Venue: OG, Chinatown
Date: Saturday, 28 Sept 2013
Time: Around 3pm - 4pm
OBSERVATIONS
The departmental store was enjoying a busy weekend crowd with customers swarming the floor. SK-II booth was situated right beside the door of the departmental store, exposed to most of the customers of OG. While the rest of the floor is packed with customers, the team spotted no one at the store and the beauty consultants kept themselves occupied with administrative stuff like sorting out receipts and arranging incoming stocks. The lack of visitors could probably be due to the group of customers that the OG store in Chinatown attracts. Demographics of weekend customers in this departmental store consist mostly of older generations (above 40years old) customers and their environment does not need them to pay special attention to their appearance. In addition, the competitions of departmental stores had made this particular OG outlet a place of regular discounts, attracting price conscious consumers, who would be put off by the premium price of SK-II products. Nevertheless, the booth here had a strategic appeal for their target group of working class customers who would patronize during weekdays.
The booth was elegantly designed and brightly lite, exuding class and sophistication that reinforced the image of the brand. Size of the booth, although bigger than a normal booth, prove to be manageable with two beauty consultants. However, the end portion of the booth blocked by a pillar, excluded it from the vision of the sale personnel, making it hard for them to reach out to customers in that area.
Even though we displayed interests in switching brand and had sensitive skin, the beauty consultants only verbally assured us that SK-II products would most probably not affect our skin; she only provided the samples upon our request. Lastly, the team also noticed that the booth was not equipped with the skin scanning equipment that reinforced SK-II’s professional service. Therefore, the service experience was average and the team felt that more could be done to improve its service.
Next, the team approached the booth to experience the customer service. Upon our arrival, one beauty consultant approaches us to see if we require any assistance. We then probed her some basic product and brand questions, which she answered with professionalism. Nonetheless, the team felt that the sale person lack the passion to share product benefits and to convince purchase. The conversation was mostly a questions and answer format where she would answer us the questions we posted.
