Back from France I am wondering if retailers really take care about customers or if they set up changes they want and call them " customers benefits". How can we believe that customers are happy to think about taking their shopping bags with them, not to forget and have their coin for the trolley, check out themselves products, put themselves those products in their bags when cashier is trying to win speed records, bring back the trolley to its place,...? When everybody is talking about shopping and pleasure, or about stores 100% dedicated to customers (cf Group Carrefour and their Carrefour planet), it seems that we are away from this purpose.
Dayling shopping is definitly not a pleasure or rarely. Taking care about clients and their wishes will basically consist in simplifying their life. Take for example Carrefour new concept: what is really new and what is really useful to customers? Welcome desk? Kid's garden?Loyalty card? Internet? Nothing brand-new...Amazing services: "freshness", "quality of the products", "satisfaction"..is that really customers benefits or just what should be? Apparently hypermarkets simply forgot what does the word " client" mean...
For sure you can find new services but are they really matching customers expectations?Hairdresser, customers meetings, umbrellas...: as many services that will not work within a couple of years.
Customers need real support in their daily, boring shopping and money should exactly be invested where hypermarkets are now cutting budget. What first makes supermarkets or hypermarkets a pleasant place, where we want to come back? Human beings. We want to meet people in store even if this has a cost. And I am not sure that prices went down thanks to human cuttings.
Hypermarkets should focus on basics and stop thinking about hypermarket of the future. Only simple and true things are lasting.
