Draft: Subject to Changes
A typical retail store is often flooded with people who are just “checking out” things. What can a store do to maximize it’s energies towards people who have a genuine interest in buying your product? The obvious answer is: find out who are the people who are really interested to buy something similar to what you have on offer. For decades, organizations have focused a disproportionate amount towards impulse purchases. While that may be a good strategy for a street side ice cream vendor or a coffee brewer, sellers of digital cameras, expensive apparel, and other products with high level of customer cognition in the decision making process, are erroneous in such an approach. Typically, at the cost of the customer group which is likely to produce greater output for the marketer’s buck.
Consider Mr. X, a student who has researched for weeks for his next laptop purchase before finalizing on a model from a specific brand. When he visits the store of one retailer, he finds everybody in the sales team busy and unwilling to attend to him, even as they explain every short piece of detail to another customer who is older and looks wealthier. After waiting for some time, the student departs for another store for the same purchase. And the older customer ends up not purchasing from that brand as another brand had another charming sales person who could convince him better. The student didn’t need to take extensive time of the store by requesting for explanations of the features. He probably understood them better than the sales person. But the store lost a customer who offered a better ROI for the store’s time.
It is then very important for the stores to use more effective criteria to distribute its resources and therefore necessary to invest a larger amount to find out about the actual decision making process of potential customers. One way to do this by identifying touch points. With reference to the previous example, a serious customer purchasing an expensive laptop would enquire about the price of the item on the phone before arriving at the store. This is the place where you should acquire the customer with your friendly service and reasonable prices. Gone are the days where businesses can afford to rely on impulse purchases and assume customers to be ignorant. Isn’t it time to re look at the decision making process of your consumers?
