Think of the Children

The Conference Board Review^® Article

Reaching customers often starts with targeting their kids.

By Paco Underhill

Paco Underhill is CEO of Envirosell Inc., a global research and consulting firm that focuses on the interaction between people and spaces, and people and products. He is author of Why We Buy and The Call of the Mall.

From Trader Joe's to fancy restaurants, the American family often moves as a unit. We are seeing kids in numbers and places we never did ten years ago. Historically, youth has always been important in terms of dollars spent on groceries, apparel, toys, and family dining. General Mills, Nike, Hasbro, and McDonald's have understood that. What the twenty-first century has now discovered is that beyond the obvious things that kids control are all the things they influence — mainly, parental spending.

School-age children make incessant demands for toys and foods. Toddlers quickly learn that they can affect their parents' behavior in stores. Even the smallest infant can cause a frazzled parent to abandon a shopping trip by throwing a tantrum in the middle of a supermarket. It makes sense to think about young children as a presence, if not a force, in commercial and retail environments. One savvy loan officer claims that her most effective tool in selling mortgages costs less than a dollar and sits in her desk drawer. It's a jar of lollipops. "If I can keep the kid quiet, I can make my pitch," she says.

Cynics sometimes refer to sociology as the scientific study of the obvious. Yet people often overlook the obvious. For example, one in eight individuals who walks in the door of many American suburban banks is under age 10. This is a telling fact. Children may not be the bank's prime customer base, but the people they bring with them are.

Nonetheless, banks remain a good example of businesses that pay little attention to children. A common bank fixture — the rope and stanchion — can be seen by a typical 5-year-old as an invitation to jump rope. Children who act up by jumping over loose ropes can hurt themselves. They can also hurt sales by distracting customers who should be looking at the signs promoting car loans and no-fee credit cards.

Ignoring children can also keep customers away. This happened when a prominent store-planning firm designed a series of branches for a British savings-and-loan institution. The result was an elegant office that was inaccessible to parents of young children and people in wheelchairs. New hardwood floors installed over existing floors created the need for a step at the doorway, making it almost impossible to get a baby stroller or wheelchair into the bank. Researchers documented an informal stroller parking lot outside the bank door, as mother after mother abandoned her child to duck inside. Those who chose to take their children inside had to spend extra time hauling them out of their strollers and tucking them back in. While in the bank, they were probably distracted by the child in their arms and the fear that their stroller would be stolen.

The access problem is not restricted to Britain. Around the corner from my home in New York City, chaos ensued not long ago when a stroller got stuck in the revolving doorway of the local Chase Manhattan branch. It took three policemen, the bank staff, and a frantic mother to rescue the sleeping tyke.

Selling to an existing customer base is almost always more cost-effective than recruiting new customers, so it is crucial for retailers to take advantage of the time customers spend in their stores. Any distraction, including children playing or sitting outside in strollers, diminishes the effectiveness of in-store promotions for products and services.

Children can be a distraction in banks and other retail environments, but that doesn't mean retailers should ban children — it means that they should accommodate them and not alienate customers who bring them. A few bankers, grocers, and others are gaining parents' loyalty by childproofing their stores and adding kid-friendly features, finding that controlling the "whine factor" and designing for fun really can boost sales.

When Wells Fargo learned about the frequency of children's visits, for example, the company responded by publishing a coloring book to keep kids busy while their parents took care of financial business. In another case, a manager at a Citibank branch on Long Island turned a vacant office into a playroom. While not exactly a McDonald's Playland, it is a safe place for children to stay out of the way while the bank pursues grown-up business with parents.

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Return to the March/April 2008 The Conference Board Review® issue.