Give Customers Just The Hits? No Thanks.

Saw a post over at Matt Homann’s site (hey Matt, turn yer comments on, would ya?) that led me to a post by Andrea Learned entitled “‘Editing’ in the Retail Environment.” The pull quotes from Learned’s post:

“Not every laptop known-to-man needs to be available at your consumer electronics store. Rather, do some research and reflect that you know your customers: deliver the top 10 sellers or the ones about which your customers requested most information in the past few years. … If your camera store, clothing store, appliance store or computer store has done its work, you will have discovered the “top 10″ of your women customers’ favorites and those will be the ones you provide and the products for which you train your customer service staff to know EVERYTHING about.”

and

“In a retailer’s situation, narrowing product selection can just reflect an excellent understanding of the store’s core customers.”

Some thoughts on this, cross-posted in the comments over at Learned’s site:

Interesting. But a question…isn’t this fundamentally disconnected from the direction that things are going? Chris Anderson argues that we now have the option for infinite selection.

(I’ve argued this as well.)

Retailers limit selection because of limited shelf space. Now, well…there’s infinite shelf space.

You state above:

“…women want to know and trust your store to edit that first layer or two of extraneous product for them”

and

“…in a retailer’s situation, narrowing product selection can just reflect an excellent understanding of the store’s core customers”

The first statement is a broad generalization, the second is a rationalization.

To respond to the first statement, what if, instead of having to “read the detailed instructions,” a customer (woman or not) had the ability to know which items solved the problems of others with similar problems to themselves? It might not be one of the “Top 10.”

And to the second, what if, instead of focusing on homogeneity, the retailer was able to focus on the customer’s unique needs?

Opinion: The “sell just the hits” approach is fundamentally flawed, and changing. Selling just the hits, frankly, leads to the case where we have WalMart everywhere, selling the same stuff. Every intersection has the same strip mall. And every woman has one of the same 10 laptops, or one of the same digital cameras.

Now, that last sentence sounds OK at first blush. What’s wrong with “editing” things down to make search and selection easier?

Here’s what’s wrong. It’s not just about the commodities. Don’t you feel that every individual (woman or man) has *some* aspect of “themselves” that they need/want to express uniquely? And connect with others who share that idiosyncrasy? Sure, for some, a laptop is a laptop is a laptop. But what about things that someone might be passionate about, and *not* want to buy off-the-rack? There are going to be some dimensions (be they music, media, fashion, or interests, etc.) that everyperson – woman or man – has a unique perspective on. Without choice, and when being forced to select from just “the hits,” those unique aspects of a person’s personality atrophy over time, and eventually the homogeneity seeps in and bleeds over into, well…everything.

Oh yeah, one other thing:

“Barnes & Noble only stocks 130,000 books, yet more than half of Amazon’s revenues from books comes from titles outside of the top 130,000 books.” (source: Rick Klau)

Companies that focus on the hits-only model will be leaving money on the table. And a lot of it.