It’s a new year and advice flies thick and fast for retailers prepared to tackle new consumerism. We have tried to pick through all the various articles and come up with some ideas particularly relevant for Queen Victoria Market traders.
1. New and exciting is the buzz phrase for consumers. Consumers are in the box seat. They want to be excited every time they go out shopping so looking for new things is important. Before you get depressed about all the stock you are already holding, new and exciting may just mean presenting your things in a different way.
2. Know what your competitor is offering. This is talking about your biggest competitor – online. We may be in an old-fashioned, traditional retail environment but our customers are up with the latest technology and doing a lot of their research online. Google your products and see what your customers are looking at. Are the products that come up in a Google search found at your stall? Is your price close? You don’t have to be cheaper. There is growing evidence that consumers are prepared to pay a little more for good personal advice and service. But if Google says the best product for a particular purpose is Widget A, you had better have Widget A, or something really close.
3. Product Individualisation. In a mass production world, customers like to think they can get something that is special to them. If you can provide that special little difference it may be the clincher in a sale. That difference may be in colour or texture or size and it may be very small but also very influential.
4. Seamless Shopping. Shopping used to be around shopping trips. Now it is conducted anywhere, anytime, in many different ways. When your customer wants to buy, you need to be there. And that seamless accessibility can simply be from the business card you gave out on your customer’s last visit with your telephone number and, ideally, your website on it. Or you could be featured on the QVM website which gives you a good chance of coming up in a Google search.
These are just a few ideas and possibly a good starting point for your market business. Look around at some of the better operators at QVM and there is a very good chance that they do each of these 4 things really well.
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