Posted by marklame1
Buyer persona is about understanding, as a whole, the common interests of your targeted consumer.
Buyer persona for The Container Store are those who have common interests of desiring organization in their life. The Container Store's brand is very well defined and over the years have enjoyed a niche in retailing. Walk into a Container Store and you'll experience an aura of excitement. Brightly lit, extremely colorful and organized with products you never imagined for solving your organizational struggles. Container Store's brand is about high quality products with the most superior customer service in retailing.
The beauty of Container Store's niche in organization is they have found many solutions to problems you may not have realized. The Container Store's brand extends to a very uniform image of employees who exude honesty, stellar expertise and intuition of providing service before asking.
The Container Store has enjoyed success but presently they are struggling. Why? Though, The Container Store regards themselves as an 'elite' Retailer, the problems before them are the same across the retailing industry.
The emergence of shopping digitally has left traditional 'brick and mortar' stores with less sales. Those who didn't see the 'writing on the wall' of emerging eCommerce like Amazon fell too far behind. Has the Container Store fallen too far behind also?
The Container Store wanted to know more about their buyer persona and chose to engage customers digitally. A campaign was launched to gather customer's emails along with addresses and contact information. Incentives were given to customers making it worth their while to register. Over a period of time, Container Store had reached well over 80% of their customers. So, you've got customers emails, now what?
Container Store 'comp' sales have declined and marketing studies had shown the average customer only shops in the store twice a year. Solving this problem, they created an email campaign to current customers advertising new interesting products. New interesting products along with their quality merchandise acts as a magnet to selling 'high end' closet solutions. The organizational closet solutions, sometimes costing up to 100k, require individual customization. Hence, their highest margin products overcome digital retailing. Their customized closets can't simply be bought online. What about new customers?
Container Store has gone IPO and secured financing to open new stores. The new stores do well! But, it's not enough... The Container Store is falling into the category of failing retailers and time is running out. Their stock has fallen from $48 a share to a current value of $4. What about their buyer persona? It's changed!
Container Store has done well with older customers who remember the grand days of old fashioned retailing. These customers come into the store dressed extremely well, are demanding for information 'sales' and don't want to lift a finger. Trust is important and are willing to pay a higher price for excellent service. For older customers, reading reviews on Amazon before shopping is unheard of... Internet marketing is not in their vernacular. The new buyer persona for the Container Store, those who will buy their 'high end' closet solutions live in the digital age.
Those who spend enormous amounts of money on a organized closet solution are successful, extremely busy and very savvy at shopping digitally. And that, is the new challenge facing the Container Store...
The Container Store, must embrace a full blown internet marketing campaign selling their traditional products digitally. They must invest in new modernized distribution centers delivering what was once sold in their stores. And, pare down their 'brick & mortar' stores for just 'high end' customized closets.
A combination of lower overhead and streamlined for eCommerce, their traditional organizational products will become more competitive. A well orchestrated social media campaign will sell Container Store quality. Using affiliate marketing, Container Store can penetrate a broader buyer persona with less cost and effort. The days of slashing prices driving consumers to the store is over.