Wednesday 5 November 2014

Your customer needs you, specifically...



Driven by the savvy consumer’s demand for personal attention, expressed in shopping behaviour, the retailer completes the consumer-shopper-retailer need-set in wanting 1:1 treatment.

Even if the retailer forgets, suppliers have to remember that their offer, tailored to the retailer’s business needs, has to have inbuilt characteristics designed specifically to meet shopping and consumption requirements.

A supplier cannot even get close, without starting with a deep understanding of what makes this, not any, consumer special.

In the ‘old days’ i.e. before 2008, we used to study the needs of the consumer with the aim of segregating ‘our’ consumer-base into six manageable consumer segments, in turn driving some token tailor-making of our consumer-offering. This we adapted to produce an acceptable bundle for ‘our’ retailer, leaving the retailer to look after the needs of ‘their shopper’, in the aisle, an area increasingly off-limits for suppliers.., often by a combination  of desire and design…

As you know, this has all changed… (if you don’t think so, give me a call…)

The savvy consumer now wants real-time, demonstrable value-for-money, and as a shopper in the aisle, uses mobile-access to comparisons at all levels in order to ensure they are not missing a better-tailored trick available elsewhere, and votes with their feet.

A successful retailer, despite unprecedented distractions, recognises this consumer-shopper as the real starting point for developing an offer-request that reflects the combined needs of consumer-shopper-retailer. Suppliers neglect this new appetite at their peril, obviously ensuring at the same time that this highly specific treatment of the retailer meets the financial needs of the supplier’s  business.

Thus the supplier has to tailor the offering on three levels, per consumer, and find ways of making it work financially.

Unfortunately, at the last count, statistics indicate the UK’s population currently stands at 63.7m people, your new KPI for tailor-making…


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