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Research shows sales people profile shoppers
The best-dressed with the best fabric get better service, journal reports
Misty Harris, CanWest News Service
Published: Thursday, February 23, 2006Retailers are being put on notice by new research that suggests their sales staff's attitudes toward customers may be costing them money.
According to a study published in the Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, well-groomed women who are fashionably dressed get significantly friendlier service at clothing stores than their rumpled counterparts.
Researchers from Ohio and Oregon State universities found the affability of sales associates to be in direct relation to a customer's attractiveness, grooming, formality of appearance, and quality of accessories and clothing fabrics. Make-up application, hairstyle, purse quality and femininity also had an impact, although not as strong.
"We didn't manipulate anything," says Sharron Lennon, professor of consumer sciences at Ohio State. "We just went in and watched the kinds of customer service real people get in real-life stores."
While previous field studies engineered participants' appearances in a one-dimensional manner -- shoppers were either very well dressed or very poorly dressed -- the new research takes into account women's tendency to mix high and low fashion.
Researchers achieved this by using nine visual cues to rate the over-all appearance of 90 female customers at three clothing retailers (plus-size stores were exclusively used to help eliminate prejudices based on body size).
Unobtrusive observers then rated the promptness and friendliness of service for each shopper and conducted short interviews with the sales staff later.
"As compared to poorly dressed customers, well-dressed customers received friendlier and, in some cases, more prompt service from salespersons," write Lennon and Oregon State human sciences Prof. Minjeong Kim.
"Salespeople may perceive customers as either potential purchasers or browsers based on their dress, and provide friendly service to those who are judged likely to buy ... For example, a designer-brand purse is a salient clue that a salesperson recognizes when a customer walks into the store, and a salesperson may instantly react to the cue implying high socioeconomic status without much thought."
The results should come as little surprise to anyone who's experienced a Pretty Woman moment while shopping -- snubbed when casually dressed, fawned over when dressed up. But analysts expect a strong reaction from store owners and management, many of whom are blind to clerks' unconscious appraisal of patrons as worthy or unworthy of attention.
"This study is a wake-up call for retailers," says John Williams, senior partner at Canadian retail consultancy J.C. Williams Group.
"It's sort of like this whole racial profiling thing with the police. If you become aware that it's out there ... then there are grounds for adjusting behaviour."
Williams says the study lends credence to industry anecdotes about appearance-based prejudices leading to lost business. "You'll hear stories of how sales associates have ignored wealthy people who came down on a Saturday dressed in jeans and T-shirts," he says. "Right away, biases start to form."
