Shoppers Need a Reason to Go to Your Store — Other Than Buying Stuff

The holiday season (by far the most important time of year for retailers) highlights the increasingly intense battle between physical stores and online websites. Given the large number of casualties this year, retailers must finally wake up to the core terrain over which they’re fighting: customers’ time. Online retailers offer consumers time well saved. People can find what they want, when they want it, with incredible ease and convenience, and with the physical good shipped directly to their homes in a matter of days (and increasingly, in large cities, hours). As often as not, they don’t even have to pay shipping costs, and returns are a relative breeze. To address this threat, one path physical retailers can take, of course, is to compete by going online themselves and even using their physical stores as a pickup spot. But that alone will not save many retailers’ physical stores. They have to provide a compelling reason for consumers to visit them that online retailers can’t match. The best way is to compete on the basis of time well spent — to offer an experience so engaging that customers cannot help but spend time with you! And the more time they spend with you, the more money they will spend.