What Consumers Want

October 31, 2010  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in on November 1, 2010

These are interesting times, and retailers and manufacturers alike are feeling the squeeze. Accordingly, Info Retail thought it would be appropriate to perform a mass survey during the Summer 2010 Las Vegas Market in order to keep its finger on the pulse of market attendees.

We interviewed roughly 200 manufacturers and retailers. In this article, we review how attendees responded to two of our survey questions, as well as offer our perspective on what these results may mean for the industry.

Do consumers want more or less products at retail? According to 63 percent of the survey respondents, consumers want more product choices at retail.

Info Retail€™s perspective: Maybe, or maybe not. Under some circumstances the consumer may appear to be asking for more products. For example, suppose a customer comes into your store looking for a sofa. At first glance, all she may see are brown sofas. One has high legs, one has low legs, one reclines, and another has gold rivets on the arms. But they are all brown. This customer might ask if you have any other sofas besides what she sees on the floor. The logical conclusion would be that she would like more products from which to choose.

While the retailer may translate the consumer€™s request into a desire for more products, what the consumer may actually be asking for is better choice satisfaction among the products already on the floor. Choice satisfaction is directly linked to the attractiveness of the assortment of options being offered. When the product options are considered more attractive and more easily understood, the consumer is satisfied with less choice. Less attractive assortment options may cause consumers to believe they need more products to choose from. In addition, if the consumer perceives that your store or assortment is of low quality, they will believe they need more products in order to make the best choice (Cherney & Hamilton, 2010). If your customers are asking for more product choices, it may be that your assortment lacks clear differentiation and option attractiveness, or that the consumer perceives your store as being of lower quality.

Changing from a product-centric to consumer-centric business model is key. We suggest having a clear product hierarchy that consumers can easily understand. This hierarchy should educate them on how to evaluate the differences between good products and the best products. We encourage manufacturers and retailers to understand dominant buying motivations and transfer that information into a clearly understood benefit to the consumer. We encourage user testing to fully understand what drives the consumer to either make a purchase, demand more options or leave empty-handed.۬Social media Survey results indicate that 51 percent of respondents use social media as a way to connect with customers.۬Whether or not to use social media is a timely, relevant question. Info Retail has created several social media strategies and campaigns for clients that have successfully allowed them to connect with consumers. In our research however, we uncovered many more ineffective social media campaigns circulating in the furniture and bedding industry than we did successful ones. A poorly executed social media campaign can actually decrease consumer advocacy and, in some cases, greatly distort or even destroy the brand۪s message. Creating a fan page on a social networking site does not translate into a social media strategy; in fact, it may hinder the effort.

The first step to designing an effective strategy is to research what€™s currently being said about your brand, where it€™s being said, and who€™s saying it. This knowledge should guide many of your campaign decisions. Next is the most important step:

Identify how your company will measure the success of each campaign. Success may be the amount of traffic the campaign drives to the Web site, or the number of people who consistently return to that site. Clearly identifying metrics for success will help frame the campaign€™s goals. For example, if your goal is to get 3,000 people to your Web site, the architecture of your social media campaign may be quite different than if your goal was to increase brand advocacy. While both are fair goals, identifying your priorities for consumer activity or sentiment will direct the development of content and the decision as to which social media channels to utilize.
Starbucks and Dunkin€™ Donuts both use social media to interact with their customers. However, the results of their campaigns have been quite different. Starbucks uses its social media campaign to claim their superiority over other brands while Dunkin€™ Donuts, who has 80 percent fewer Facebook and Twitter followers, takes a more advocacy-driven approach.

Dunkin€™ Donuts uses its campaign to turn real people into online supporters. With social media, Starbucks voices its dominance and Dunkin€™ Donuts creates consumer advocates. These two goals don€™t have to be mutually exclusive, but companies should identify what they intend to accomplish before they launch their strategy.

Several furniture and bedding manufacturers make use of €œflat€ social media. Social media is referred to as flat when the owner of the campaign does not allow consumers to interact with the campaign, like a Facebook page where interaction isn€™t encouraged. The positives of a flat campaign are that the manufacturer has more control over what is being said and less PR issues to address. The disadvantages are that it isn€™t allowing consumers to interact. In fact, flat social media actually is just another way to execute traditional advertising wherein the company talks €œat€ a consumer instead of €œwith€ the consumer. In flat social media, the content becomes a pop-up ad in a place where social media is supposed to take place, and the resulting consumer perception is often quite negative.

We recently researched a bedding manufacturer€™s Facebook page. The good news: They have accumulated hundreds of fans. (Keep in mind that the word €œfan€ when referring to Facebook does not necessarily mean an individual appreciates you.) The bad news: The wall is plastered with negative comments regarding its products.

Making matters worse is the fact that the manufacturer is not addressing the negative comments. If the manufacturer€™s original goal is to attract €œfans€ to the page, the campaign could be considered a success. However, if the manufacturer€™s goal was to showcase product quality and consumer satisfaction, the campaign may be perceived as a failure.

The result of the campaign could be entirely different if the manufacturer had spent less time marketing product, which is typically perceived negatively within social media, and more time addressing the negative comments. While the campaign may have resulted in a lower number of fans, it probably would have also decreased the number of occasions when negative comments were addressed publicly by fans. In addition, by publicly addressing the negative consumer comments, the company showcases their concern regarding consumer problems and their devotion to creating a satisfactory solution, thus turning a negative comment into a positive PR moment. Bear in mind that not all negative comments need to be addressed.

A strategy for responding to negative consumer feedback must be developed, identifying feedback that needs to be addressed and how often to respond. If this balance is not established, a company can come off as being defensive instead of helpful.

The lesson here is that simply pouring content into a social media channel does not translate to a successful strategy. Remember, a social media strategy is the integration of appropriate and engaging communication channels in order to create a seamless flow of communication between a brand and consumers.

It€™s because of this that even more discretion and consideration is needed when developing the campaigns within a social media strategy than was required for a print media campaign, because social media is organic and evolves over time. Companies must consider how the dynamic evolution of the content in their social media campaign will invariably affect the perception of their brand.

While the industry continues to struggle through this time of economic uncertainty, the development of a strong, data-driven strategy for new initiatives is absolutely essential. Within each strategy, key performance indicators should be established as well as measurement metrics. These steps will insure that you will receive the absolute highest return on your investment. HFB

For more information about Info Retail€™s Las Vegas 2010 survey, go to blog.inforetail.com/podcast or e-mail the company at info@inforetail.com