Broaden Target Markets Beyond Yourself

A Bloomberg Businessweek posting titled “Don’t Market to the Mirror” cautions against assuming our prime customers are all highly similar to us.
     You might not spend time looking at circulars and discount coupons which arrive in your mailbox, but your prospective customers might. With running your store, you’ve less time to look at much of anything than does the typical shopper.
     You might think your store’s tag line is awfully clever and the store logo is a real grabber, but your prospective customers might not. You contemplated for long hours creating the tag line and logo, while shoppers have to comprehend the line and logo promptly or they’ll move on.
     Psychologists use the term “projection” to refer to the tendency we all have to assume that what we enjoy is embraced by those around us. In reality, this assumption can work for the very small retailer who is just getting the business started. The hobby shop owner and the purveyor of specialty foods can pay the bills for a little while by depending on a cadre of consumers who share the merchant’s niche passion. This cadre knows about the store without having to read circulars, they’re drawn even without discount coupons, and they can instantly decode the store’s tag line and logo.
     This is because the cadre consists of the retailer’s friends and family. To grow the business the retailer must broaden their target markets beyond themselves. The flip side of projection is called “introjection.” It consists of incorporating the perspectives of others into our own thinking. Allowing the preferences and predilections of others to guide our actions.
     Researchers at University of South Carolina, Loyola University, and Baruch College verified what any student of human behavior suspects: In the retail marketplace, it is more challenging for the parties to engage in introjection than in projection. What the researchers added was an explanation and then a workaround.
     The explanation is that most of us in individualistic cultures like the U.S., Canada, and Australia place a high value on being our own person. Each of us wants to be unique, exactly like everybody else!
     How to keep this from getting in the way of retailing success? As we incorporate the ideas of others into our business planning, begin by labeling those ideas as originating with others.
     This method also helps the retailer hold that passion from when they started their business.

For your profitability: Sell Well: What Really Moves Your Shoppers

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