Stripping the social and political sentiment out of the question and looking at the issue of retail wages purely from a business standpoint may provide at least some clarity.<\/p>\n

The question for all businesses including retailers may actually be quite simple.\u00a0 If people (the people in their stores) truly represent their greatest competitive advantage and the critical medium through which consumers experience the brand, then business expenditure and investment should be guided accordingly. Furthermore, if the goal of the business is not only to compete but to dominate the human brand experience<\/em>, then it must ignore minimum wage guidelines and target instead a rate of pay and package of compensation that begins (at least incrementally) to bridge the social and economic gap between staff and the customers they serve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review any retail sales training program written in the past 50 years and you\u2019ll likely encounter multiple references to the word \u201crapport\u201d.\u00a0 Rapport, or the relationship [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[97,103,166,24,167,168,169,170,171],"class_list":["post-1387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-daniel-pink","tag-human-resources","tag-minimum-wage","tag-retail","tag-the-container-store","tag-timothy-noah","tag-wages","tag-wealth-gap","tag-zappos"],"yoast_head":"\n