Why a Frictionless Experience is Essential in Retail

In retail marketing, it’s essential to tailor unique strategies to every business while also never forgetting across-the-board basics.

During the Sept. 30 virtual event, “Building a Blueprint for Success: How to Leverage Technology to Optimize Your Asset and Portfolio Performance,” hosted by Commercial Observer Partner Insights and presented by Kinexio, definitions of success came down to bonding with your customer while making their experience as satisfying and frictionless as possible.

Webinar participants included Eilidh Fisher, manager of national retail marketing for Morguard; Robert Horst, national vice president, retail REM at Oxford Properties Group; Sina von Reitzenstein, vice president of leasing for Pier 39 in San Francisco; and moderator David Fuller-Watts, CEO of Kinexio.

Fisher noted that when it comes to customer experience at Morguard, which has almost 15 million square feet of retail in its portfolio, one size rarely fits all.

“We have a very diverse portfolio,” said Fisher. “There are two tenets we keep very close to our decision-making process. One of those is to elevate. We want to elevate the customer experience, the tenant experience, and the long-term value of the asset. The other word is authenticity. In some cases, things that elevate one property are not going to be authentic to another property, either because they don’t have the tenant mix or because of the diversity of the area. So whenever an opportunity comes up, we think: Will this elevate the property and is this going to be authentic for customers?”

Fisher cited strategies such as seamless gift card interactions and easy access to information, including product discovery, as ways to enhance the customer experience.

For example, when a customer searches for a brand in a kiosk on a Morguard property, that brand will turn up in the search for every store that carries it, even if the brand does not have a stand-alone location at that property.

“We looked at our existing tech stack to see if there was a solution, and we were able to find one using existing vendors,” said Fisher. “It’s a great opportunity to make our tech stack more valuable, and to make our existing vendors more integrated into our systems, and all in the spirit of bringing a better experience to our customers.”

With Oxford’s retail portfolio at almost 10 million square feet across five countries, Horst reinforced the importance of frictionless experiences, noting that in many cases, the experience with a property begins before the customer even arrives.

“Most customers’ journeys begin on their phones somewhere before they get to the shopping center,” said Horst. “But then when they get there, what matters are things like your touch digital directories — how easy is it for them to get around the shopping center?”

Horst notes that Oxford’s properties also installed kiosks where customers can purchase gift cards, yet another touch point to make the customer experience “better, faster, and easier to get around,” calling that aspect of the customer experience “table stakes.”

“If you’re not doing those things well and consistently across the board, you’re going to have a hard time,” said Horst.

At Pier 39, the No. 1 entertainment destination in San Francisco with over 11 million visitors last year, according to von Reitzenstein, those visitors break down into one-third each locals, tourists from elsewhere in the U.S., and international travelers.

The mix of stores and attractions, therefore, much reflect the diversity of the customer base.

“It’s everybody from all over the world,” said von Reitzenstein. “A traditional mix of three shoe stores and five jewelry stores, a typical mall merchandising scenario, doesn’t work here.”

Instead, Pier 39 is around 80 percent locally owned and operated small businesses.

“That’s what keeps it real for the locals, for the international visitors, and even for the domestic visitors, because they want to have a true San Francisco experience.”

Fuller-Watts remarked that given the customer mix, reinvention and finding new ways to entice customers must be a never-ending cycle, which von Reitzenstein confirmed, noting that the recent addition of a local brewery has increased local visitation.

“Now we have a beer garden and taproom. There are locals from San Francisco who might never have come to the pier but for the fact that we now have this brewery,” said von Reitzenstein. “So we’re changing with the times to bring new experiences in where locals feel invited and comfortable. For us, as an entertainment destination, it’s really important to have that balance. The crazier it is, the weirder it is, let’s try it. That’s been Pier 39 since the beginning, and it continues to evolve every day.”

While embracing the nontraditional is a way to ensure a creative and unique retail mix, the participants also emphasized the importance of using various methods of consumer research, from data to location visits and customer surveys.

“At Oxford, we invest in data and in teams of people to analyze data to figure out where are the trends going, and what’s happening next. But we also send teams of people to look at other destinations,” said Horst. “It’s really important for us to ask our customers simple questions, like what restaurant don’t we have that you would like to eat at, or what brands are we missing? Sometimes you get surprising answers, and if you didn’t ask, you wouldn’t know.”

Horst said that Oxford also uses mobility data so the company can see who’s visiting a shopping center and what neighborhoods they’re coming from.

“Sometimes you see a big gap in the map and say, well why are we not capturing from that community?” said Horst. “You can change your marketing and leasing strategy around that.”

Fisher notes that this sort of data constitutes “the core of every decision that we’re making” at Morguard, which she said is particularly essential given these rapidly changing times.

“We are very deep into mobility data, trade area data, and customer segmentation,” said Fisher. “Especially for us, being in secondary markets, it’s so important to know our trade area intimately and be willing to adjust those boundaries when the need arises. There has been such a flux of migration, of people moving out of downtown cores and into more urban fringe areas. So our trade areas have changed massively in the last five years. We have to be nimble and be able to understand, where have those people come from, and what are they used to?”