Listen to the Voices of the Customers

The small to midsize retail business can’t stock every possible product or provide every possible service. There’s not enough room on the shelves or enough opportunity to keep all those skills sharp. The advice to carve out a niche is not just so you can distinguish your store. It’s also so your operations can be cost-effective.
     Deciding what to carry means prioritizing the needs of your customers and potential customers. In the early 1940’s, while on the faculty at Brooklyn College, psychologist Abraham Maslow described a hierarchy of human needs.
     Four characteristics of Prof. Maslow’s needs hierarchy are important to retailers:

• It’s based on his conversations with people and observations of their behavior. He steered away from elaborate theories. 
• Prof. Maslow assumed that people are driven to improve themselves in positive ways. Many of the other needs hierarchies assumed people are motivated chiefly by their desires to escape unpleasantness. Retailers do best to accentuate the positive, even when appealing to shoppers in negative situations. 
• People are most comfortable making purchases to satisfy higher level needs when they feel their lower level needs are being satisfied. But needs at the lower levels, such as the need for safety, will never be satisfied permanently. Consumers will always be looking for ways to replenish satisfaction of those needs. 
• The same purchase of a product or service might satisfy more than one need category, and each need can be met in a broad range of ways. 

     Over the years, other psychologists refined Prof. Maslow’s hierarchy. Here’s roughly where the hierarchy stands these days, starting with the most basic needs and moving to the ones it could take a lifetime to even partially satisfy:

• Breathing freely, avoiding hunger, sleeping comfortably 
• Staying safe from injury 
• Having friendships 
• Being respected 
• Understanding how the world operates 
• Appreciating beauty
• Achieving one’s full potential 
• Helping others to achieve their full potential

     “Voice of the Customer” has become a term used to remind those who sell that they should attend to the needs of those targeted for a sale. Here are some questions to ask:

• What is the essence of the consumer need? 
• Why does the need exist? 
• Which benefits and attributes are mandatory? 
• Which benefits are consumers willing to trade off? 
• What benefits are available to the consumer? 
• What benefits does the consumer most desire? 
• What factors might drive purchase decisions in this category? 

Click below for more: 
Define Your Niches by Your Shoppers’ Desires 
Recognize a Need, Then Fill It 
Broaden Target Markets Beyond Yourself