target. It'll hold on-site seminars on how to rent a first apartment, how to finance a motorcycle etc.