Annelie Näs

Today I stopped by the Belgian Chocolate Store Leonidas. I was going to by a few gift boxes with fresh chocolate pralines for my grandparents, as they have never been to Belgium, and it is a part of the culture here. I remember the first time I went and bought chocolate praline stores here and how luxuries it felt to have them hand-pick the pralines, put them in the box and neatly wrap it up. Before I moved to Belgium I had never bought chocolate in this way.

Thus, because the fact that they give their customers this feeling of luxury I think that the buying process in the store is definitely part of what they are selling. They sell the experience to pick your own hand made chocolate pralines.

Imagine my disappointment today when I came in the store and they told me to buy a box that was already picked before I came in to the store, instead of letting me watch as they do it. The part that is even worse is that I asked for a mix box with less dark chocolate and alcohol filled pralines, which is not a generic mix box. But, I still got a finished mix box, which was already wrapped. I hope the boxes were created during the day, but as the boxes what not labeled with packaging date, I have no idea if I bought old chocolate. Therefore, it did not feel special at all to buy Belgian chocolate today, which actually felt more disappointing that one would have thought.

I’m sure that Leonidas did this because they wanted to be able to sell more during Christmas rush hours, when more people buy chocolate. Maybe they even managed to sell a few more boxes, but what does that matter when people leave disappointed? In the long run, they may actually lose customers by doing this, and then the extra business they generated won’t have mattered at all.

Thinking about it I am not even sure how much extra they can have made from this, they were still a lot of people working, who were standing around as they had nothing to do. The lines were long anyway, and I did not find out about the finished boxes until it was my time to order.

From this story I want to convey the message that before you make it easy for yourself, make sure that it does not affect your customers or their experience. This is perhaps even more important when you are in a market with a lot of competition like in the case of Leonidas.

So before you make it easy for you self at least think of the following:

• How much will I gain of it?
• What is the potential risk of the change?
• How does it affect my customers?
• Will this change be good in the long run?

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