Consumer Behavior

Why are you selling a product or providing a service? The simple answer involves making money. However, how can you get your customer to use your product or service repeatedly, faithfully, and with satisfaction? You need to engineer your product or orchestrate your service in such a way that the consumer will enjoy their shopping experience.

Think like a customer

As flirted with in the introduction, you must have the mindset of a customer. Walk in their shoes to understand how to make this experience enjoyable, what is appealing about it. Consumers must have a reason or a need to come back and that is usually ingrained after the first time they walk away, hopefully with a good experience. These good experiences can be created though many forms including the friendliness of the staff, the location and ease of finding products, the ambiance and cleanliness of the store etc. These all can be attained by simply asking your customers their thoughts simply because customers are one of the greatest sources of information for any business.

Surveys are an excellent form of contact between consumer and retailer, allowing the consumer to put their guided thoughts on paper for the retailer to see and analyze. This offers businesses insight on the positive and negative aspects of the consumer’s experiences, creating the ability to change or enhance certain aspects for the consumer.

Another way to boost consumer enjoyment is the obvious Sale. The word “Sale” makes shoppers extremely happy, maybe a little too happy. Many companies have found ways to put on a “sale” without actually reducing prices. A perfect example of this is at Joseph A Banks. Occasionally this retailer will hold a sale that states “Buy 1 suit, get 2 suits free.” It is obvious from the retailer’s perspective, they simply bump up the price of the one suit and therefore are still making a responsible profit; but from a consumers perspective this deal is simply too hard to pass up, which makes the...