Sports tracking watches, heart rate monitors, digital pedometers, and many of the other newest consumer health-related wearable products will be in hot demand this Black Friday-Cyber Monday sales weekend. Consumers will be looking for big deals and big brands.
Writing on the state of retail selling in this new fitness industry niche, MarketSource, Inc. Executive Director of Sales Brian Conley pointed out gaps in many retail strategies that negatively impact wearable fitness products sales. Conley advises that the biggest challenges are faced at the “last three feet” of the sales journey.
Conley advises that, because these products are now complicated to operate, “not easily understood right out of the box,” one gap in retailer strategy is in expecting consumers to make a purchase decision by simply reading about the product on the outside of the box. “Without guided help, they will likely get home, not be able to figure out how to use the product in their own routine, and being disappointed, they’ll return it. And that doesn’t help anybody.”
Even Amazon now records “returns” metrics, with the “Return Dissatisfaction Rate” for their sellers, which further demonstrates evidence of retailer industry damage when products must be returned.
Quoting an Adobe content study from 2015, the MarketSource, Inc. report also points to the gap in a retail sales strategy that ignores the danger of an under-informed sales associate. Often, the younger floor-sales associates could be inadvertently leading consumers into “best deals are cheapest deals” scenarios. Conley points out that that does not adequately inform the consumer, especially when products are as diverse in functionality as wearable tech products are.
The wearable tech industry is fast approaching a quarter of a billion dollars annually, from a zero beginning just over two years ago.
As an operating subsidiary of Allegis Group, the largest privately-held talent management firm in the world, MarketSource, Inc. (@MarketSourceInc) is a leader in the U.S. for retail sales team solutions; hiring, training and deploying field sales teams for some of the best brands and major retailers in multiple verticals including wearable tech.