increase during the first five weeks of 1996, and Europe appears well on its way to meeting or exceeding its plan for the first quarter.
The twin strategies that go far to account for SCI’s phenomenal success, both concepts entirely new to the funeral industry, are “clustering” and anonymity.
Of the twenty-two thousand funeral homes in the United States, the vast majority are small operations doing somewhere between fifty and one hundred funerals a year. Critics of the industry attribute high prices to this factor; they point out that the owner who performs one or two funerals a week must nevertheless maintain a full complement of embalmers, equipment, hearses, funeral cars, and sales personnel to serve these few customers. “It’s full-time pay for part-time work,” as one analyst put it.
SCI entered this picture with the force of a hurricane, swept away the antiquated methods of the old-timers, and substituted “clustering,” the latest in streamlined mass production. Borrowing from the successful techniques of McDonald’s, where food preparation and management functions are centralized, SCI first buys up a carefully chosen selection of funeral homes, cemeteries, flower shops, and crematoria in a given metropolitan area.
The next step is to move the essential elements of the trade to a central depot. “Clustered” in this hive of activity are the hearses, limousines, utility cars, drivers, dispatchers, embalmers, and a spectrum of office workers from accountants to data processors, who are kept constantly busy servicing, at vast savings, the needs of a half dozen or more erstwhile independent funeral homes. Needless to say, the savings obtained via the cluster approach are not passed on to the consumer. SCI prices have risen sharply, with a targeted increase of 30 percent. In markets like Houston, where SCI with its 20 funeral and cemetery businesses has a predominant position (75 percent of the market), its prices—according to a recent survey—average 60 percent higher than those of independents in the area; in Washington D.C., 40 percent higher. Prices of Loewen Group mortuaries tend to parallel those of SCI.
Although the consolidators own only about 10 percent of the nation’s funeral homes, these tend to be prime properties in key markets and account for 20 percent of the country’s funerals. The funeral customer is totally unaware of the strategy of clustering because of the immensely successful SCI policy of anonymity. In general, the plan is to acquire Johnson’s Chapel of Eternal Rest and keep not only the name but also Johnson himself, now installed as salaried manager, thus ensuring continuity of recognition and goodwill. When the occasion arises, you think of dear old Mr. J., honest old chap that your family had dealt with over the years, and so you go to Johnson’s, where Mr. J. greets you and leads you through the casket-selection room and signs you up for the funeral. Little do you know that the Dear Departed has been whisked off for embalming elsewhere, to reappear looking twenty years younger, nicely made up, and elegantly dressed in Johnson’s “slumber room,” where friends and family may gather to say their last farewells. Nor do you know that Johnson’s Chapel is now a highly predatory outfit where nothing’s the same—particularly the prices.
As a customer following Mr. Johnson into the casket-selection room, you may think you are being shown some randomly placed caskets, with nary a clue to the strategy carefully plotted by SCI, Johnson’s employers, as he leads you through your paces. An SCI directive to its Australian employees reads like a TV miniseries script, complete with stage directions:
As your arrangement comes to the casket selection stage, we would like you to use the following approach:
“Mr. and Mrs.______, I would now like to assist you in selecting a suitable coffin or casket for.”
ENTER SELECTION ROOM AND PROCEED TO STAND BEHIND THE CLASSIC ROYAL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM. GUIDE THE FAMILY TO STANDING IN FRONT OF THE CLASSIC.
“I would like to introduce you to our Classic Royal. This design is that of a European contemporary coffin. It is elegant [sic] finished in Rose Mahogany gloss with fine line gold engraving on the sides. This unit combines expert craftsmanship with a fully satin lined interior. It is priced at $1,595.”
NOW MOVE TO YOUR RIGHT AND STAND BEHIND THE CLASSIC REGAL.
“Here to the right, we have our most recent design and we call this the Classic Regal. It combines the shape of both a coffin and a casket to give us the very popular wider shape with a Rose Mahogany gloss finish. This item combines the versatility of Australian native timber and craftwood. It is priced at $1,995.”
MOVE TO THE WHITE PEARL ON THE STAND TO YOUR LEFT.
“This is our White Pearl…. It has been designed in the traditional coffin shape…. [T]he material from which it is made is craftwood. It is priced at $995.”
NOW PROCEED TO THE HANOVER IN YOUR RIGHT BACK CORNER AND STAND BESIDE IT.
There follows a glowing description of the Hanover, which is priced at $2,995. Doe or counterpart then tells the family:
“I will be just over here (move to near the top of the stairs) if you have any questions.”
The final stage direction:
ALLOW YOUR FAMILY AS MUCH TIME AS THEY NEED BUT ENSURE THAT YOU DO NOT LEAVE THEM IN THE ROOM. READ THEIR BODY LANGUAGE.
The casket prices quoted for Australia may be increased by a factor of three or more for their U.S. equivalent. Note, too, the use of the word “coffin,” a definite no-no in the lexicon of the American funeral trade. But Down Under, the word “casket” may mean—as elsewhere in the English speaking world except for the United States—an ornate box for jewels and other valuables. Australians are just now being indoctrinated by SCI into its undertaker- bestowed meaning of burial receptacles.
SCI has improved upon the somewhat primitive list of okay words (see chapter 5) in its recent manual for the use of its cemetery salespeople (emphasis as in the original text):
A SPECIAL TERMINOLOGY has been developed at all SCI cemeteries in keeping with the memorial park plan. Just as well-designed tablets, flower gardens and statuary of genuine merit have taken the place of bleak and often garish tombstones, so words that are pleasing in their suggestion of BEAUTY AND DIGNITY are used in place of those that are HARSH and linked with depressing ideas.
CERTAIN WORDS AND PHRASES long associated with cemeteries sometimes increase sales resistance because they suggest images of a negative, morbid and depressing nature. The following is a list of POSITIVE- ACTION words and phrases in contrast to those that are negative. The latter should, as far as possible, be eliminated from all sales vocabulary.
Herewith a partial list of SCI’s deathless words:
| Casket Coach | not | Hearse |
| Display Area | not | Casket Room |
| Interment Space | not | Grave |
