Knowing the customer
The tailoring of the Morpho offer relies on a deep understanding of the retailer’s consumer audience, and here the company has invested heavily behind a buyer persona programme to guide its decision making. It is built around visitor types in each country, and fed by knowledge of frequent travellers that come to the stores across Latin America.
Director of Retail Alberto Perez Ibarra says: “We already know that we are very strong with 35-40 year-old women, who buy chocolate, coffee, jewellery and other items, and we have built this up into one buying persona. Then there are others. We give these personas names depending on where they are from, and these profiles help us develop a tailored offer. And we segment them according to where they typically travel.”
Styling the offer for the right clientele: Pueblo Paraiso, Mexico
The buyer persona information, led by the marketing team, feeds into purchasing and operations, all with the goal to capture awareness of the audience so that they enter the stores.
“In many ways we are a marketing company,” says Perez. “We have a marketing plan for every country in which we operate that involves local theming; music, craftsmanship, dress. We also use our digital platforms to market the offers.
Segmenting the offer for the customer base in Chile
“We know our shoppers quite well now, and for those that are regulars we have extended this to discounts, gifts on birthdays, all tailored by market.”
Morpho is also working to understand and engage with a new generation.
“Millennials and Gen Z are important new traveller groups,” says Perez. “They are more switched on digitally, are more into sustainability, than other groups and we need to adapt to this, to think about products and services.”
The company tailors the offer across price points, using digital marketing in-store to advertise multi-purchase deals
To reach these and other generations, Morpho has various tools in its digital strategy, At The Westin Hotel Guanacaste for example, the company places a QR code with a digital catalogue of its store in the hotel rooms. It even provides the store manager’s WhatsApp number so guests can send a query, all of which helps to build visitation even if the overall numbers are modest for now.
“It is activity that we learn from, as do the hotels; it’s important as the hotels take a share of revenue so it’s in our and their interest to collaborate, test and learn. As part of the programme we have built landing pages for catalogues for all the different hotels,” says Perez.
Beyond this, Morpho creates Facebook and Google ads, and also monitors closely what the customer is saying. In fact, the retailer ties part of each manager’s bonus by location to customer reaction and number of ‘stars’ the store receives for its performance – a digital incentive scheme for a digital age.
August 2023