The secret to successfully using Best Practices

Best Practices are popular

Whether we teach managers at ESADE, at SDA Bocconi, at Moscow School of Management Skolkovo, or at Saint Gallen University, the response we get is always the same: a large majority of managers do like Best Practices.

That is hardly surprising. We are talking about the best!. Best Practices have been found to be most effective and, so, it is wise to use them.

However, a few years ago at the ESADE canteen - one of the best places to learn important things - I happened to share table with Professor Carlos Losada, Director of this Business School for several years. In the conversation it came out that in his doctoral thesis he had to study the validity of Best Practices.

He found that those Best Practices that worked best were those related to the company’s back-end, that is, the 'backstage', the part that customers never see. For example, logistics, finance, IT, etc. Detecting, copying and applying something from the back-end that works well in Helsinki also guarantees good results in Prague.

However, he found that the Best Practices related to the front-end, that is, the visible part and in contact with customers, do not achieve universal effectiveness.

The reason: most back-end disciplines are about things, while front-end ones are about people. And people live in different cultural, economic, social, ... contexts.

The use of context in Best Practices

Context, that invisible thing

During the pandemic, many of us worked from home. In this lockdown situation, work and leisure times may not have always been clearly defined. Both contexts were blurred and, for some people, that was not easy to manage.

Would this outfit be appropriate for having a good time by the pool side?

Would you negotiate a salary increase dressed in a swimsuit?

The most likely answers to these two questions will lead us to the conclusion that context does matter. It matters a lot. Neale Martin said this in 2015 (1):

Context is more important than any other variable.

That is why the success of front-end Best Practices is dependent on customer context.

If we did not try to properly understand the context our main customers live in, we would not be able to say that we are customer-centric. We would be ignoring our customers.

Context management done by Desigual

Anyone who has been following the fashion industry for a while will know that Desigual, the internationally fastest growing fashion brand about two decades ago, had a store concept that looked like a pop music disco. 

At that time, Spanish economy was growing and money was freely flowing. The company's thousands of customers were like a fish in water in that crazy shopping experience.

However, when the 2008 crisis hit, almost everyone had an unemployed friend or family member. That saddened social context clashed with such a kind of disco-like shopping experience.

At the time, the two partners of Desigual invited us to form part of a working team whose aim was to devise another retail concept that, combined with a new brand purpose encapsulated in the expression 'life is cool' (la vida es chula), would be validated at their Diagonal Mar shopping center store in Barcelona.

For this project, we used Urie Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Contexts of Human Development Model, particularly those contexts closest to the core and 'macrosystem'. (2)

1. The customer and their closest environment. In this case, the profile of the priority clientele was based on their vital framework related to their age, dominant personality, basic attitudes, aesthetic preferences, etc. This would be the core of the graphic above.
2. For this project, taking into account the macrosystem was essential. As seen, the country's economic situation was really difficult. This had a huge impact on a good proportion of the population, not only economically, but also emotionally. Therefore, if the brand had not known how to interpret this context well and had continued with its initial concept of 'disco madness', the disconnection with ordinary people would have been monumental.

As a result of the above, a very empathetic work was done to adapt those elements that, as a company, could be controlled. That is, the stimuli ('sense data') that would be captured by the store visitors and capable of having an impact on decision making when shopping, such as décor, lighting and, in general, the feelings conveyed by the store.

This new store concept generated a feeling of relaxation, with chill-out, resting areas with sofas, an uncluttered product range to provoke serenity, a kind of indirect lighting through thousands of bottles hanging off the ceiling, etc.

Sales at that pilot store saw a triple-digit increase. Once validated, this concept was rolled out to many other stores in the chain, such as this one in Berlin, making the appropriate adjustments to suit each city and culture.

Things we learned

By taking part in this project, we were able to make three very valid reflections, that we would now like to share with you:

Letting ourselves be guided - creatively - by the customers' context is a practical way to devise a new product, service or retail concept.

2.

When we have no control over the context, the best thing to do is to adapt to it, with the utmost empathy towards our customers.

3.

Having a validated retail concept and then, exactly replicating it at all other stores, while aiming to achieve productivity, it actually entails ignoring local culture and is a poor example of the use of internal Best Practices.

© Co-authors: Lluis Martinez-Ribes and Marina Font . Barcelona, May 2023 m+f=! (MF marketing catalysts)

Bibliographic References

1. Martin, N. (2015). The Special Role of Habits in Consumer Behaviour. Sublime Behaviour Marketing. Presentation at the NMSBA Neuromarketing World Forum 2015, Barcelona.
2. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1994). Ecological models of human development. International Encyclopedia of Education, Vol. 3. Oxford: Elsevier.