Create Your Future by Anticipating Resistance

To maximize your success as a retailer, don’t just predict your future. Create your future. Don’t trap yourself by waiting for the marketplace or the broader economy to force you into reacting. Instead, do your best job of predicting what the government, regulatory agencies, your retailing competition, and your shoppers are likely to do. Then consult your predictions to grab the initiative.
     But to put this grand sounding philosophy into workable form, keep in mind the inevitability of resistance. Retailing requires human interactions, and a universal component of human interactions is resistance. For every retailer seller, there is a purchaser, and purchasers fight back against feelings they’re relinquishing free will.
     So persuade instead of manipulating. When using powerful psychological techniques to create the future for you and your shoppers, proceed patiently. Plant the seed and give it some time to grow. For instance, when shoppers might resist purchasing a product because of its country of origin, research findings indicate those resistances are less when country of origin information is presented in advance.
     Moving beyond shoppers, for many retailing initiatives, there are restrictions enforced by human regulators. Those regulators, just like your customers, want to feel important. They want their knowledge and influence to be acknowledged. And in you creating your future, sometimes you might decide patience isn’t enough. Sometimes you’ll meet resistance with force.
     Consider how Wal-Mart is responding to a fine levied by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration: Wal-Mart worker Jdimytai Damour was trampled to death by Black Friday shoppers in November 2008 while attending the front doors at the Valley Stream, NY store. In May 2009, OSHA levied the fine after finding Wal-Mart responsible for failing to protect employees from “crowd surge or crowd trampling.” Wal-Mart has refused to pay, OSHA has not surprisingly resisted that refusal, and Wal-Mart has met that resistance with the force of lawyers.
     According to a New York Times article, Wal-Mart’s spent about two million dollars on legal fees so far. The OSHA fine was only $7,000. There is a larger issue involved, according to Wal-Mart: The threat of creating a future in which retailers are held responsible for events outside their control.
     Wal-Mart has the deep pockets to mount this sort of resistance against resistance. In creating their future, smaller retailers might do better to meet inevitable resistance with patient negotiation.

Click below for more:
Be Creative, But Only Sometimes
Use Customer Karma to Build Repeat Business
Feature Country of Origin Advantages
Use Psychology for Shopper Crowd Management