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| Marketing: Time is Money |
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| Written by John Rosen and AnnaMaria Turano |
| Sunday, 30 November 2008 23:00 |
 The fascinating part is that each customer’s stopwatch is unique. Some decisions take months or years; some take days, minutes, or mere seconds. Adding to the complexity, the size and speed of the stopwatch will change depending on the customer’s specific occasion. Buying a bottle of wine for a big date (high risk) might involve more time, energy, and dollars than buying a bottle for a weeknight dinner (low risk). In fact, the riskiness of the purchase, from the customer’s standpoint, often helps define the customer’s stopwatch. This interplay of risk versus time and energy (the shopper’s stopwatch) defines four different of shopping behaviors: impatient, recreational, reluctant, and painstaking. Impatient shopping Buying replacement tires is the very definition of an impatient purchase. No one buys in advance, but a purchase can’t be put off once the flat tire occurs. There aren’t many touch points when the shopper is impatient. The customer’s stopwatch starts ticking very quickly. In these situations, Goodyear had to be certain that no customer was swayed by a salesman claiming, “I’ve got something just as good for $15 less from Korea.” In the case of impatient shopping, Goodyear discovered that visual cues, such as sidewall images, tread design, branding, and product names, were most persuasive to close the sale. Once customers could see the triple-tread tire itself, with the differentiated tread and sidewall icons (a sun, three raindrops, and a snowflake) that crisply communicated the tire’s unique benefit, customer stopwatches came to a standstill, and the sale was made. As Andy Traicoff, Goodyear’s director of customer development recalled, “We knew we had a winner when customers told us, ‘It looks like it does what you say it does.’ Dealers even admitted that the tire sold itself.” Recreational shopping Nowadays, most customers drive away from their local supermarket feeling defeated and deflated, dreading their next shopping trip. Whole Foods Market, however, brilliantly turned the act of grocery shopping from drudgery into delight. Rather than attempting to further speed up the grocery trip, Whole Foods slows down the shopper’s stopwatch. The brilliance of Whole Foods’ strategy is its recognition that some customers would rather spend an hour roaming the aisles of a delightful supermarket—one with beautifully displayed produce, samples in every aisle, surprises on its shelves, and friendly and informative store personnel—than 10 minutes pushing a cart through one that isn’t. The company succeeded in making the act of shopping nearly as rewarding as the consumption of the actual purchases. Whole Foods recognized that more time equals more money. By making the shopping experience comfortable and even indulgent, Whole Foods kept shoppers’ attention long enough that they would check off their weekly shopping list and perhaps make a low-frequency-yet-high-ticket purchase. Bringing fun and education, such as tips and tricks on how to get the most out of a product or service, to shoppers will bring more time and, more importantly, more profits to a business. Reluctant shopping Shopping for tires may be distasteful, but it is seldom delayed. The decision to open up an account at a new bank, however, is seldom made under time pressure. Unlike replacing a flat tire in an impatient situation, reluctant shoppers are likely to put off shopping even though they are well aware of their need. The opportunities to take advantage of reluctant shopping behaviors are richest wherever customers have an ongoing relationship with a business and are not “in the market” to switch. Commerce Bank employs this strategy, understanding that customers’ switching costs are simply too high once they have embraced a bank. Commerce makes sure its customers are not inclined to leave by perfecting a marketing strategy that combines customer friendliness (innovative services, friendly and welcoming staff, convenient customer-driven hours) with a consistently pleasant and inviting in-branch experience. As a result, Commerce customers are naturally reluctant to take their accounts elsewhere. Making the “known” always attractive with competitive offers and in-the-know exclusives (versus the “unknown”) is critical to ensuring customer loyalty among reluctant shoppers. Painstaking shopping Reluctant shopping is characterized by fear of making any decision. Painstaking shopping is characterized by fear of making the wrong decision and having to live with that decision for years or even a lifetime. Consider premium mattresses. Shopping for mattresses isn’t weekly or even yearly activity for most. When a customer starts to think of purchasing a new mattress, s/he invests much time and energy in reading reviews, learning about recent innovation, and even lying horizontally on mattresses in local showrooms. Tempur-Pedic understands the customer anxiety behind this purchase decision and works to ease this anxiety early and throughout the process. By succinctly explaining its innovative technology, sharing personal testimonials, and arranging no-cost in-home trials of its mattresses, Tempur-Pedic diligently overcomes any reluctance prospective customers might have in acquiring a new mattress. Understanding and internalizing shopping behavior—specifically, the time and energy customers are willing to spend shopping for your product or service—will strengthen your customer sales and marketing strategies. As a result, customers will be happy to give you their time and money. John Rosen and AnnaMaria Turano are coauthors of Stopwatch Marketing: Take Charge of the Time When Your Customer Decides to Buy (Portfolio; 2008). They are executive directors at Marketing Consulting Associates, a strategic marketing consulting firm based in Westport, Conn. Their clients have included MasterCard, Verizon, Gillette, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Goodyear, and Payless ShoeSource. Visit their Web site and blog at www.stopwatchmarketing.com. |