Market researcher Pamela Danziger's new book Shopping: Why We Love It and How Retailers Can Create the Ultimate Customer Experience (Kaplan) offers seven distinctive features that attract consumers in her "shops that pop" description.

Among them are involvement, which encourages customers to touch, feel, taste and try one; price/value, superior value at a reasonable cost; and accessibility, freedom from pretensions and exclusivity.

Danziger, president of Unity Marketing and an expert in consumer insights, observed that in order to be successful, retailers should aim to make shopping in their stores a "special experience." She said: "The focus for retailing success in the future is not so much what you sell but how you sell it."

Believing that "transformation" is needed, Danziger defined the word for retailers: "It means examining everything about your store and its operation and reconfiguring it, not for your personal convenience or pleasure, but according to the needs, wants and desires of the customer. The shopper must be the focus of all retailing objectives."

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