New ideas of 15 groups of people in retailing

MKT 315 101 Focus Paper 3 CREATIVE APPLICATIONS FOR 15 GROUPS OF PEOPLE RELATED TO URBAN OUTFITTERS STORE Xiaojing Jiang June/12 Focus Store: Urban Outfitters
Location: 119 E Grand River Ave, East Lansing, MI 48823
Dates and times visited:
June 11： 4: 30 pm -6: 30 pm
Total time spend: 2 hours
Competitor:
Forever 21
Location: 3017 Preyde Blvd, Lansing Charter Township, MI 48912
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
This paper is about new and creative ideas for 15 different groups of people affect the success of retailing business of Urban Outfitters store on Grand River Avenue. My focus store is doing well in many areas. However, I believe the store can be better in the future with application of these new ideas that I derived.
PART TWO: Creative Ideas for 15 Groups of People
The list of 15 groups of people subdivides into five different categories, which include:
A. Inside Improvement
B. Connected Relationship Enhancement
C. Public Media Universality
D. Critical Figure Influence
E. Public Assistance
A. Inside Improvement
This category focuses on the inside of Urban Outfitters store on Grand River Avenue with an aim of improving the store policies. In this case, I will address the two most important groups in retailing which include customers and staffs. Specifically, this entails four small groups of individuals that include past customers, present customers, future customers, and staff. Notably, improving the store policies will enhance effectiveness, cohesion, and utilization of the available space and resources in the retail. The proposed ideas are effective, essential, and yields positive results within a short time.
1. PAST CUSTOMERS
We can value past customers, motivate them, and encourage them to come back in the following two ways:
a) Do not give up on past customers and keep communicating with them
Past customers are the most essential people in retailing because they bear the goodwill and history of the retail.
We should try our best to invite past customers to come back to shop. We can achieve this by addressing their queries and establishing constant communication with them for purposes of understanding their views on our retailing and store keeping.
The communication mode should involve the sending of emails says that our store miss you; updating them on the promotions, new products, discounts, and any changes in our retail.
b) Sending surveys with rewards to past customers.

Addressing the feedback of the past customers can make retailing so easy for the store since it will know how to serve target customers.
We can also get the past customers back to our retail by sending surveys with rewards to them. This will include short phone surveys that will derive important information on customers’ views, likes, and dislikes about the store and products with an aim of increasing the efficiency of the store. As an enticement, we can offer them cash rewards for any goods they buy from the store. This will encourage past customers to present their grievances and offer the management an opportunity to offer remedies for bad experiences with an aim of preventing target customers from such experiences.
Ideally, this strategy has been effective in many organizations and departments since it enhances efficient customer service, address to customers’ feedback, and enable the store to meet the customers’ needs. Past customers will pass the effectiveness to target customers.
2. PRESENT CUSTOMERS
Present customers define the growth, turnover, market position, competitiveness, and success of the retail. As such, the store must strive to address and satisfy their needs by making their shopping experience enjoyable and reducing complaints and unpleasant experiences.
In maintaining the present customers, we should make an urban outfitters loyalty program. Many stores have membership card. Urban outfitters store does not. We should encourage them to subscribe to the membership of our store by offering them membership cards with an aim of encouraging them to be loyal customers, to shop in this store for the same product, and spend more. We should offer incentives or special offers to them and reward their loyalty to the retail store. We should consequently reward them with points that they can exchange with some small products or services in our store. This may include free shipping services, gifts, or card of appreciation.
3. FUTURE CUSTOMERS
While maintaining the current customers, we also need to think about our future. Future customers are also important to us in order to expanding our business and keep the store running further.
We should motivate future customers by offering them first time shopping payback in the first time they spend money in our store products. This will include significant discounts for the next purchases, which will encourage them to spend more. We can also encourage current customers to invite their friends by offering discounts to themselves and their friends and families. Advertising our products, services, and our retailing experience will also encourage future customers to shop with us.
4. STAFF
We should ensure that the management and other staff have a better working environment and that we address their welfare. This forms the basis of the store’s success since the staff will consequently serve the customers encouraging them to spend more money on our store.
To achieve this, I decide to vote one to two ” super stars of the month”. This staff will be elected by customers and sales made.
We must recruit competent staff, reward their commitment and productivity; motivate them to address the customers’ needs. For the good staffs we have, the store will give them convenient off days, and recognize their performance at the end of the month by promoting them where possible.
B. Connected Relationship Enhancement
This category includes vendors and competitor, which have a tight connection with the store. To enhance their effectiveness in the store, we should establish strong relationships by developing efficient communication modes.
5. VENDORS
Vendors are channel parterres to retailers. We want to keep good relationships with them in order to achieve more completive advantages than competitors do.
We should ask vendors to offer preferential and competitive prices as well as fast shipping services to us to enable our store establish competitive advantage in the market. This will guarantee quick access, availability, and affordability of our products in different countries, which increases the competitive advantage of the retail store.
As the survey I did show our stores best competitor are the forever 21 store in east wood. Their best completive advantage against us is that they offer a lower price. Therefore, we try to make the prices lower by partner with our vendors.
6. COMPETITORS
Competitors can destroy our store or help us in different ways. We must know our competitors and their marketing strategies with an aim of establishing a sustainable competitive advantage.
We can choose to collaborate with our biggest competitor forever 21 at east wood town center since we may not be offering universal products. This will derive huge turnover and strong market presence. Our two stores are the two of the strongest stores in this local area with similar target customers. We can work with each other. Such a partnership may involve recommending customers to each other by emails and add the other stores address.
C. Public Media Universality
Public media involves the media, advertising, and rating. Notably, the social media, which is part of public media, affects most populations and will subsequently affect the store.
7. MEDIA
Media can make our stores image looking good to the public. If the media talks about bad sides of our store, we would lose many future customers.
We should create good relations with the media where we request and entice them to present free good news about the store to the public. This will help in presenting our history, services, products, offers, promotional events, and customer service, which will create a positive impact to the public. This will involve telling the store news in the local newspaper, news TV programs, and radio to grab the attention of prospective customers.
8. PROFESSIONAL AGENCIES
Our store is doing pretty well in social media sites. Here is something we did not do before, and we can accomplish to get to more customers by the helping to adervertising agencies.
Advertising agencies will make a great and cool brand image of the store. This will form our advertising message that will entice target customers to prioritize our products and services.
The advertising agencies will create an advertising campaign for the store that will encourage customers to visit our store for enquiries and purchases. These agencies present simple questions in the advertising campaign for purposes of deriving the right marketing information and advertising our products. By inviting people to our store, we can make more future sales.
9. RATING AGENCIES
Rating agencies bear the responsibility of collecting the customers’ views, queries, and recommendations. The agencies encourage the customers to rate the stores efficiency, products, and services. The ratings will connect customers to their satisfaction or displeasure through their opinions. The rating can take place in questionnaires, coupons, or website ratings. This will encourage the store to address the collected views with an aim of improving our ratings, which enhances our productivity.
D. Critical Figure Influence
This category involves three groups that include opinion leaders, celebrities, friends, and families. They have significant effects on certain customer groups where these effects are becoming more quickly spread and works with lower costs.
10. OPINION LEADERS
Fashion bloggers now have a great impact of what young people should wear. their influence is getting huge in defining what is the fashion trend of this season, and what clothes and accessories are the must have ones.
Our store should work with fashion bloggers. We ask them to recommend our products in their blogs by offering this product free.
These include bloggers who present their views on the social media. By establishing a close association with the bloggers, we will have a platform to market our products by allowing the bloggers to make their recommendations of the store. Such recommendations will reach a huge audience, which enhances our market presence and encourages potential customers to buy from us.
11. CELEBRITIES
Celebrities have a huge influence in the global market through their followers. When people do not know what to wear, they follow the celebrities. Customers feel nice when they wear the same item as their dressing idol. Our store should make the price affordable for customers.
We should invite our customers to vote their top three best dressing idol celebrities. In addition, make three lines of clothes with them. Like Kate moss did for top shop.
We can encourage famous celebrities to identify with our products as brand ambassadors. This will encourage their followers to identify with such products, which promotes our products in a big way.
12. FRIENDS AND FAMILIES
Friends and families can reinforce our marketing and market presence since they form a formidable customer base. We can enhance this by offering them discounts and after sale services that will strengthen and increase our customer base.
We should offer our staffs and loyalty customers three times a year of a huge presale event. It will be nice if their friends and families think highly of our store. Therefore, we treat them like VIP customers. Presale is attractive for most people. They can purchase new and seasonal products in a discounted price at about 30%off while others still need to pay the full price. They have better choice of products and more sizes available.
E. Public Assistance
The store also need some help from three categories that include universities, government agencies, and financial organizations. These institutions can offer financial advice, capital, professional advice, and professional staff.
13. SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES
Our store relies on the students of Michigan state university. It is nice to have the students working in our store when they graduate. They would have a better knowledge of our store. This idea is a bit crazy but in fact, it is realistic and works for both the Michigan state university students and our store. Our store can offer scholarship to good students in retailing who promise will in return come back and work at the store after graduation. The store can select the students they want for the future by equally offer internship opportunities to the universities. Good students would create a competent and experienced working force for the store for the future with the financial help of our store.
14. GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
The store must adhere to the government policies, which will guide the store on the acceptable mode of operations. This will ensure that the store stays in line with the changes in business law, which derives goodwill and competitive advantage for the store. In most cases, the government defines the code of conduct in certain industries for purposes of establishing fair competition, uniformity, and sustainability. The store should therefore adhere to the set government policies. Failure to adhere to these policies may attract huge fines and penalties that may jeopardize the competitiveness, goodwill, and going concern of the retail store in the industry. In following the government policies, the store will enhance sustainability by conserving the environment, offer high quality products, and establish better working conditions for the staff.
15. FINANCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
Our store holds different events from time to time. These events seek to establish good relations with several big financial organizations with an aim of soliciting funds to support our donation programs. In establishing these relations, the store develops an effective communication channel and presenting our financial information to the public. Moreover, by advertising the financial organizations in our store, we create a good public image and establish good financial relations. These will provide the requisite operating finances for the store. They will also offer financial advice to the store and allow us to produce and acquire relevant products that define our business.
PART THREE: CONCLUSION
These 15 groups of people are all essential for our store. We want to survive and keep developing with the help of them and by enhance ourselves. These creative ideas can help the store in the ways that store can improve to the best.
Some of them sound a little too big, but they are all realistic. It is better to create a win-win situation for everyone.