This article
asking if the sales person is dying as a job category caught my eye, that and
the discussion of the growth of the concept of “retailtainment” as the
direction in which retailing will move.
If you have read the linked article, there are a couple of
points with which I would take issue:
1)
The author grossly overstates the importance of
online retailing to the overall retail sector. Although it has grown rapidly,
online retailing still accounts for only about 10% of sales in the entire
retail sector.
2)
The retail sector typically ramps up hiring for
the holiday season in September through November then lays off a lot of those
hires after Christmas, so an 89,000 person decline in retail sales people may
not be that out of line for the period October to now.
Retailing remains important though with 1 out of every 10
people in the US employed in retailing and it is still where most people get
their first job and learn valuable skills, such as interacting and working with
other staff members and the public, time management and personal responsibility , that will serve them, if
learned properly, throughout their life. However, unlike when I first entered
retailing in the 1980s, people no longer spend their careers as retail
salespeople. Movement by stores towards part time work, lower wages and fewer,
if any, benefits (and I am talking things like health insurance and retirement
plans, not free snacks and a discount off game purchases), have kept employee
turnover high across the industry, approximating 67%, meaning the average retailer has to
replace two-thirds of their staff every year. This is why many large chains
have moved toward self checkouts with only one staff member monitoring 4-6
check out stations while Amazon
tests staff less stores, where the customer selects items off the store
shelf, scans the items themselves and the purchase gets billed to their Amazon
account. Simple once set up and no human interaction needed. Will this happen
quickly? Nah, too much infrastructure needs to get implemented for retailers to
adopt the model widely anytime soon, but it is coming.
This is why stores will move toward the “retailtainment”
model, in which customers are entertained
while they shop. Customers want an experience to go along with their shopping,
which is why they flock to a new restaurant when one opens. Dining there is a
new experience, one they cannot get elsewhere. In fact this is why new stores
have heavy foot traffic for the first few weeks after opening. Customers
looking for a new experience stop by to check it out, but once the new wears
out, they head off to the next experience.
So what do game stores have to do? Create experiences.
Tournament model stores, those with as many or more tables than retail space,
already do this, creating weekly or daily experiences for their customers. The
rest of us have to use atmospherics (appealing to the senses) to bring the
customer back. Stores and salespeople aren’t passé but we will have to work
even harder to remain relevant.
