Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 90

Sty I 10 Section 7 Chicago Tribune, Wednesday, May 23, 1990 CN services as more working couples divide shopping responsibilities and more men have to fend for ervic done by retailers and the Wall Street Journal for its 1989 series "The American Way of Buying." Retailers are responding by or add at Field's, but Dayton's also offers a package pickup program in many stores: A customer may check packages at any cash register, continue shopping, go to pick up the car and drive up to a store's side door and have the packages put into the car. Handwritten thank-you notes to customers are de ngueur not only from big operations like rseinian Marcus ana JNora-strom's but also from smaller boutiques such as Among the Flowers on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. Speed, speed, speed Customers also want to get in and out of a store as quickly as iposMuie, au-oiuiiig io surveys Many stores are being redesigned to put high-demand items near the doors, to cut customers' search times. Still, perhaps the ultimate 1990s service is not shopping at all. Catalogues and specialty stores have flourished in large part because of convenience and a smaller, less confusing selection.

"Editing is a service," insists Rod Parker, director of sales promotion for Spiegel Inc. Big-store retailers are addressing this consumer desire to choose from among a few good things by spotlighting personal shopping services, pioneered by Blooming-dale's and adopted years ago by many other retailers. The personnel select not only clothes to individual specifications but gifts and household items as well. I "It's not just wardrobing," says Iris Furlet, a personal shopper with PS Field's, the store's per-jsonal shopping service, who once furnished an apartment for a 'newly divorced businessman. "We can select dishes, towels whatever they want from the store." Executives expect such services Ito grow in the '90s.

Saks' Tillman says her store's Fifth Avenue Club has experienced "phenomenal" growth in recent years and will get more space and staff in store's new location. "Sixty-eight percent of Marshall Field's female customers are working women, so they don't have time to shop. They are shopping for others in the family as well," observes Sharon Brix, manager of customer development and PS Field's. Brix sees more men using such tKirSinde giving sales staff more power to make on-the-spot decisions. At Field's, a 36-page returns policy was trimmed to 1 page to let salespeople make more decisions.

Target discount stores now let checkout people use their own judgment on ringing up a price iwhen a tag is missing. Salespeople at Saks are among those now encouraged to direct customers to other departments for merchandise that might coordinate with or accessorize a purchase. If staffing allows, the salesperson may dash around the store to get the merchandise. Shore is oohing and aahing! Maternity Continued from page 7 properly disposing of as many appliances as we deliver." Consumers already are finding more stores offering a number of old-fashioned, gracious extras like free gift wrap, delivery and shopping bags, and more are likely to be added. Dayton's department stores in Minneapolis, a division of the conglomerate that recently acquired Marshall Field's, has revived free in-store coat checking.

The company says it hasn't yet decided what services it will keep A new concept in birthing is born! Introducing St. Francis Hospital Single Room Maternity Care Center. Where vou can labor, deliver, recover and recuperate in one prwate room One wonderful room with warm wood furnishings and floors, comfortable binhine oea, cusnionea rociang cnair anu oom Care Hess The themselves. The quality of the sales staff is 'important in such situations, so salespeople of the future are likely Ito be more enthusiastic and more professional. Still, stores are economically pressed to keep their numbers smaller.

"It's quality as well as quantity," says Tillman of what she looks for in a sales associate. 1 "When you dig into it, employees are happier and provide better service when they are much better compensated," observes the Retail Federation's Schultz. i. Nordstrom's, which plans to open an Oak Brook store next spring, enters the 1990s with abundant tales of the lengths to which its salespeople will go for customers even changing a flat tire in the parking lot The average Nordstrom employee makes more than $23,000 a year, says a company representative, compared to the $12,000 retail industry average. While stories of a dark, Darwinian behind-the-scenes atmosphere at the company have surfaced, customers apparently are well-served.

The alternative to paying mediocre workers who don't provide hospitality and service is to cut out workers completely. In a shopping paradox that will sharpen as the decade progress, consumers are likely to find themselves shopping both at stores with a multitude of services and in bag-it-yourself megastores with few workers and no services at all. 661 vernon avenue glencoe, Illinois 708-835-2530 off North Shore miiiim if' wonder the North cry. Just iiign iecn brought to SPRING SALE-Focusing on you and your lifestyle. 40 Dinning equipment is your room for normal deliv- Nurserv and operating room if "Bi needed.

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