Implementing Value and Relevance – How Hard Can it Be?
There are five qualities that can be used to define consumer engagement:
- Efficiency
- Trust
- Relevance
- Control
- Value
Of these qualities, most merchants find “value” relatively easy to implement because consumers typically evaluate value based on price. Most consumers will ask themselves if they are getting a valuable deal for the marked price before making any purchase decision. On the other hand, some retailers manage to set prices slightly higher and still continue to win wallet share because they successfully reflect “value” through components such as a unique shopping environment or superior service.
While value comes in different shapes and forms, and retailers and restaurants will always find a way to talk about it, the perception level of “value” will always vary from one customer to another. To this effect, the ability to maximize “relevance” is far more difficult in the grand scheme of customer engagement.
Here’s why: consumers are not equal in terms of shopping habits, which makes access to customer knowledge so critical. In order to access customer data, loyalty programs paired with business intelligence is the best way to determine the right message and the right medium to effectively communicate with each individual customer.
Moreover, one of the most important factors to keep improving the level of relevance is on-going customer analysis. Relevance will get stronger if you have the ability a.) to implement a two-way process which translates in analyzing customer behaviour and b.) to observe how that same customer responds to an offer.
Although it may sound easy, the on-going analytical exercise is often something that organizations are simply not ready to invest in and this explains why retailers still struggle to be as relevant as possible with their customers.