Retail Navigator
The Retail NaviGator - our communication to you about our research on retailing issues and the activities of the David F. Miller Center. This ongoing media change creates a direct connection to the retailing community in a way that keeps information current, direct and GREEN!
In this issue:
- JCPenney Reviews the Holiday of 2008
- The Changing Responsibility of the Buyer
- Conquering the Behavioral Interview
- Gator Wins Competition for the Second Time!!!!
- Building Championship Teammates
- JCPenney Elevator Speech
- Retail Society Meet and Greet
- Retailing Smarter 2009 - Find Direction in Turbulence
- We're Moving!!
JCPenney Reviews the Holiday of 2008
The last several months have led retailers to manage a less-than-perfect holiday season. The sparse shoppers and low sales of December left some retailers to perish, and many others to lick their wounds. Scott Boyer, manager of the JCPenney store in the Gainesville Oaks Mall, came to speak to students about what JCPenney did to prepare for the storm of fourth quarter, why it was so difficult, and how the company plans to forge ahead with financial strength, clever strategy, and brilliant differentiation to assure loyal customers and grow new business.
The retailing season for Florida stores was difficult for many reasons. Boyer explained how holiday shopping came off of a summer of the highest gas prices ever and a depressed real estate market. Many customers lost their home equity line of credit, which many used to help with holiday shopping. Election years bring apprehension about what is yet to come and what elected officials do. This affects consumer confidence. As luck would have it, there were five less shopping days in comparison to last year. By design, holiday shopping would have taken a blow with this factor alone, because each shopping day of December, particularly the last five days before Christmas, can reap as much in sales as a week of business in January, February or March. For Florida stores, unseasonably warm weather dampened the mood of holiday shopping, as colder weather attracts the crowds. Bottom line for December was no one wanted to spend money.
JCPenney attacked this challenge by having strong strategies as it entered the fourth quarter. To begin, JCPenney capitalized gift-giving across their channels of catalog, Internet and in-store experiences to make it easier for the customer to buy. They accelerated clearance pacing in order to move merchandise, promoted the rewards program, and promoted gift cards as the "perfect gift." In order to improve the shopping experience, JCPenney focused on associate morale, and increased staffing during the last six days before Christmas to help stressed shoppers find what they need and leave a great lasting impression.
After the holiday, JCPenney made shopping easy by respecting the customer's time-starved lifestyle. They sized clearance areas and price pointed it when possible. They quickly transformed the store from holiday to spring and promoted basics to stimulate shopping. Like many retailers, a staff reduction occurred to keep the best associates to provide great customer service so customers continue to choose JCPenney when they shop.
Mr. Boyer shared that JCPenney differentiates itself by continuing to upgrade stores. JCPenney remains involved in the communities they serve. Last year, JCPenney gave over $11 million for their After School program for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. All monies are put right back into the community in which they are earned! Along the same line, the company focuses on corporate social responsibility by working to decrease their environmental footprint, and was the only department store to have been awarded the Energy Star Award two years in a row. In a few months, JCPenney will open its first completely "green" store in Fairview, Tex., which will leave a neutral footprint on the environment. This novelty won JCPenney the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification award. Innovations like these attract the best associates. Associates stay engaged and are encouraged to share ideas in corporate surveys. Their inclusion and diversity principles also support associate ideas by providing a wide variety of experiences and expertise to contribute to the advancement of the company. Finally, JCPenney offers new brands and concepts that are attractive and desirable to the customer, such as Sephora and American Living. The Gainesville store's Sephora department has done magnificently, ranking third in the country.
The Changing Responsibility of the Buyer
The Miller Center was proud to welcome Mr. Steve Riordan, senior vice president/managing principal, consulting practice for PRG Schultz to present in the Sears Holdings Seminar Series.
Mr. Riordan began his presentation by explaining that retailing is not just fashion centric, but rather has become a fact-based and analytical industry. As a result of better information and analytics, retailers have better buying power than ever before. He affirmed that students who are analytically curious and capable should consider retailing for a career. In order to help students understand where retail was and where it is now, Mr. Riordan proceeded by sharing the steps he took in his career and what he observed over the years.
Reaching our goals and serving our communities better depends on a diverse, talented group of associates who look for the chance to go as far as their hard work and talent will take them.
Riordan's experience in retailing helped him to understand the changes in how retailers have adapted to utilizing information in many ways. Years ago, buyer responsibilities were more of a generalist role, comprised of a huge spread of duties, including merchandise development, allocation, inventory management, forecasting, replenishment, vendor negotiations and store communications. Mr. Riordan said his first exposure to a buyer's career path included a single, generalist track from assistant buyer to buyer then onto divisional merchandise manager. By the time he joined a second retailer, this path had already begun to evolve into more specialized roles. This specialization divided the traditional roles of a buyer into a merchandise planning role and into a narrower buying role.
At the beginning of his career, information for buyers was limited. At the outset, buyers utilized purchase orders, receipts, vendor shipments and manual store counts. At the time, technology was as basic as calculators and the phone, which later evolved into transaction systems. In a short time, Riordan experienced a spark in information availability when he was able to employ the use of the additional metrics of POS and inventory information. Although today the buyer is still the center of the merchandising organization, the tasks are broken into areas of specialization so buyers can focus exclusively on merchandising strategies in order to have favorable impacts on the growth of the business.
The availability of information has exploded for retailers over the last twenty years. Internal data has grown because of the addition of loyalty cards, allowing retailers to get consumer data. In addition, retailers have been able to leverage their web businesses to also gather consumer information—what customers buy and what habits they have developed. This enables retailers to market to consumers on a more strategic level.
External information is also abundant ranging from consumer panels, tracking studies, information from Wall Street, industry experts and vendor insights—not to mention the huge impact of the media. "A big part of a buyer's job is not gathering information, but rather sorting through it," Riordan says.
Major advancements in technology include data warehouses, which take information from many different sources and put it into one environment for analytical processing. Other advancements include business intelligence tools that are focused on concepts that take theories, such as pricing, and provide scenarios to develop successful and profitable pricing strategies. Having access to information and proficiency to use the data has made retailing come alive. The ability to process information has allowed retailers to better manage their critical resources and enhance their relationship with the customer. Riordan concluded his presentation by asserting that students who have a passion for analyzing information should consider a career in the industry to help retailers develop and maintain their strategic advantages.
Conquering the Behavioral Interview
By: Jaclyn Mennie
This month, Mike Millares, recruiting and retention manager for Tires Plus, presented an evening workshop on Conquering the Behavioral Interview. This important workshop was designed to help students develop their interviewing skills to be better able compete in the job market.
Mr. Millares began with a humorous video on the "Top 5 Interview Questions" to break the ice and moved quickly into the helpful information. Highlights of this presentation included a general layout of what to expect at an interview and specific examples of questions that are frequently asked. In addition, Mr. Millares shared some interview basics that students should consider prior to the interview, such as researching the company; bringing an additional updated resume; and dressing appropriately for the business meeting.
The beginning of the interview may include questions that verify a student's experience, as well as credentials, such as "What is your G.P.A.?" Students should expect to be asked questions that will evoke an opinion response. He emphasized that the most successful responses were those where the interviewee backed up their answer with specific examples. Interviewers ask many questions during an interview with the goal to learn how a student would respond to certain scenarios based upon previous past experiences. When an interviewer asks students to tell a little about themselves, students should be prepared to respond with a two to three minute snapshot of who they are and why they feel they are qualified for the job. When discussing short and long term goals, students should focus on achievable objectives and give examples of what they have done to achieve those goals.
Mr. Millares said behavioral interview questions allow an employer to anticipate future behavior based on a candidate's past behavior. These questions are easy to identify because they are open ended and usually begin with "Describe a time when..." "Give me a specific example of..." Students can master this type of questions by telling a compelling story that is unique and supported with specific examples. Mr. Millares advised to use the "STAR" approach to describe a Situation, identify the Task at hand, point out the Action took, and explain the Results. The last thing students can do to ace an interview is to be passionate about the job and about the company. Researching the company, mastering the behavioral interview and expressing enthusiasm for the position takes the mystique out of interviewing.
Gator Wins Competition for the Second Time!!!!
By: Samantha Weaver
Winning the American Express National Retail Federation Aspire 2 Retail Challenge for the second time was an honor. It gave the other participants and myself a chance to really understand what opportunities are available within the retail industry. Also a great surprise was being awarded a $2,500 scholarship by Shop.org, the digital division of the National Retail Federation.
The Aspire to Retail Challenge is a case study competition that aims to increase student's knowledge of the various career paths within retail. An interesting aspect to the challenge is that the teams are comprised of students from different universities across the country, so each team must use phone and web conferencing to work on the project. This year's challenge was to integrate web 2.0 technologies into a department store. After being assigned an area of specialization, we set to work creating a solution, working through our holiday break and giving our final presentation before the spring semester even started.
As a result of our hard work, my team won and we presented our solution at the National Retail Federation's 98th Annual Convention and Expo in New York City. I had an amazing time at the conference and giving our presentation in front of a live audience. As a surprise to all of us on the winning team, Shop.org presented us with $2,500 scholarships. We had no clue about the scholarships—they announced it right after our presentation. We are all so grateful; it was incredibly generous.
This experience reaffirmed my belief that retail is the industry I want to go into when I graduate. I want to thank the National Retail Federation Foundation, Shop.org, and the David F. Miller Center for Retailing for providing me with this amazing opportunity. I hope many students for years to come benefit as much as I did from participating in the Aspire 2 Retail Challenge.
Building Championship Teammates
Truman Hyde, director of human resources, presented to students about how Tires Plus builds teammates. He began with a business model called the Service Profit Model, which emphasizes offering great customer service, which, in turn, provides great results for the company. The core part of the model is teammate engagement. This model loop shows how financial rewards from offering great service is put back into the associates.
Teammate engagement is the extent to which teammates commit to something or someone in the organization and the effort they make as a result of that commitment. It is a function of individual associates' engagement. Teammate engagement can be categorized into two areas: rational and emotional. Rational are the basic services provided by the company like benefits, compensation and the tools you need to perform the work. Emotional engagement are the tools offered to help each associate want to do more, like leadership tools, business practices, ethics, brand promise and education. Mr. Hyde explained what Tires Plus offers to teammates to help them become engaged. To begin with, all associates of the company go through an intense orientation that teaches the philosophy of engaged teammates through a culture of excellent training, coaching and leadership. Each year, Tires Plus picks the top 21 out of over 500 stores and offers them a retreat to reward the associates with fun activities and additional leadership training. This competition among stores encourages associates to try harder to grow and achieve goals. Additionally, Tires Plus teaches dimensional selling skills so managers better understand how to work with different customers, based upon personality traits. Store managers are then better equipped to teach their individual teams the best practices of serving the customer. Once again, better customer services grows the financial success that will reward associates—the Service Profit Model.
One question that comes to mind is how does Tires Plus know they are engaging their teammates? Mr. Hyde explained that success is monitored through confidential teammate surveys. Individual stores that are poor performers get coaching in order to improve the store experience for all. Additionally, in order to engage the team, the executives live the brand promise by owning the same responsibilities to the customer as any store associate. Company performance is constantly evaluated. If the company is prosperous, then there are sure to be engaged teammates. Hyde says that many companies falter not entirely because of a financial crisis, but because their associates are not engaged. Companies that engage their teammates will pull through the economic crisis. Finally, great retention can be traced back to engagement. Tires Plus emphasizes team engagement because engaged teammates try 57% harder, perform 20% better and are 87% more likely to stay with the company. The numbers make the investment into associate engagement a no-brainer.
JCPenney Elevator Speech
Imagine you are in an elevator and our CEO just walked in. He recognizes you and says, "I was curious, tell me who you are again." To be prepared for this nerve-wracking moment, the Miller Center for Retail hosted a workshop, Preparing Your Elevator Speech. An elevator speech is the most powerful and concise description of you, your company, your department; it's your value proposition.
The room was filled with over 50 students waiting to hear the new JCPenney recruiter, Kazem Moghtader, advise them on how to formulate the most powerful, concise elevator speech. Before the presentation began, Gainesville Store Manager Scott Boyer, and Ocala Store Manager Robert Moore, handed everyone a 3 x 5 index card to practice writing their own elevator speech. Prior to this exercise, students learned the dos and don'ts of elevator speeches for casual and professional occasions..
An elevator speech is key to differentiate oneself in a group or even leave a lasting impression. Its purpose is to relay just enough information to have the listener want to hear more, as well as to leave a lasting impression. Within this brief period of time, 20-60 seconds, you should be able to demonstrate passion, express your vision, inform of a success story and goals. Remember to always be concise, tailor to each audience, and be clear.
After the presentation, students were given about 5 minutes to draft an elevator speech of their own. Four lucky students volunteered to present their elevator speech. These brave students got feedback from store managers, a JCPenney College Recruiter, advisors, teachers and students, allowing them to further improve their elevator speech, as well as gifts on behalf of JCPenney.
Your elevator speech is your time to shine. Don't be ordinary, be EXTRAordinary.
Retail Society Meet and Greet
By Keri Waldron
The smell of great food filled the room for the first Retail Society meeting of the semester, an introductory "Meet and Greet" directed by our newly elected president, Keri Waldron. Keri and her board members jump-started the semester's activities with a great deal of interesting ideas.
The meeting started with introductions of current and new members, and announcements of upcoming events, social networking with other clubs, and information on the upcoming field trip to Dick's Sporting Good's. A fun teambuilding exercise was performed by more than 30 participants. The activity was called "Me Too," which was an icebreaker to get to know about members—with a little bit of a twist. The activity began with Keri, Retail Society president, who shared a fact about her life, then tied a ball of yarn to her arm. Any member who knew they had that fact in common would shout, "Me, too!" and would catch the ball of yarn, tie it to their own wrist and share a new fact about themselves. The last person to speak tossed the ball of yarn back to Keri, who shared thoughtful words on the importance of networking. "This web that we have created as the Retail Society shows much more than just a large orange mess. It demonstrates how we are connected to one another with experiences. Networking is key in the retail industry, and this new network is the beginning of the bonds and connections you will form throughout your career in retailing." With this sentiment closing our meeting, students exchanged names and emails to begin building their first retail relationships.
The Retail Society is hosting an internship panel next week comprised of student interns from last summer who will share their experiences and answer questions of future interns. For more information on the Retail Society, contact Keri Waldron at .
Retailing Smarter 2009 - Find Direction in Turbulence
The David F. Miller Center for Retailing Education and Research will focus on retailing in the current economic environment, with an eye to development, growth(!) and survival in the 2009 Retailing Smarter Symposium scheduled for June 25-26, 2009. Register at warrington.ufl.edu/RetailCenter/RetailingSmarter before April 17th and save $100. Speakers include: Deborah Weinswig, Leader of the Retailing Broadlines Team of Citi Investment Research, as she takes a look at how retailers can manage through this economic challenge. Michael Boylson, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of JCPenney Corporation, Inc., will discuss building leadership through constant innovation. Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com, will visit to talk about building brands that matter. Alison Bond, Author of The Direct Hit will teach participants how to get better, not busier. Julia Arnette, Vice President, Global Retail Industry, IBM, will reveal the results of the IBM Global CEO Study to help understand the enterprise of the future. Gwen Manto, Executive Vice President, Merchandising and Chief Merchant, Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc., will coach symposium contributors with merchandising strategies for changing economic climates. Mike Kratofil, Senior Vice President Global Market Development, Jarden Consumer Solutions, will teach insights on the dynamic retail/supplier relationship.
In addition to these respected presenters, eight breakout sessions will be offered to participants for individualize learning. For more information, visit warrington.ufl.edu/retailingsmarter
We're Moving!!
When William R. Hough Hall is completed in fall 2010, all business graduate programs will housed in this state-of-the-art facility. In turn, open space will be created in the Warrington College of Business Administration, and the Miller Center will then be located on the ground floor of Stuzin Hall.
"We're very excited about this move, because the Miller Center will be more visible to students and our new design will draw them to learn more about retailing," says Center director Bart Weitz. The new location is surrounded on three sides by windows, which will provide a medium to advertise the Center's sponsors which, by using current technology, will make the student /retail experience more interactive. The interior design will provide work space for staff, as well as offer space for meetings, workshops and student/recruiter interactions.
Renovation of the current space will begin in fall 2010. Join us on a tour of the new David F. Miller Center for Retailing.
View the architectural renderings of our vision online.
This electronic newsletter from The David F. Miller Center for Retailing Education and Research is issued throughout the year to provide updates on what is happening in retailing at the University of Florida. Information regarding student outreach, jobs, internships, research and retailing connections throughout the country will be included. We hope you enjoy seeing what Gators are doing in the retail industry!
