Know Your Potential Customers’ Intentions

Operators of retail businesses can get so caught up in managing pressing daily issues that they aren’t looking sufficiently at the potentials. They make decisions based on what they know about their regular customers without also considering what they can discover about their potential customers. They make decisions based on the shopping habits of customers today instead of on educated estimates of what customers will want a year from today. They make decisions about serving consumers based on what the business is now, not on what the business can become.
     Learn from the past and take account of the present. In gaining new customers, don’t lose the ones you’re already serving. In preparing for how your customers will be shopping a year from now, recognize that the best single predictor of the future is what’s happened in the past. In building your business to reach its full potential for profit, remember what has worked well in the past and what failed. Use the past and present. But don't get stuck there.
     Base your business decisions on accurate data about consumers’ attitudes. In my consumer attitude survey work over the years, I’ve seen problems with accuracy when the questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, and diaries fail to assess the shopping intentions of the consumers. Beliefs will be assessed with items like, “Sales staff here want to get me the right product for my needs.” Feelings will be assessed with items like, “When I buy a product here, I’m confident I made a good decision.” But many consumer attitude surveys lack the intentions items like, “Next time I need a product carried by this store, I’ll shop here.”
     For your business to reach its full potential, know all three. Know your potential customers’ beliefs, feelings, and intentions.