In This Chapter
Restructuring your establishment to make it more appealing to people from other cultures
Looking at packaging and prices from your customers’ point of view Bringing your products and services in line with demand
Diversifying your supply lines to buy from those who buy from you
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ost establishments in the United States are designed with traditional Americans in mind — people who were born and bred in the United States — with little regard for new arrivals. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.After all, if you travel to Mexico, you’re not likely to see many stores that cater specifically to American tastes. In fact, you’d probably be disappointed if Mexico became too Americanized.
In a way, the same holds true for stores and offices in the United States. You probably don’t want to transform your store or office into a replica of what you can find in foreign lands, but you do want everyone who enters your establishment to feel comfortable. You want people from other cultures to dig the digs and be able, without too much effort, to find the products and services they’re looking for.
It’s a little-known fact that how your store or office is designed and decorated can attract or repel customers, regardless of their culture. In this chapter, we show you how to make a few adjustments to your place of business (and to your products and services) to create a more universally appealing ambience and product selection.
The devil is in the details, and so are the dollars. When you’re trying to become the business of choice for the ethnic market in your area, the little things you do add up. Whether you own the business, manage it, or are sell-
You want to make sure that each aspect of “the customer experience” gives you the greatest chance of making a sale, gaining a customer for life, and increasing your referral business. In Chapter 16, we encourage you to take this one step further by diversifying your sales team as well.
Retooling Your Establishment from the Outside In
To get a feel for how prospective customers from other cultures may feel when they step out of their world and into yours, take a trip to your local Asian or Hispanic grocery store, as suggested in Chapter 4. Does the store carry the products you need? Can you locate everything easily? In all likeli- hood, the store would need to make some adjustments to encourage you to shop there. After you return from your trip, you’ll better understand the need to make some adjustments to your store or office to attract your target cus- tomers. The question is: What adjustments do you need to make?
As you’ve probably guessed, the adjustments depend on the customers or clients you’re trying to attract (see Chapter 2 for details on sizing up your clientele). Designing a store that’s more attractive to Hispanics and easier for them to navigate is going to require a much different strategy than designing one that’s more friendly to African Americans, Asians, Middle Easterners, or another group.
In the following sections, we provide specific recommendations on the types of adjustments you need to make to your business’s exterior, interior, and service hours, depending on the group or groups you’re trying to attract.
See the later section, “Adapting Packaging and Pricing for Diverse Clientele,”
for details on changing the appearance and pricing of products and services themselves.
Making a great first impression
The first impression is the most important one, and it begins with marketing and advertising, as discussed in Chapter 5. Your storefront design, however, gives you that rare second opportunity to make a good first impression.
Assuming your marketing campaign is effective, it should drive consumer traffic to your establishment. The next step is to make your shop’s exterior inviting enough to draw these same people inside. In the following sections, we offer some practical advice on how to choose a location and create a storefront design that’s more effective in drawing customers from the park- ing lot inside. We also give you tips on how to arrange your entryway and floor plan so those customers don’t turn around and walk right out.
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Location, location, location
If your business location is already well established, we’re not about to rec- ommend that you uproot your place of business and relocate to where your target customers live, work, and shop, but if you’re just starting out or are looking to expand your operations, consider location carefully. Research your customers’ demographics, as discussed in Chapter 2, and consider choosing a location where you’re likely to see a lot of foot traffic from multi- cultural customers if you need it. When choosing a location, put yourself in your customers’ shoes and consider the following:
Convenience: Is the site on a bus line or within walking distance of your customers’ neighborhood? Is it easy to drive to? Does it have sufficient parking?
Location: Is the site located near other businesses your customers frequent?
Space: If you’re planning a new store, does the lot have sufficient space to build a store and expand in the future? If you’re already established in a store or office, does the building have enough space for you to expand into if your business grows?
Visibility: Does your store stand out (in a good way)? Will passersby be drawn to it? Will people who know the address be able to spot it easily?
Your signage may be able to help increase your visibility; see the section
“Amending your signage” later in this chapter.
Safety: Is the neighborhood safe? Are the parking lot and streets well lit at night?
If you’re having trouble choosing an ideal location, consider using specialized software to analyze your options. You can purchase software that uses fac- tors such as sales, demographics, square footage, and demand to determine the optimum site for a store. Such software is currently available from com- panies including Digital Geographic Research Corporation (www.Digital Geographic.com) and Plan Magic (www.PlanMagic.com).
The location for an office that provides services isn’t as crucial as the site for a retail outlet, because you generally don’t need high foot traffic around an office. If you offer services that your customers want, they’ll drive a long way to get to your facility. Of course, a convenient location is always best, but it may not be as essential for an office as it is for a store.
Adjusting your window dressing
You may think people are people, but what your window dressing communi- cates to passersby may mislead them into believing that your retail business caters only to an exclusive group of customers. Just think about it: Are you going to shop at your local discount store dressed in a suit? If you’ve decided
The same is true for multicultural customers. A Hispanic, Black, or Asian shopper, for example, is probably not going to feel very welcome if all of your posters, mannequins, and womenquins look like Caucasians. In fact, studies show that when people of color don’t see images that look like them in an ad, the ad doesn’t even register in their minds. This is true of your window displays, as well.
Manufacturers today can produce mannequins and other window-dressing products that realistically depict all races and ethnicities, so there’s no reason not to have a display window that’s representative of all the customers you serve. Ask your vendors whether they have posters designed for customers of other cultures. If you use mannequins for displays, consult the company from which you buy or rent your mannequins to explore your options. Also check with your window display provider about the options they may have.
Creating a grand entrance
When multicultural customers cross the threshold into your store or office, you’ve just scored a great achievement, but you have no guarantee that they’ll stay. It’s easy to turn around and walk out. We’re fairly certain that you’ve done the same yourself upon entering an establishment where you didn’t feel welcome.
After your prospective customers are inside, keep them there by making them feel at home. Think of your entryway as the foyer of your home. You want your guests to feel as though they’ve entered a sanctuary — a place that will ultimately help them find what they need.
If you’re redesigning the entryway of your store, try the following to make shoppers feel welcome and not overwhelmed:
Clearly mark the aisles. Bookstores and groceries typically mark their aisles to help shoppers find what they’re looking for.
Add a store map. If your store is fairly large, consider placing a map at the entrance that shows a bird’s-eye view of where everything is located.
Malls, large hardware stores, and retail outlets often use maps to help customers navigate.
If you’re targeting new immigrants, make sure your signs and maps are bilingual. See Chapter 5 for more about translating materials into another language.
If you’re redesigning your office’s entrance, make sure the physical environs of your lobby immediately strike your customers as an inviting and comfort- able place to do business. Spend some time considering the effect that certain color schemes, artwork, photos, and furnishings are going to have on someone
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from the culture you’re trying to appeal to. If possible, seek the assistance of someone from your target culture in choosing your office décor. See “Adding diversity-friendly décor,” later in this chapter, for additional suggestions.
Does your office have a waiting area? If so, subscribe to some magazines that your new clients may find interesting. You can take a poll or just subscribe to a few and look at which ones get dog-eared or “borrowed” most often. Also make sure the reading material is in your clients’ language. This is a small ges- ture that speaks volumes about your care and concern for them.
Redrawing your floor plan
Have you ever stepped into the grocery store that you’ve shopped at every week for the past ten years only to find that everything has been rearranged?
You probably felt confused and betrayed by the very people you’ve been handing your money to all these years. Here you are, ready, able, and will- ing to buy stuff, and you can’t find anything you want! You’ve fallen victim to some cruel and unusual shell game.
Customers and clients from other cultures can feel the same way if they walk into your store only to discover that nothing is where they think it should be or that your office is arranged in such a way as to bring everyone in it bad luck.
Sometimes, especially with stores, your customers simply need some time to get acclimated. A grocer can’t inconvenience other shoppers by moving the dairy section to the other end of the store, for example, just to make a certain group of customers more comfortable. Marking the aisles and including a map of the store, as discussed in the preceding section, is usually sufficient.
An effective floor plan should directly expose customers to new merchandise and draw them to promotional end caps. It should also feel open and inviting while maximizing sales per square foot. When it doesn’t accomplish these goals, it’s a good sign that you need to revisit your floor plan and make some adjustments. Do some of your own field research to obtain ideas for modifying your floor plan. You can also benefit from retail space-planning software, such as Smart Draw (www.SmartDraw.com), or by seeking the assistance of a con- sulting firm. Display fixture manufacturers may also provide free floor plans for arranging their products.
In an office, however, you can make clients feel downright uncomfortable with the furniture arrangement, particularly in the waiting room. To overcome some of these problems and make everyone feel happier and more energetic, many businesses are embracing feng shui (a philosophy and methodology for arranging items in a given space to increase harmony with the universe), as explained in the nearby “Feng what?” sidebar.
Adding diversity-friendly décor
If you retool the exterior and entryway of your establishment but don’t make any corresponding adjustments inside, your customers are likely to experi- ence a disconnect when they walk through your front door for the first time.