Chapter 17 : Personal Selling and Sales Management

      Since Banana Republic is a company so heavily concerned with customer service, their selling strategy seems to be that of relationship selling, meaning that they want to interact with their customers so they can get to know more about them and what they want to get out of their experience at Banana Republic. This process helps build, maintain, and enhance customer-business relationships and ultimately long term satisfaction from the customers. This is carried out by the Banana Republic store employees, either through general interactions or services the company offers such as personal shopping and styling. 

  Banana Republic is very customer-centric, and although they pay attention to certain trends happening in the fashion industry, they never fail to consider the opinion of the consumer. The company is always gathering information to help better the customer experience in their stores and there are several touch points such as customer surveys and requested services that help Banana Republic acquire this information. 

An example of a survey given to Banana Republic customers

       As mentioned previously, a huge goal of Banana Republic’s is to retain loyal customers. They do this with their loyalty rewards program, or their Banana card. This rewards program offers Banana Republic’s loyal customers additional discounts and rewards to apply towards future purchases. 

An exclusive discount to loyal customers [cardholders] at Banana Republic

Another exclusive discount available to loyal customers of Banana Republic

       Banana Republic has a pretty straight forward business model, and therefore it requires no sales presentations, negotiation, or cold calls (speaking in terms of in-store employees, not upper management). The in-store employees are focused on developing those long term relationships with its customers and the strategies they have put into place in order to do so continue to bring the company success.