How Pirch Satisfies Its Customers By Selling An Experience - Strategy With RS

Starbucks of kitchen appliances/bath fixtures!

The new way to sell is not to sell, but create an ambience in which customers fall in love with products & end up buying it. How can we get customers to fall in love with our brands? Let me introduce you to Pirch. It is a brick & mortar retailer, which stocks a range of super premium kitchen appliances/bath fixtures. It has showrooms sprinkled across USA. Pirch believes its job is to make each guest – moniker for their customers – feel that their time in the store is the best part of their day – whether they buy anything or not! Result – they are likely to fall in love the offering present in the store. How is this strategy executed? • By greeting each guest, who enters the store, as if she were a guest of honor.     • Getting them relaxed, in the store, before they begin their shopping expedition. For that they seat every guest & serve them drinks/snacks! • The guest can then move around the store where products are displayed in warm & inviting settings, with museum like plaque describing each appliance and gives its specs!     • The display encourages guest to ‘touch, feel & play’ with every appliance. What is the insight behind this strategy? The more a customer touches a product the more likely they will end up buying it. From a behavioural sciences perspective touching a ‘product’ results in building trust between the product & the guest - more the guest touches the product more trust is likely to get established between the guest & the brand which is likely to culminate into sales! • Try before you buy: Pirch encourages their guests to try before they buy! Take bathtub. If a guest is desirous of buying a bathtub then they will encourage guest to bring their bathing suit & slip into the bathtub & experience its splendour. Or if they wish to buy a shower head – then they can take a shower from the shower head they are desirous of buying! Consumer insight: This reduces post purchases dissonance!     • HD Touch screen: The store also has HD touch screen on which the appliances in all its glory can be experienced. Here a guest can discover information about the product at there own pace! • Engage in a conversation: Take a kitchen appliance – stove. A guest desirous of buying it, can engage in a conversation with a chef, who will answer all queries relating to the product & educate them about the benefits of the stove as well as demonstrate its benefit by cooking a dish right in front of the guest & also encourage the guest to use the stove to cook any of her favorite dish! In an era where online shopping is eating into business of ‘brick & mortar’ stores, Pirch does not sell its merchandise on line. It only sells through brick & mortar stores. Despite that it is experiencing eye popping sales growth. What is the business strategy behind its success? Their strategy is not to sell its range as a 'product' nor as a 'service' but as an 'experience'. How do companies sell their product as an experience? Simple! Assault all the 5 senses – smell, sound, sight, smell and touch of the guest in unison to create a memorable experience! If you wish to understand how to deliver an awesome experience to your customers then I would invite you to read my article, published on InsideIIM.com titled, ‘How Starbucks Engages All Five Senses To Create A Memorable Experience.’ The article has a video embedded in it. Armed with this understanding you too can design a program to deliver an awesome experience to your customers. ———- In this series, Rajesh Srivastava, Business Strategist and Visiting Faculty at IIM Indore gives you a regular dose of strategy case studies to help you think and keep you one step ahead as a professional as compared to your peers. Rajesh is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore and IIT Kanpur and has over 2 decades of experience in the FMCG industry. All previous Strategy with RS posts can be found here.