Chicks Rule at CEA Forum

Let women browse the retail aisles, but don’t stalk them. Be courteous but firm when they return products. Don’t underestimate the spending power of women.

These were just a few of the lessons imparted by industry experts at the Consumer Electronics Association's (CEA) 2004 Industry Forum, held in October.

Best Buy headlined the event, which drew a record crowd of more than 600 people. Company executives discussed the retailer’s customer centricity initiative, focusing in particular on the prototype “Jill” stores in California.

Featuring play areas for kids, soothing background music and kinder, gentler salespeople, the Jill stores cater to moms—a segment that apparently controls 80 percent of household spending, according to Jen Drechsler of the consulting firm Just Ask a Woman. Drechsler, who is working with Best Buy on the Jill stores, explains that women have been “harboring bad retail experiences for 21 years.”

Best Buy is trying to turn this phenomenon around with the Jill stores, where aisles are wide to accommodate strollers, and salespeople are specially trained to tone down the technical talk, according to Nancy Brooks, Best Buy’s leader for the Jill segment. Brooks says that when a customer asks which digital camera is better, instead of comparing pixel counts the salesperson replies, “’What do you want to do with the camera? Do you want to zoom in on the kids while they’re playing soccer?’”

Brooks claims that sales are up dramatically at the prototype Jill store and, indeed, at other area stores, suggesting that Best Buy either attracted more customers or got them to buy more than usual at the Jill store.

However, Brooks did not comment on the increased cost of sales, nor the breakdown of males vs. female shoppers. After one Industry Forum attendee—a male—suggested that men too want a shopping experience like the one Jill affords, Brooks conceded, “Most of the things that matter to women [regarding shopping for consumer electronics] also matter to men.”

One down side of the Jill store is that it has “not necessarily decreased [product] returns because women feel so comfortable with the process,” says Brooks.

In fact, women behave differently than men when it comes to returning consumer electronics. That’s according to a series of focus groups recently held by CEA in partnership with the Reverse Logistics Executive Council (RLEC). RLEC chairman Dale Rogers, professor of supply chain management at the University of Nevada, presented some of the findings during the CEA Industry Forum.

In a clip of one of the female focus groups, one of the participants says of men, “They don’t return. Never. If it doesn’t work, they just put it in a corner.” Vigorous nods throughout the room.

Another participant pipes in, “If it’s a $1,000 TV, of course, but if it’s $50 or $100, my experience has been they’re [men are] much less willing to go back to the store, to deal with it.”

Then there were the men. In one of those focus groups, a participant admits, “I don’t let my wife do it [return product.]. I feel they take advantage. They won’t take advantage of me.”

As for store return policies in general, Rogers concludes, based on all of the focus groups, that consumers most appreciate stores that have the strictest return policies, consistently applied. “The retailer with the strictest return policy—the one that can say immediately what they’ll take back or not—got the best response,” he says. “With the other stores, the perception was that they were making stuff up as they go along.”

The topic of women also cropped up at another Industry Forum discussion, in which Stan Glasgow, president of Sony Electronics Consumer Sales, said the company’s new Sony Styles stores have attracted an unusually large number of female shoppers.

Finally, a discussion of CEA and women would not be complete without mentioning Kathy Gornik, president of Thiel, whose second term as CEA chairman expires during the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Gornik was honored in a brief ceremony during the Industry Forum.