Making Friends – MVC’s Jason Pires featured in Home Furnishings Business Magazine

‘Relationship Marketing’ May Hold Opportunity for Furniture Retailers

By Powell Slaughter
Originally featured in Home Furnishings Business Magazine – April 2010

Relationship marketing, which extends retailer-customer communication beyond advertising in recognition of the benefits of customer satisfaction for the long term, is new ground for many furniture retailers.

“A lot of what people are doing with relationship marketing depends on their customer base and value proposition,” said Jason Pires, principal and creative director of MVC Agency, a Los Angeles-area marketing agency specializing in brand development, design and advertising for the home furnishings, cosmetics and fashion industries. “If they’re selling on price alone, most of the relationship building is quite simplistic. There might be loyalty being established, but basically they’re selling on price. For retailers emphasizing quality, style and sophistication, it’s a lot more effective for them to use relationship-building techniques.”

It all boils down to what Pires calls a soft-sell and a retailer’s effort to associate the brand with certain images and values.

He cited some examples of services associated with this “holistic” approach. Southern California retailer Pampa Vivienda offers a staging service to outfit homes for sale on the real estate market.

“It does an interesting job of equating the value of purchasing a quality home with quality furnishings,” Pires said. “These are typically homes selling for $1 million-plus. It’s a soft approach to marketing, and it establishes the product with the target demographic.”

And since many of the current home owners bought at the top of the real estate bubble, staging also is a needed service.

“It’s important to have a great-looking house to show if you’re looking to get the best price,” Pires said.

In-home consulting is another service that encourages customers to relate with a business.

“All this can be tied into communications in general through e-mail blasts, Twitter and Facebook,” Pires said.

Special events, especially for higher-end retailers, can help tie stores to the image or values they want to project. Pires cited the example of a retailer that staged a mini-photo gallery event with edgy, artistic, modern photography.

“That’s exactly the kind of store they are,” he said. “If you can translate that event into what’s available at the store in terms of furniture, that can be an image builder.”

Fundraising and benefits tied to current events such as the relief effort in Haiti, or to causes important to your store’s demographic can help define a retailer’s place in customers’ minds.

“You can go a couple of ways—find things that are relevant to what’s happening out in the world,” Pires said. “On the other hand, you might want something tied into the values you believe are important to your customer base. … It depends on what people are passionate about in your region.”

Freebies such as an in-home consultation, or even a salesperson’s offering to sketch out a customer’s room to help choose appropriate goods, help build links.

“In my business, if it’s a difficult sell, I will typically say ‘Give me a chance,’” Pires said. “I’ll give them a taste of something for free, maybe a couple of Web site changes they can track for effect. … Then we might be able to move into ‘Phase 2.’ Go the extra mile to give them a reason to come to your store instead of shopping for price alone.”

While relationship marketing is particularly applicable to higher-priced stores, promotional retailers shouldn’t completely ignore its possibilities.

“Even if consumers are going to you for price, that’s still a relationship, and if the store is junky or the in-store service or delivery is terrible, they won’t be back,” Pires noted. “Those experiences go back to creating loyalty, and loyalty is a relationship. You can pursue a loyalty program, but it will be futile if the experience at your store is terrible.

“It’s cheaper to maintain a client than it is to find a new client.”