Stopwatch Marketing

Understanding the time and energy that consumers are mentally ready to devote to buying your offering is the key to successful sales, underline the marketing consultant authors. Indeed, people have an internal clock at the time of purchase that determines whether they are more or less rushed, more or less receptive to marketing arguments, etc. Take one minute too long with a customer in a hurry, and you’ll lose the sale. On the other hand, if you fail to give enough information to a picky customer looking for the best deal, you will also lose out. An intimate knowledge of how your customers make decisions should serve as a marketing strategy guide.
Marketing tactics, according to the authors, should take account of four basic shopping types: Impatient shopping, Painstaking shopping, Reluctant shopping and Recreational shopping. For each type, they use an example to underline the corresponding strategic conclusions. For instance, the leaders of Goodyear turned the brand around by starting with the observation that motorists wanted to spend as little time as possible purchasing tires, while feeling completely reassured about safety. They consequently redesigned their tires to make the quality visible in the product itself, with no need for further explanations. The company also came up with a one-size-fits-all design compatible with most rims, etc.
This is an illuminating book on how to optimize the customer experience to turn it into a key performance driver for your brand.