It started sometime around the third week of April. With increasing frequency since then, the BattleAxe has been seen wandering the corridors of BattleAxe HQ shaking her head and tutting - even more than normal. Her deep sighs have been those of a baffled and desolate woman.
Eventually this week, at an Elf team meeting her high-horse mounted, she made her views clear through the following mantra:
“Lesson Number 1 in business is to understand the needs of your target market(s).
Lesson Number 2, is to make sure core products aren’t in stock one day, not available the next, then back again on the shelves a week later.
Lesson Number 3: communicate with your loyal clientele in a way that leaves them feeling loved and wanted – make them feel special.”
The Elves seemed confused as to why the BattleAxe felt the need to remind them of this. “Isn’t that obvious to everyone?” ventured the Chief Elf, “after all, the majority of business is really all about your customers, not about bigging up you as an entity.”
“One would think so,” the BattleAxe responded (for once overlooking the Jamaicanism), “but the last few weeks have shown that there are some that just don’t appear to have worked it out. Their marketing gurus seem to have overlooked the basics and focused on brand rather than substance. Not only that, but core product items were changed without even talking to the heads of the departments affected – the people who actually have the data and know the customers best.
“The sad thing is that, as a result, they’ve had to shed jobs and lost some really good local staff. Furthermore their bargaining power with suppliers and international distributors has been seriously weakened.”
“If only they’d taken heed of the basic rules, their customers would keep coming back year in year out. And they’d have been able to do it without feeble attempts at attracting a whole new fickle customer base by “updating” much-loved stock lines, thereby leaving loyal customers without the very products they’ve bought for years!
“It doesn’t mean that a business doesn’t need to evolve over time – life changes. Neither does it mean that they can’t try new things alongside established standards.
It’s not like we’ve not seen the impact of all this before. M&S getting close to the brink misjudging their market. HMV appointing liquidators after over 90 years. Woollies losing its wonder to the likes of Wilko, not to mention the big supermarkets having underestimated the German discounters and now, apparently, ignoring Amazon and eBay’s potential impact in challenging the very need for shops as we’ve known them.
“What it does mean is that none of us in business can afford to be complacent and we definitely can’t act like we know best, simply assuming that longstanding customers will follow no matter what’s on offer.
As recent events show, behaving that way means that we’ll wake up to find closed outlets as they rapidly lose their hold on the market.”
No comments:
Post a Comment