More staff, less stuff

Black Friday did garner crowds, but the scenes I witnessed, and other scenes I heard about, suggested that many retailers were staffed to the gills.

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* Crowds at cash registers actually moved faster than normal.

* Returns were processed at ATM speed.

* Questions were answered from anywhere; associates were everywhere and ready to respond to requests of almost any kind.

* I was in two stores where my well-trained shopper's antennae said: "Enough already! Too many clerks are watching me." I actually felt pressured to be seen buying and just wanted to get out and go home.

This is quite a change from repeated reports of poor service and no service. "Find clothing stores horrible, from inexpensive stores to Lord & Taylor, no help to find something--merchandise all mixed up. They'd sell more if they'd return to having staff on the floor and more registers open." If that shopper was right, sales would have zoomed over this year's Black Friday weekend. What she left out was having the merchandise to back up the ads!

News of shoppers waiting in the cold for hot Xboxes hit all the newscasts, but the news media didn't cover what I experienced and saw as recurrence of bait and switch by, of all companies, Target, which may be too engaged in its holiday-share battle with Wal-Mart to reckon with the long-term good will cost of ad items out-of-stocks. The 28-page full-color Target circular that was delivered with the too-heavy-to-lift newspaper on Thanksgiving was headlined "2 DAY SALE. OUR LOWEST PRICES EVER." The cover page presented five items and five prices at various degrees of hotness. I visited a nearby Target and Wal-Mart on both Friday morning and Saturday afternoon. Both stores seemed to have 10 times more sales associates on duty than they usually have. Based on conversations with shoppers in both parking lots, Wal-Mart was doing a much better job of covering their advertised sale merchandise and satisfying shoppers. (Could Wal-Mart shoppers be easier to satisfy?)

I carried a circular into Target's camera department and asked for the Kodak digital camera featured on the first page of the circular. The clerk laughed. "We haven't had that since yesterday morning. In fact, we haven't had anything on that page since yesterday morning."

I asked about rain checks--the associate showed me the place in the circular where "No rain checks" was printed in what I later measured to be 8-point type and have printed here in actual size. I asked to see the department manager and, when he appeared, asked if other shoppers were as annoyed as I was at learning that the store didn't have the advertised merchandise. He said: "The shoppers were angry yesterday, but people who came in today knew they might not find it." I asked: "I don't see any Kodak in the case. Don't you have other Kodak brand cameras and docking stations?" He told me he had taken them all out of the display so guests wouldn't be angry at the higher prices. (Guests indeed! I decided that this guest would just check out.)

What does disappearing from the display case do to the Kodak digitals' brand strategy! As a follow-up, I called Target on Monday to inquire about the problem with sale merchandise. The well-trained rep explained that quantities of the holiday weekend sale merchandise available to most stores were very limited. That's refreshingly honest, but it does show that Target's winning streak is vulnerable. In fact, it's a throwback to the days when shoppers lost their trust in Sears'.

Happy Holidays, Mona Doyle

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