ADVICE FROM CUSTOMERS

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 26985, 10 March 1953, Page 2

ADVICE FROM CUSTOMERS

BIG PARIS SHOP’S IDEA A big Parisian department store has just formed a 4 ’council of customers,” which will meet once a month to offer suggestions on quality of goods, prices, general policy, display, and so forth. Parisian, women shoppers, 250 of them, form the council, and they were chosen from among the store’s most faithful customers by thfc heads of departments. Those present at the firist meeting included, in addition to the’2so “counsellers” and directors of the store and departmental heads, members of women’s and family associations, representative of consumers’ co-operative groups, and those customers interested enough to attend the meeting.

The council of customers plunged at once into all the problems that interested them. One woman deplored the fact that goods could only be exchanged, and that there was no system to enable the customer to receive her money back when she was dissatisfied with a purchase. Another advocated a return to catalogues, discontinued by French stores since the war. The store directors replied that catalogues were too expensive. Printing and distribution of 80,000 catalogues would cost £50,000 in Paris today, they added. A third customer had an original and ingenious idea to offer. Why, she demanded, shouldn’t the store film its customers, show them their faults, then dress their hair, make them up, sell them new clothes, and film them again to demonstrate the difference? It could be a payable proposition, she said. But the store manager did nol seem very enthusiastic.