An Australian speciality food shop recently raised eyebrows by charging $5 (£3.37) just for browsing. And some shoe and clothes stores in America and Australia have also tried a “fitting fee”. In all instances the fee is taken off the bill when someone buys something.
Victoria Barnsley, chief executive of HarperCollins, recently suggested the idea of charging a fee for browsing bookshops is “not that insane”.
I realise that showrooming is a problem for High Street retailers, but charging people to come in and look around isn’t going to help. Indeed, it will hasten their decline.
Long before the advent of online shopping I would browse before buying. Often looking in different shops to find the exact product at the right price. So showrooming isn’t exactly new even if it is becoming more prevalent. If a shop wanted me to pay them to browse, i would just walk out never to return. I doubt very much that I would be alone. After all, I can browse the online shops for free and get what I want for less money. If your business model is in decline, slitting its wrists is not the best approach for rescuing it.
The cycle shop that provides a bespoke and personalised level of service to its clients is more like it. Building a relationship with the customer that makes them want to come back makes sense. Charging them to walk through the door is idiocy of the first water.
Poor Victoria does know that Kindles and other ereaders allow you to read the first chapter of an e-book, for free, I suppose?
Probably not. Another retail industry going the way of the dinosaur.
Adapt or die.
The trouble is that it still doesn’t work. Jessops did exactly what people say shops should do – provide a service beyond what online does, but people will still just take that advice and use it to buy cheaper. It’s very hard to make a customer pay once you’ve handed over the advice. You pretty much end up choosing only those customers for whom the price difference is insignificant, or doing what upmarket wedding shops are doing and charging to do fittings.
You get it a bit in software – people calling up to talk about a project and what they’re really after is to get some free advice. And in software, most of the value is in the knowledge and experience. You don’t pay for me to push some buttons, you pay for the 25 years of experience that means that i know which buttons to push.
I drove 30 miles for an interview at a company once, only for the guy to ask me what analytics software I’d used and then to explain a project and ask me which would fit their needs and how I would approach the project. I told him that he could talk to the agent and sign a contract with a 30 day notice period and then I’d call him and tell him.
The trouble is that it still doesn’t work. Jessops did exactly what people say shops should do – provide a service beyond what online does, but people will still just take that advice and use it to buy cheaper. It’s very hard to make a customer pay once you’ve handed over the advice
Though my experience is that the advice offered wasn’t very good. I was once looking for a pair of binoculars to give as a Christmas present. The advice I got from Jessops was rubbish so I went to a specialist store instead, where I got excellent advice and bought the binoculars from them. I ended spending more than in Jessops but I got something that was spot on.
How to lose your customers by small, mean degrees.
Isn’t it right, though, that a business can try something new? If she gets stung, she’ll wear it and do something about it or perish. If it means that she has a lower footfall and she’s still taking the same money (which is what she claims), her life is made easier and therefore, she benefits.
Ever been to a restaurant that asks for a deposit? What about the ‘service charge’ that started out at 10% in some places only, and is now 12.5% almost universally? In the latter case, have you ever sat down, seen the service charge on the menu and walked out?
I recommend you to the original story: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/grocery-store-charges-5-to-browse-20130326-2gry3.html . It’s not a diet food shop, as you’ll find out – or at least, she doesn’t eat there.
@Tim – similar story, 150 miles away and they wanted me to code for six hours as ‘part of the interview process’. A lesson, hard learned. I deleted everything before I left, regretting that I didn’t scatter KP all over their network.
Never been to a restaurant that asks for a deposit. And, no I wouldn’t. I’m not sure though that this a relevant analogy. Restaurants aren’t facing the same type of competition.
I’m not convinced that charging for browsing will result in the same takings as they are likely to piss off potential customers who might not buy on this occasion, but may come back later. I certainly would never pay a fee to browse. I pay to buy something. The whole point of browsing is to find out if the retailer has what you want at a fair price. Until you’ve looked, you don’t know. Having to pay for the privilege would certainly put me off even looking to find out, because I’m out of pocket if they don’t have what I want.