How Consumers Perceive, Learn, and Remember

Retailers often neglect at least one and often two of our five senses when creating their shopping environment. However, all retailers should consider each sense in an effort to provide the best shopping experience possible for their customers.

Through our five senses, consumers react based on their experiences of:

1.    Vision
2.    Touch
3.    Sound
4.    Smell
5.    Taste

Stimuli such as loud pop music playing in the background of a store or the aroma of your favorite scent in a bath and body shop constantly influence consumers in their shopping habits and ultimately in their purchases.  The process of interpreting our surroundings through our senses is called perception. This process includes attention and interpretation that is unique to each individual. Attention is when we apply our minds to stimuli, therefore creating thoughts on a certain stimulus. Interpretation is the unique understanding of something based on your initial perception and overall attention to the subject or object. The word shopping won’t sound so simple anymore when you reflect on each of the steps that consumers process while making their shopping choices!

Think of the last time you walked into a store and were captivated by something. Don’t think about Target or some other big box store, but rather think about a boutique or store similar to yours or similar to stores that sell product like yours. What was it that awed you? Was it the smell of candle burning in the background? Or maybe the sound of subtle jazz playing? Possibly it was an exciting visual merchandising display that lured you into the store from the front window. Then again, maybe something captivated you in a bad way, distracting you from shopping rather than encouraging you to linger longer in that store. A bad smell, loud music, a kid crying – whatever it was, it made an impact for you to remember. Your store makes the same impacts on your customers, so make sure you are in control of what these impacts are. Consider each of the five senses and determine how you are using them and if possible, how you can use them better.

Overdosing on Email Campaigns

Are you obsessed with sending out mass emails to your customer list or subscriber list? If you are, you aren’t alone. If you aren’t, thank you.

Using email as a tool for marketing is a great way to communicate with your customer base. Commonly referred to as email blasts, which are emails sent to a large group of people, customers and subscribers of websites and businesses today are often bombarded with an overload of emails. Email blasts are being sent from every direction to consumers today – for advertising, customer feedback, events, special announcements, and more. Small business owners tend to love email blasts because it is a cheap yet often effective way to communicate what is going on with their business. However, too many retailers and wholesalers are abusing this luxury by overdosing their use of email blasts.

Here are a few things to consider next time you plan to send an email marketing campaign out to your email list.

1. Why are you sending out an email?
2. what is the purpose of the message in the email?
3. When was the last time you sent out an email blast?
4. When do you plan to send out an email blast again?
5. Is the email you plan to create going to excite your audience? How?

These five simple questions can help keep you in check with why your email blast is worth sending out or not. By answering these questions, you are able to really evaluate how you are using emails to communicate with your audience. Remember to always consider when the last time and the next time you think you will send an email out because if you are doing it too often, your audience may not take your emails very seriously. Just ask yourself the last time you deleted an email without opening it because you knew there was nothing of value in it for you. Or was there? Unfortunately, if you overdose on your email privleges, your audience may not take your emails seriously and begin deleting them without ever reading them.

It’s impossible for me to tell you exactly how often is too much or too little for you to use emails as part of your marketing strategy, however I would definitely recommend no more than once a week and ideally no more than twice a month. These details should ultimately be a reflection of what is going on with your business at any particular time, though. It’s always a good idea to get customer feedback on any marketing approach, so in your next email blast you may want to ask your audience how often they’d like to get emails from you. This is a great opportunity to gain other insightful information, as well, such as what products they love or hated in 2009, what is motivating them to shop, and more.

Please note that email blasts can often be used for blogs, which allow the subsribers to know there is an updated post. When you receive an email that lets you know there is an updated post, there is a quick and simple purpose to this email that seperates this from the email blasts I was referring to above. Email campaigns are used to highlight details that are not part of your normal outreach. For bloggers, normal outreach would be emails notifying your subscribers of new posts. So if this is something you do, your subscribers should be comfortable with the amount of emails they get as a direct connection to the blogs you are posting.

Remember that each business is unique in itself, therefore your email marketing strategies must be unique, as well. Use the ideas mentioned above as support in your own marketing initiatives to help make your individual retail or wholesale business as successful as it can be.

5 Retail Mistakes to Avoid

Statistics show that about half of all small businesses make it past two years. Accepting this reality can be devastating to someone who has invested all they have into the business of their dreams. Unfortunately, too many business owners, particularly in retail, do not educate themselves enough to be among the survivors. Most retail owners have zero retail experience before opening their stores, and many wholesale vendors lack the necessary experience they need, as well. While this should not keep you from starting a retail business, it should be the stepping stone you need to begin really learning about the business of retail.

Having worked as a consultant for many years with small retail and wholesale businesses, I have heard every excuse from business owners as to why their business is not succeeding. They point blame on nearly everything and everyone except themselves. With a new year ahead of us, I challenge each of you to understand what may be potentially fatal mistakes for your business.

Mistake 1:

#1 Focus Being Product – While understanding your product assortment is extremely important, it is equally as important to understand all the reasons someone may want or need this particular product. In doing this, you need to evaluate your competition as well as the economy. Even if you have done this before, you must continue to do this as both the competition and the economy are constantly changing. Both of these two factors will influence whether or not consumers will purchase what it is you are selling. As a retailer or a wholesaler, this responsibility should be maintained on a regular basis.

Mistake 2:

Customer Service – Whether you give too much or too little, providing valuable customer service is one of the most important tools a small retailer has in making their business profitable. I can personally tell you as a consumer that I will shop at a store simply because I enjoy a particular sales associate and appreciate their help while being in the store. This said, I know I can get the same purchase for less somewhere else, however the customer service delivered will entice me enough to want to shop at this particular store again and again. With this in mind, you should evaluate your own customer service. From my professional experience, I find that store owners either offer great customer service or fairly lousy customer service. Sometimes it’s as simple as one person being more of a people person and the other person not, however often it’s simply because they don’t realize what they are offering in customer service is nothing at all. In addition, often employees of small businesses range from horrible to outstanding depending on if their boss is within an earshot or if they make commission. Think about your own employees if you have them – do you think they work differently when you aren’t around?

You should evaluate the customer service being delivered from every angle of your business – from answering the phones to greeting customers who walk in the door to follow up procedures after purchases made. There are a variety of traditional customer service tactics that can help maximize your business, as well as there are many creative ways you can take this approach. A good way to really understand the customer service being delivered in your business is to have someone else who has no personal attachment to your business evaluate it. You can get this done through a mystery shopping analysis, as well as you can have someone you trust complete this for you. I recommend having at least three people do this to get an assorted view of your customer service. Most mystery shopping analysts would include multiple viewpoints in their review. If you choose to do this on your own, however, you need to make sure you trust that you will get honest truth whomever you ask – whether good or bad. This is the only way to really know how your customer service is being perceived.

Mistake 3:

Retail Demands –No one who has ever worked in retail has said it’s easy. On the contrary, people who have never worked in retail think it’s easy. The reality is that retail demands a lot of dedication, with time being one of the most important things you need to dedicate yourself to. Too many people think that running a successful retail operation can be done part time, however I have yet to hear of this ever working out unless they have hired a great support team, which is typically too costly for most small retailers.

It should be understood up that operating a retail store is a constant cycle of budgeting, buying, planning, merchandising, marketing, and more. The cycle is endless, therefore time is necessary. If you don’t have the time, you can’t realistically think you will be successful in retail. This holds true for running a wholesale business, as well. While wholesale may not always be as demanding in the beginning, it can get as demanding as your product reaches more stores and re-orders start coming in. And of course, it takes time to even communicate with store to begin with! This is a great problem to have, but you have to react to it professionally to keep your customers satisfied and product on target. So whether you are a retailer or a wholesaler, you need to find the time to make your business a success. How you plan that time depends on a million other things, so you better get started!

Mistake 4:

Wasting Your Time in Details – Paying attention to details is so valuable for business owners. The details of a business can make or break success. What surprises me, however, is what details I see retail and wholesale owners paying too much attention to, therefore keeping them from spending more time on the details that matter. For example, if you are merchandising fixtures in your store with new merchandise, you will ultimately need to decide what product will be seen from the best possible angles in your store versus the least desirable. I have worked with clients who go back and forth on how to display one fixture all day. If we look at this from an average perspective, they may have merchandised four total skus of product over the course of eight hours. Had they made their decision during a reasonable amount of time or outsourced the merchandising, their time would have been better used to get more work done. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses can often help you designate how to spend your time in the details. For example, if you know merchandising is not your thing, then you need to decide how to get this done effectively – even if that means outsourcing this work or doing it yourself during a certain allotted timeframe so that you don’t get consumed by it. Be aware of how time can catch up with you, though. If it’s wasted, than you are not maximizing the opportunities you have to make your business a success. There is simply too much to do to waste your time on the little things. At one point, you will need to make a decision and run with it, even if you are not 100% in love with whatever it is you are deciding on. Bigger decisions, of course, deserve more time and should take more time. But deciding the font on your business card, for example, shouldn’t be something you lose sleep over.

Mistake 5:

Support Matters – There comes a time for every business owner when they recognize their professional weaknesses. Sometimes, this happens right away while other times it takes what seems like forever. Either way, when the time comes that business owners recognize what they cannot do well enough to support their business, the option of having hired support should be considered. There are experienced retail consultants who can help advise small business owners in a variety of retail sectors, including marketing, publicity, and buying, as well as support them in the execution of some retail needs, such as merchandising, special events, and accounting. The investment in this support can make a valuable impact on your retail success – or failure. Make sure whoever you hire is experienced in the area of expertise you need support with, and don’t be afraid to ask for references or interview them extensively. It may also be useful to hire a college student who is studying retail for some of your support needs, however this will not always be effective and although often less expensive, should not be your only support system. Consider all of your options before making any decisions that will cost you money, but don’t be afraid to spend money if it will help get you ahead.

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