Learn about consumer behaviors that help you grow your business, read the article for more information
If you work in the retail business or the retail market – whether you are a project owner or work as a manager – you know that the most important thing for you is getting new customers. In the end, the more customers you get, the greater the chances of the project’s success.
The key to getting new customers is a good understanding of consumer behavior, and the better and deeper you understand this behavior, the greater the chances of attracting more consumers.
With this in mind, here are four consumer behavior facts helping you grow your retail business.
Actions towards achieving good service:
Most retailers understand the importance of good personnel training, but many have difficulty motivating personnel to provide continuously good customer service.
If you have the same problem, here are two suggestions; Firstly, explain to personnel the benefits of good customer service, and the success of the store give rise to the success of the employee himself.
Secondly, help employees understand the positive return from good service, and a smiling and a cheerful face are a gift to a customer that bring them back to the store.
The best way to attract new customers is to keep existing customers.
According to the Office of Consumer Affairs in the White House in the United States of America, keeping existing customers and maintaining a positive impression can be a key source of attracting new customers.
How does this work? Have you heard about the Word of Mouth marketing?
When customers are satisfied with the service, they will always refer you to friends and family and recommend a visit to your store, this in turn leads to new customers visting your store and additional profits. Studies have shown that people trust friends’ recommendations much more than paid advertising.
Given these considerations, you should do its utmost to keep existing customers fully satisfied with the service.
Steps you can apply:
Encourage your loyal customers to share their experience with friends and family. There are many things can be done, for example, Many retailers use discount cards for new customers through existing customers.
The best new customer may be the one you already have
According to the Marketing Metrics book, Your business has a 60% to 70% chance of selling to an existing customer, while the percentage drops to only 5% to 20% selling to a new customer.
So, as important as it is to attract totally new customers, don’t lose sight of the fact that existing customers are still the best source of revenue.
Actions you can take:
You can use a bounce coupon — a coupon a customer uses if they return to purchase at a specific time — to incentivize existing customers to return to the store frequently.
For example, if a customer’s normal behavior is to buy from your retail business once a month, you can give them a discount coupon if they return within two weeks.
Thus, you have increased the chance of him returning to your store again as a new customer, and ultimately increasing your profits.
The customer makes a purchase decision based on emotion:
Humans are weird in this respect. While our decisions are supposed to be often based on logic, the opposite is true.
We actually buy things for emotional reasons, and then we use logic to justify the purchase to ourselves.
Starbucks’ success is a good example of this.
Starbucks is the world’s leading coffee retailer, partly due to the emotional appeal of the Starbucks experience.
The friendly staff at Starbucks, the choice of music, the smell of coffee, and the furnishings all make for a positive emotional experience, the thing that has benefited the company immensely for decades.
Actions you can take:
If you own a store, you will get used to everything in it over time and thus not realize what the experience is like for a new customer.
So, ask a friend or even hire a consultant to visit your retail business to describe their experience after you finish it.
Next, try to optimize this experience as per your market requirements, this is if you want to grow your retail business.
It takes a lot to preserve the reputation and prestige of a retail store, and with so much data you deal with daily, you may forget the importance of getting new customers.
