Making Financial Headlines · Page 5
The Bedroom Becomes Retail's Most Familiar Fitting Room
· New York time
Primark has announced plans for home delivery, bringing attention to shoppers who avoid clothing stores altogether. Women interviewed by the BBC described their preference for shopping online, including one who finds the store experience demoralising. A retailer can have appealing products and still offer a visit someone would rather skip. Online shopping shifts much of the experience into the home. It replaces travel and changing rooms with browsing, delivery and decisions made in familiar surroundings. Effort has not vanished so much as relocated, usually into a room already containing several other unfinished tasks. For retailers, the opportunity is access to customers who do not want to visit a branch. The practical job of selling also changes. Photographs, descriptions and delivery arrangements must do work previously shared by rails, mirrors and physical inspection. A payment button cannot answer every question about a sleeve. Primark's plans therefore address more than the journey between shop and doorstep. They enter a competition over the whole experience of buying clothes. The bedroom offers privacy and familiar lighting, but it has other duties to perform. Retail has discovered that the customer likes staying home, which is excellent news until the business realizes it must now make the clothes travel and explain themselves on arrival.
Read this story in the full newspaper →Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.