The relationship between retailers and consumers' buying habits is perpetually in flux. Customers make decisions based on a variety of factors, and retailers can either meet consumers' needs or face declines in sales through inattentiveness, ineffective messaging, subpar service or factors beyond a retailer's control. Consideration of this relationship is the paramount issue for retailers. What can a retailer do to tilt consumers their way?
Understand The Customer
Before you can recreate a balance between what your customer needs and what your company can provide, you should take steps to better understand the wants of the buyer. Knowing your customers involves some research into the needs of the modern consumer. Pay attention to changing dynamics that alter how your customers search for or buy products and services. Are macroeconomic factors, for example, such as inflation, stagnating wages, or technological innovations affecting sales? Staying abreast of these developments can help you determine how to continue meeting your customers' expectations over time.
Gather Data to Inform Company Decisions
When customers spend time browsing your website, shopping your store, or engaging with your social media, they provide you with useful data that can guide your future decisions. Gathering data about your customers and site visitors is a common practice, to the point that most customers expect it as part of the process of providing a personalized experience. Use that data to figure out where your customers are spending most of their time and categorize buyers by the types of purchases they make and/or their browsing habits. Do you need to improve, for example, your order-to-invoice processes? This information will help you understand your existing customer base and find opportunities to further establish your value proposition.
Focus on their Experience
Go through your store or website as a customer and see how the experience works for you. Ask friends and family to do the same, along with a few of your customers. When you find points of struggle, where a customer could not complete a transaction or became frustrated because they could not find what they needed, plan to address the problem and implement it. As you look for tools to speed up your load times or decrease steps to finishing a transaction, focus on quality over price. Technological developments are like accounting advisory services: You want an expert to handle it.
Foster Trust in Your Company
Customers make decisions about retailers they prefer based on personal ethics and trust, not just price. Consumers want to feel like they are making a good decision about purchasing from your company and brand, just as much as the products they buy. You can earn their trust by increasing your transparency and business ethics. Show how you use customer data and give people the option to minimize data collection. Take a stand on issues that are important to you and demonstrate how those ethics apply to your business practices and your brand in general.
Another more practical factor involves inventory or lack thereof. Do you have what customers want when they want certain products? If not, your brand takes a hit and the trust of the consumer fades. Regardless of industry, you must have a detailed, forward-looking cash flow and a demand plan projection to ensure flexibility. Shortages can happen. Are you prepared?
Reward Loyalty
If you want loyal customers who come back again and again, you should ensure that you understand your value proposition and the role that your customers play in keeping your business thriving. Consumers make conscious decisions, translating into effort to purchase from you as a retailer. They want you to be cognizant of their relationship with you and in many cases the causes associated with your brand. Look for ways to add value to your customer experience, such as coupons or rewards for previous purchases. Creating loyalty tiers, for example, can make the shopping experience into a game that gives customers engagement as well as savings.
Maintaining a retail establishment requires that you understand the balance between your customers and your business. By focusing your efforts on the things that your customers need and expect from your company, you can devise new solutions that continue to reward them as they patronize your business. You may ultimately find that you will need to roadmap a comprehensive program structure and roadmap to drive accountability across all aspects of the company's ordering process or implement new customer-driven technology to make it easier for customers to purchase from you. There are many possibilities and an advisor with deeper knowledge of the customer-retailer relationship may help.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
