Comments on: Hollister VS Abercrombie Branding and User Experience.

By: PeyoNYC

PeyoNYC — Sat, 08 May 2010 15:02:01 +0000

IKEA would be a somehow similar example maybe? Offline shopping experience is awkward: you have to walk through the entire shop, whatever you want to buy. It is relatively well structured, but you have absolutely no control over your shopping experience. The online shopping experience by contrast is simple and neat.

@Dan — this is not a I’m a Mac/I’m a PC forum but my piece of advice would be: instead of trying to explain people why they shouldn’t buy Macs, why don’t you try to understand why they do buy them?

By: Jake

Jake — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 22:11:05 +0000

One of the most disturbing things that I have found with both the Hollister stores in my local mall (Ann Arbor, MI) is that they do not hold items under a circumstance. I’m sure there is probably a reason to this, but to me it is not apparent. But the overall lack of service in both of these stores is ridiculous and reflects a very scary future of retail where customers like to be abused by the retailer (Apple?).

By: Mandeex3

Mandeex3 — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:53:53 +0000

Is Hollister really that bad? Gosh… I never knew it was that terrible. I’ve never been to the store. I just shop form them online! They send me pretty good stuff.

By: Phil Norton

Phil Norton — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:43:59 +0000

A few weeks ago I spent a frustrating 45 minutes in the Hollister store in Belfast, and came out if it and started ranting to my wife (who’d been spared the experience) about the poor “user experience”. Now, it turns out that there was a sale on that day (you’d never have known: not only is is impossible to detect what the shop sells from the outside, but there was nothing to suggest that a sale was taking place), but still, here’s what I found…

* Dark. So very, very dark inside. And with an overpowering smell of “So Cal”, the fragrance each of the identikit sales assistants tries to sell to you.

* All of the staff were from Belfast, but without fail, each of them greeted me with “Hey, what’s up?”. I mean, seriously! I know it’s an American brand, but this was in the middle of Belfast, where we greet eachother with a Jim McDonald-style “’bout ye”!!

* There were 8 fitting rooms in the store. 5 of them were closed. For no reason. Leading to huge waits to try on the clothes.

* On top of that, there was then another 25 minute wait to actually purchase anything. And, despite the huge queues, each of the sales assistants STILL tried to sell you the bloody fragrances!! Seriously? I’ve just spent the last 45 minutes waiting to GIVE YOU MY MONEY, so the very least you could do is to make the actual purchasing bit as quick as possible.

I swore that I would never again darken Hollister’s doors, to be put through such a horrific shopping experience. And, of course, the irony is that, as an American brand, I was expecting the shopping experience to be second to none. But it was actually more painful that a visit to Primark with the missus (which, it has to be said, makes me want to cry every single time!!).

By: Jon Moss

Jon Moss — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:55:27 +0000

Great comparison of these two very modern brands. I must admit, I had not heard of Hollister.

I’ve been chuckling away at my desk about the instore A&F experiences – spot on and very funny. I’ve been to the 5th Avenue and the Savile Row store. Three big impressions for me, sorry, make that 4:

- could not see anything (I wear glasses, but they are the correct prescription)
- could not hear anything (music was good but deafening)
- I felt old, very od
- I felt distinctly out of shape (have you seen those chaps on the front door?)

Not the best shopping experience for a very traditional 38 year old

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 08:59:50 +0000

By reliability I take it you mean in terms of the OS, seeing as the hardware is the same these days. I suppose OSX, being UNIX based does have some reliability and security benefits. I’ll give you that.

However with the RAM I did look into the free slots slots thing and yes, for the upgrade, Apple use a single 4GB stick which means the upgrade price would not only cover the additional stick but the replacement of the existing 2 X 2GB sticks as well. I factored this in and this still came out at Apple – £800 and Crucial approx. £60 Crazy Talk!!

By: Chad Engle

Chad Engle — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:56:54 +0000

@Dan however you didn’t factor in reliability and other things that Mac has over PC. But basically it boils down into personal preference. (I’ll agree with you on the ram however, but sometimes its because apple fills all the memory slots opposed to leaving them open. So 4 gigs may be 4, 1 gig stick opposed to one 4 gig or 2 2gigs.)

About Hollister, I hate their stores. Its dimly lit, the music is loud & it smells like they broke a crate of cologne before they opened. If I am buying clothes I want to see what I am buying and if I am with someone I want to be able to hear them. If I don’t want to hear anything I bring my headphones for my iPhone.

By: Andy Wickes

Andy Wickes — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:49:02 +0000

How funny? I only just had the conversation with my girlfriend the other day about our (separate) visits to the Abercrombie Store in New York, and simultaneously we both said ‘God, wasn’t it awful?!’ Dark, loud, hot and generally chaotic. I’m sure, deliberately so you just grab armfuls of clothes, pay and get out. I get the feeling that Jack Wills / Aubin and Wills would do the same if only they weren’t aimed at a younger crows dependent on their parents paying for the clothes, and therefore the stores need to appeal a little more the older generation. Either way, I think those two brands have taken a lot of stock in their image from A+F and Hollister, certainly in their two-tiered approach. Jack Wills seems to have manufactured a brand that is steeped in british, public school history even though it isn’t, and A+F has similarly created a timeless, preppy American brand despite being younger than its youngest of staff!

By: Paul Burton

Paul Burton — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:43:13 +0000

The differences between in-store and online user experiences shouldn’t be surprising, especially considering they are both purposefully engineered to engage customers in specific manners.

An online store must be easy to navigate because the user is not present. The purpose of an online store is to create a seamless customer experience that allows a shopper to get in and out in the shortest time possible. The more complicated the online experience is the more likely the user will click away out of frustration. Merchandise needs to be easy to find and the checkout process must be painless. I think it is also safe to say that online shoppers probably know ahead of time what they want to purchase and this compounds the importance of a seamless experience.

On the other hand, retail stores are designed to retain customers. The longer a customer is in a store, the more likely they will purchase something. The layout of the racks and sections in a clothing store are specifically designed to create confusion and force a customer to search for the product they came in to look for. A confusing layout also provides salespeople with the perfect opportunity to ambush you and suggest other items. Retail stores are designed for casual browsing and are not meant to help people find what they need, but rather what they didn’t know they needed when they walked in.

In-store and online retail are two entirely different animals and if I were to judge the effectiveness of the retail store by this comment … “yet we all walk around picking up clothes and spending money (lots of it at that)”… well, case closed.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:52:44 +0000

No, it’s like comparing computers with other computers. They’re even built sing the same parts now that Apple use Intel. When you look at the tech specs of, say a MacBook pro and a similarly priced windows laptop, the windows laptop will eat the MBP alive, spec wise.

Even the windows alternative with rivalling build quality; some high end Sony Vaio machines, offer substantially more power for substantially less money.

True story, I once speced up an iMac and clicked to double the RAM from 4GB to 8GB to see the price jump by £800. The same memory from Crucial: £40… delivered.

Bonkers, no?