Pride of Bag

THE STORY
Bag Story #1:
Back in the late 1980s, on my commute to work I would drive past a bus stop for high school students. At the bus stop, there was this one girl who always carried her books in a shopping bag from the Limited. By the end of the year, that bag was getting pretty worn out. It was no longer strong enough to hold the weight of her books. Yet she still put her books in the bag, holding the bag from the bottom so the books wouldn’t fall out.

Bag Story #2:
Much more recently, I worked at this company where there was this administrative assistant who always came to work carrying a small shopping bag from Macy’s. I could tell it was always the same bag, since it was starting to show some wear and tear (although not nearly as much as the wear and tear I saw on the Limited bag). I was curious as to what was in the Macy’s bag, so one day when I got to the office door at the same time she did, I peeked in the bag. Inside was another small bag with breakfast from McDonald’s.

THE ANALOGY
Sometimes, we can get caught up in the notion that we are in business to sell “stuff.” The problem in selling “stuff” is that there are usually lots of places where you can get similar “stuff”. For the most part, everybody’s stuff can be found from other sources having stuff with relatively the same quality at relatively the same value. “Stuff” does not serve to differentiate you from others. In our modern society, stuff is little more than a commodity. If you focus on the notion that you are just selling “stuff”, then you are commoditizing yourself. In the end, that does not usually lead to a profitable business model.

If you want a strong strategy which causes customers to choose you over the alternative, you have to stop thinking of yourself as a seller of “stuff” and start thinking of yourself as a seller of brand identity. This is what will make you stand out from the crowd and cause your business to become the chosen one.

In retailing, it is often more important to get customers to prefer your shopping bag than it is to get them to prefer your “stuff” that you put in the bag. I call it the “pride of bag” phenomenon. The bag represents the store and what it stands for. If what the brand stands for is something that the customer wants to be associated with, then the customer will be proud to carry the bag. If the brand does not reflect well on the customer, then they will be embarrassed to be associated with the bag.

So here’s the definition of success: If there are enough people who so want to be associated with your brand that they proudly enjoy being seen by their peers carrying your bag, then you have won. If people are embarrassed to be seen by their peers carrying your bag, then you have lost.

It really doesn’t even matter what is in the bag. It could be school books or a McDonald’s breakfast. These are things that the Limited and Macy’s do not sell. For all I know, the stuff that originally came in those bags was thrown away a long time ago. What remains is the bag.

There was something so special about the image of the Limited to this high school girl that it made her feel good to be associated with that brand in a very public way. This wasn’t about practicality. A Limited shopping bag is a lousy book bag. It cannot support the weight of the books for an entire year. No, this was about image. The image of the brand on the bag caused the girl to feel better about her own image (although today, it would probably have been a Hollister bag rather than a Limited bag). This image association turned the original shopping trip from being just a trip to buy “commodity/stuff” into being a trip to buy a commodity associated with a brand that makes her feel better about herself. And I bet she was willing to pay more, just to have the pride of getting the bag.

A similar situation existed for the administrative assistant and her Macy’s bag. There was nothing wrong in bringing a McDonald’s breakfast bag to work. It did not require being smuggled in via a Macy’s bag. However, the public image of being seen carrying a Macy’s bag apparently was superior to being seen with a McDonald’s bag.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is about building strategies around maximizing consumer self worth rather than around selling “stuff”. People like to feel good about themselves. They want to have a sense that they are a good person—that they are a person of worth. How people choose to define “good” varies. But whatever measure people choose to define "good" helps define how they will act.

In the past, I have done a lot of consumer research. What I found was that even in the simplest tasks, like choosing a store to buy toothpaste, store choice will depend in part on how the person defines the goodness in their self-image.

As an example, let’s compare the self-image of the loyal Target shopper to that of the loyal Wal-Mart shopper. When I talked to loyal Wal-Mart shoppers, they were very proud to shop at Wal-Mart. These people typically defined their sense of self worth around being a good provider for their family. They knew that if they shopped at Wal-Mart, they would get the most for their money. That meant that shopping at Wal-Mart allowed them to provide more to their family. Consequently, shopping at Wal-Mart maximized their sense of self worth.

These same people felt that shopping at Target was silly. They believed that when you shopped Target, you end up paying more for essentially the same thing you would find at Wal-Mart. They thought Target customers were making a poor choice in going to Target because you had to pay more for a tiny bit more of some in-store “niceties” which you cannot take home. In the end, you just have less stuff for your family if you shop Target. They would not be proud to be Target shoppers. They would much rather be seen with a Wal-Mart bag in their hands than a Target bag.

Conversely, the loyal Target shopper would be extremely embarrassed to be associated in any way with a Wal-Mart. They had an image of the typical Wal-Mart shopper as being at the lowest end of the socio-economic ladder. They had a picture in their mind of the typical Wal-Mart shopper as being dirty, uneducated and poor. This is not something they wanted to be associated with. These Target loyalists achieved their sense of self worth more from being viewed by others as a little more hip and fashionable. Since Target’s store image is viewed as more hip and fashionable than Wal-Mart, the reasoning was that the shopper of Target would be seen as more hip and fashionable than the shopper of Wal-Mart. Hence, their self worth was optimized by shopping at Target. They would much rather be seen with a Target bag in their hands than a Wal-Mart bag.

Pity poor K Mart. I interviewed a teenage girl one time about her K Mart experience. She said that when her parents took her to K Mart, she refused to get out of the car. While her parents were in the store shopping, she huddled under the dashboard to be as unnoticeable as possible and said she prayed the whole time that none of her friends would see her in the K Mart parking lot. If that attitude is common, you won’t see K Mart winning many “pride of bag” battles.

Just this past week, the CEO of Starbucks openly commented on his fear that the company had gotten so concerned over being efficient that they had destroyed some of the unique elements of the coffee-drinking experience that enriched people’s emotions. Deep down, he realized that if they only became known for the stuff they sold (coffee), then they would be more vulnerable to anyone else who sold the same stuff. But if they were known for enriching people’s lifestyles, then they had a safer strategy.

If you can get that much emotion around self worth just talking about discount stores and cups of coffee, you can just imagine all of the ramifications this has department and fashion specialty stores. And this applies to other industries as well. I was talking to an old IT guy once, and he said there used to be a saying when it came time to buy mainframe computers that “Nobody ever lost their job recommending IBM.” In other words, if your self image was based on others having a good impression of you, there was the least risk of hurting their impression of you if you recommended IBM. Even if it wasn’t exactly the best rational choice, it was the least risky for one’s image. It was the “safe” choice (for your image).

The good news is that different people use different measuring sticks to determine their self worth. That means that if one position is already owned by a competitor, you can just choose a different position, based on a different path to gaining self worth. For example, some people feel better about themselves if they choose what the majority chooses. Others feel better about themselves if they go their own path and avoid the majority. Both can work. Just pick which type of self worth you are going to supply and then find the people who achieve their self worth in the same way.

…and by the way, you might even want to sell them some “stuff” to go with that self worth.

SUMMARY
People act in ways that reinforce their sense of self worth. This not only applies to big decisions, but also to the more mundane. Self worth can have a far greater impact on choice than the attributes of the product they are purchasing. Therefore, instead of building a strategy around the stuff you sell, try building your strategy around the way it enhances the self worth of a particular customer segment.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I was working with a retailer once whose customer image was so poor that I joked they should sell the competitor’s bags at the checkout, so that the customers would be less embarrassed when taking their purchases home.