ICSC: 'Experience is the Brand'

AVON, CO-Customers are now in control of products being offered in the retail market instead of the manufacturers and retailers that dictated what was in the stores of the past, said Andrew Cohen, CEO of New York City-based marketing firm Exposed Brick, yesterday here at the International Council of Shopping Centers’ Leading Edge Conference. The meeting, which runs through Thursday, is being held at the Ritz Carlton Bachelor Gulch.

Some companies, like Sears, Roebuck & Co., have great brand names, Cohen said, but have relied too much on advertising and lost much of their customer base. Yet other firms, like Amazon.com and Starbucks, have done minimal advertising in their relatively short lifetimes, and lead their respective retail categories because of their innovative offerings. “The secret is that experience is the brand,” he said. “You have to give the customer choice and control, and you must be the first.”

Cohen also touched on the radio frequency identification (RFID) tags that Wal-Mart and other large retailers are starting to use in place of barcodes. “This is going to change consumer behavior,” he said. “It’s going to change the way stores are built and how consumers react.” In the future, a person will try on clothing in a video monitor-equipped dressing room, and the RFID will enable the customer to learn more information about the product just by looking at the screen, he said.