Marketers these days are focused on conversion of social media engagement to actual sales, and Shoppers Stop is a brand that has had fair success in this direction. Vinay Bhatia, Customer Care Associate & Senior VP, Marketing & Loyalty, Shoppers Stop, shares his perspective on the brand’s approach to social media, omni-channel retailing as well as uniformity in the brand’s language, and advises upcoming marketers to stick to the basics
Q] The concept of gifting is a big selling point for Shoppers Stop, though Indian consumers are not in the habit of gifting in the manner of their western counterparts. How do you address this?
This whole registry business that is popular abroad has never really taken off in India. In Indian culture, we don’t ask for gifts, we are not that open. We have two big initiatives in this space –
1. ‘Choose your own gift’: Customers have a definite point of view about what they want. Earlier, we could give them an expensive gift – say, a branded watch if they spend X amount of money. Now the consumer has a view on what kind of watch he wants, size of the dial, etc. He wants to choose his own gift. Based on this, we run a promotion called ‘Choose your own gift’ where we do not pre-decide the gift. Once the customer spends X amount, we gift Rs Y worth of gifts. Our whole store is open for choice. This has worked really well as this same gift amount is also given to the customer as points credit. When he comes to redeem his points, he buys multiples of that amount as per his need and choice.
2. Gift Cards: We have also introduced gift cards which can be loaded and reloaded; this is growing at a very rapid pace. We have tripled the volume we used to do on gift vouchers for retail customers after introducing gift cards.
Q] So do you think the consumer is now truly at the core?
It is no longer about the company giving something to the customer, it is all about engagement and co-creation - be it social media or analytics where you are using the customer’s data to help the customer better. You are empowering the customer. This was not true a few years back, but now it is imperative.
Q] Can you share a case study on increasing business through social media engagement?
We celebrated reaching one million fans on Facebook by giving a Rs 200 discount to all our Facebook fans. Loyalty analytics is helping us get repeat business from Facebook, as this activity earned the brand Rs 2 crore business from 10,000 customers. We realize this is a great medium for fun, joy, engagement, but it must also convert to business. This conversion will not happen overnight.
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Q] What is your primary focus with social media such as Facebook?
The primary focus is to listen, which we do very carefully. First, we find complaints from people and have a dedicated team to address these complaints as soon as possible. Also, getting to know consumers’ hobbies, interests and subsequently current trends is very important. For example, last year we were working on a product range for the New Year. We put up some related posts and started listening to people talking about what they would wear at parties three months in advance. We got clues from there, and created a range called ‘Go Glam’, based on these inputs.
Q] Where do marketers go wrong when it comes to initiatives on the Digital medium?
Many brands put out one message in Print and a radically different one on Digital, but a brand’s language cannot change from medium to medium. You can tweak it, but cannot change it. We have always used black and white colours in our communication and we do this across YouTube, Print and Facebook. Our humour is tongue-incheek, and remains unchanged across domains. We need to bear in mind that Digital is just a medium, not a new marketing line. You are not a Digital expert, but a brand expert with the same basics. I learnt something 15 years ago - that Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning (STP) is so much more relevant, given the increase in media.
Q] Omni-channel retailing is the new marketing approach used by the brand. What is the shift brought about by this approach?
In the past, you had the brand at the centre, reaching out to consumers via various media. With omni-channel retailing, we are bringing the customer at the centre. My customer can shop at my store in Bandra or at the airport store in Hyderabad or Bangalore or go to my website - I will continue to reach him through various media and he may take action anywhere he likes. My communication to him will be ‘omni’, so I am not bothered about where he buys, I will not tell him to buy at my store. I will tell him this is what we have and where it is available. To give you an example, before every sale, we have previews for the first three days open to our first citizen members. Communication is sent out by e-mail and SMS. An inland letter also goes out. Our First Citizen members are on our Facebook page too, so we put up the information there as well. The customer also gets the information on his First Citizen app, he may choose to go to the retail store or airport store if he is travelling. The shift in this approach is that it is not all push-push, the idea is to engage the customer and the sale will happen eventually.
Q] Since when have you adopted this approach?
For the last year-and-a-half. We have spent a lot of time on this approach although we have been in this space for two years now. We have hired the right people and created the right content.
Q] How does the brand use logistics and analytics to increase business?
Last year, we had Rs 45 crore of incremental sales just because we used analytics well. It is a core activity for us, we build our hypotheses, mine the data, summarize our insights and most importantly monetize our insights. For example, through our market-basket analytics, we realized that customers were buying only single categories from us, despite the categories being contiguous like shirts and trousers. Our first insight was to expand the customer’s wallet share. It wasn’t like the customer wasn’t spending, but he wasn’t spending with us. So we looked at five years’ data in a focused manner. Some customers are attracted to discounts, while others buy in bulk at one go. Yet others are brand conscious. In accordance with different segments, we sent out targeted communication and saw results. The width of purchase can be brought down to the last rupee through analytics. As a department store, we give customers points because we want them to come back and burn those points. Once we find that customers have Rs 500 upwards worth of points in their account, we send them targeted offers. When we open a new store, there is a cannibalization of our old store. Through our analysis, we have actually built a model to predict the cannibalization.
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