Through the years, there has been a tremendous amount of change happening in the retail industry. With the emergence of e-commerce which is slowly killing the traditional means and ways of retail, there is a boom in trends and a boost on how things formerly goes and works.
Retailers have gone a lot of innovations and developments recently. There have also been a lot of studies going around to explain phenomena and to predict the future of the market. Researchers spend years observing the market, its variables and the hard-to-predict behavior of customers just to be able to give us these valuable data.
One of these important studies focused on retailer considerations and priorities with their businesses. Study shows that personalization which is thought to be preferred by most customers is among the least on their priority when choosing retailers.
Personalization is considered as one of the biggest trends in business due to the rising diversity of customers among different generations, race, age group, lifestyle and preferences. It all boils down to one thing; giving a unique customer experience.
But it turns out, that there are other factors that are still more important that personalization such as the value, quality and convenience. Values and personalized experience may become more important as time goes by but there’s no sign to be seen that it will become more important than the previous priorities.
It can be simply explained as a result of consumers being bound to tradition. Also, the term personalized experience may have a different connotation to them such as an experience with the product itself and not with the process of purchasing or maybe they just don’t see any significant benefit of it yet.
Another revelation found is that despite the boom of online selling, foot-traffic on stores surprisingly increased proving that customers still value going to physical stores like how all customers used to do before. Though there are only a few industries which showed increase maybe due to the trends.
Now, it is also essential to highlight the importance of these data which are gathered from thorough investigation and analysis by well-trained and skilled professionals. Instead of purely depending on hunches, this is where businesses should rely on these for these contain accurate information that can help in knowing and understanding consumer behavior.
Businesses must always set their priorities straight and focus on what matters the most for customers. They must assure that the quality of their products and services always matches its worth. It is also required of them to think of ways to make purchase transactions more convenient to ease the life of the consumers.
There are countless of tools and software that can be used in achieving this. But remember that not everything will fit your business. So, pick carefully if you are trying to use one because you will be investing time and resources to make sure it’s worth it.