See why missing prices labels lose you business

I went out shopping to an out of town retail park yesterday and repeatedly faced one of my pet retail peeves - the missing price ticket! I hate this in a shop and I found it in shop after shop - all major retailers.

Out of town retail parks can often encapsulate the best and the worst of retail in one place. The parking is usually horrendous and battles for parking spaces take place regularly. If you've ever worked in one of these "out-of-towners" and had to regularly leave your car there, you'll know the state that they can end up in with bumps and scrapes. Because of the tendency to operate late hours, there are usually operating on skeleton staffing. And there are sometimes the parking enforcement cowboys that want to take money from you if you stay there too long - isn't the point that you stay there and shop?

But yesterday was missing price ticket day. The first place I saw it was an outlet shop for a major international sorts wear brand. There were signs everywhere showing things like-

"50% off lowest marked price"

"Save 25% on ticket price"

"Further reductions"

And time and time again there were no tickets on the products. Whole racks of clothing with 100 items and I looked through half of them and found not a single price label. It wasn't just me that noticed it. I walked past four other shoppers they were complaining about missing prices.

Next stop was a national supermarket chain that had a big display of consumer electronics as soon as you walk through the doors. Around 20 items in total and 5 of them were missing prices. For a display of this nature, price is a major purchase factor. The price of this is sensitive and all the big players watch each other's price movements with great care. So to have a display missing approximately a quarter of it's prices will cause customers to just walk away.

And this is the point. Away from small shops where you are never more than a metre or two away from your customers, pricing is essential. The result of missing prices is either grumbling customers or customers that walk away. And neither is a reaction that a retailer wants to create in customers.

I'm sure that most of my readers will look at this and think "well this doesn't happen in my store." But if this can happen in major retailers in the examples I saw yesterday then it can slip through the net of others. Go out to your store today and check price labels - make sure that you are ready to trade in every way.

Don't cause your customers to grumble or walk away when the solution is so simple.

Not everything can be bought on the High Street-