Are People in Better Positions With You or Competitors?

Positioning is a major marketing practice & should include how consumers perceive consequences of their mental & physical positions. Customer integration helps people use current & new resources for progress from current to desired positions.

Retailers should offer advantages including psychological incentives to emphasize total product value to fulfill goals & retain gains.

When retailers dread monetary & inventory risks of full shelves, advertising ‘Product-X $30’ seems reasonable. But ‘Product-X’ doesn't promise beneficial opportunity fulfillments or problem-relief. Paying $30 means consumers have less money & possibly feel stuck with fewer resources.

Rough days feel worse when consumers have less money. Effective marketing explains how advantage offers justify prices by improving conditions or maintaining improvements. You can justify profitable prices by offering preparedness so people are assured they can cope when days become rougher.

Offer consultations to increase the probability of successful improvements, so you can afford refund/product exchange guarantees. Assure people your offers are superior to: 1) holding money as inflation erodes value; & 2) hoping cheap products will optimize results.

Offer Example: ‘You can spend your $30 any day for potential benefits. In (Store), you can invest your $30 today for definite (result) advantages. Get full-quality (products) & guidance from (Store) instead of hassling through driving to big store parking lots, searching stores without help & waiting in checkout lines. (Store) refunds money or replaces defective products. Since you deserve superior (solutions/opportunities), (Store) advantage offers include stress-relief of guidance to create high-quality product benefits. Before you buy, consider what kind of value would ensure you're investing in long-lasting advantages? Would you get that value & assurance from discounters? There are no guarantees about good or bad days. As times passes, inflation increases prices as wages buy less value & (problem) expands. For peace-of-mind, you need assurance of solving (problems) now, so you can focus on other issues.’

Unending Moderate Stress is a Major Problem.

Even if you don't offer total relief, offer essential physical & mental rest so people enjoy activating other brain & body cells than those engaged in tiresome tasks. Morale is boosted by anticipating enjoyment especially by increasing delightful variety. While enduring rough days, which memories or planned experiences can inspire intermittent mental relief/recovery?

People can use pictures, souvenirs &/or sounds to retrieve feelings. What would restore previous comfort, self-confidence &/or encouragement? Offer resources to establish mental & physical sanctuaries so people can cope longer with stress because they know durable recovery resources are reachable.

What would help customers achieve long-term foundational abilities despite changing conditions? Optimize flexibility & strength of foundational abilities, so customers create, maintain & defend advantages without undue concern about losses.

Which advantages create well-being & increase psychological satisfaction as people advance in the Hierarchy of Needs. Lives are destabilized when people lose needed basics. If something blocks or reverses self-actualization, self-confidence & peace-of-mind may seem threatened.

Cheap products form insecure self-actualization foundations.

Even if discounters promise advantages, how confident are customers in integrating & retaining advantages? Assure customers you offer attainable & maintainable advantages. Advantages are hard to fully enjoy when people are stressed about losing them.

Distracted people want enjoyable days without studying & interpreting overwhelming details. Since you specialize, it's easy to think everybody shares your priorities, curiosity & knowledge. Despite 8 business hours per day, you might be ready for more details, but consumers' attention is split among different level urgencies. As urgencies seem to become emergencies, stress pushes people to act quickly or surrender.

On good days, people might procrastinate to avoid stress & expand pleasure. On bad days, people might procrastinate to escape current problems & avoid other stresses.

Stress motivates people, as brains scramble to search memories for examples & facts which can clarify or clutter interpretations of current troubles. As mental clutter increases, people feel more vulnerable to trouble plus manipulative sellers.

Customer integration retailers can decrease vulnerabilities & increase trust, so customers are less concerned about manipulation. People don't want to admit vulnerabilities to potential manipulators, especially as vulnerabilities increase. Trust brings comfort & openness to ideas.

Long-term Progress

Despite not controlling what consumers understand or want to receive, we can influence their choices with customer integration. By integrating your store into consumers’ lives, you build trust by showing how you increase value by learning how to fulfill customers' desires & needs.

Some retailers don't ask service-oriented questions. Big retail customers are motivated to buy low-priced, cheap-quality products, but you should know advantages niche members want. So, differentiate your offers by emphasizing progress from effective, efficient products & techniques.

Consumers might wonder why customer integration retailers ask questions before recommending optimal products & methods.

Analogy: If you aren't a pharmacist, you might not know about off-label uses. Physicians might prescribe medications for conditions manufacturers hadn't considered. This can apply to how people use other products. Maybe products can be used with other methods in other conditions for other results, especially when people don't read instructions or use strange tutorials.

Your understanding of products & people's conditions is important but secondary. For successful offers, the primary importance is how people's desires & needs affect perceptions of conditions & understanding of products.

Start with what consumers (think they) know because if you don't work with what's in people's minds, you'll have trouble influencing plus connecting with beliefs.

Positioning involves where & how problems, opportunities, competitors & you are prioritized in people's minds. As problems & opportunities emerge, people's journeys could route toward or away from solution & optimization resources. By positioning your store in people's minds, you can influence their journeys.

If you & consumers don't know each other, you need to get in front of them as a guide. Are consumers observing/experiencing problems & correctly/incorrectly journeying toward prevention/solutions? Are consumers observing/experiencing gaps & correctly/incorrectly journeying toward opportunities?

As you consult with customers, you can refine your positioning in their lives plus your position in specific journeys.

Start with paradigms. The concierge paradigm can be based on people wanting to be treated like VIPs. You can go further by helping people fulfill very important person roles by being most valuable players for loved ones &/or organizations.

Analogy: For people’s journeys, do you sell equivalents of generic maps to theater parking lots? Would you specifically map customers’ routes based on personal needs, vehicles, traffic patterns & weather to parking lots & walks to theater doors? Would you be like an usher to choose seats according to physical needs or combine those like a concierge plus provide beverages & snacks?

Position your store in customers’ processes to establish & maintain advantages that wouldn’t exist or be complete without your resources. People might have 'set it & forget it' mindsets leading to frustration because high-quality products can last while conditions change.

Conditions can change & show how results hadn’t been fully prepared for multiple problems, though preparation might’ve been complete for current conditions.

Results may be as complete as possible from big retailers’ resources. High-quality products can make results more beneficial.

Your added value can establish advantages which include guiding customers’ journeys to avoid/reduce problems which makes advantages more powerful & retains power plus makes it useful as conditions evolve.

In WHAT GOT YOU HERE WON’T GET YOU THERE, Marshall Goldsmith & Mark Reiter wrote about success being a journey. They analogized Success Delusion with this: "The bear was about to clamp onto an unsuspecting airborne salmon jumping upstream. [An UNUM] headline read: YOU PROBABLY FEEL LIKE THE BEAR. WE’D LIKE TO SUGGEST YOU’RE THE SALMON."

Some of Goldsmith's statements are: "Successful people believe they are doing what they choose to do, because they choose to do it." "Successful people have a unique distaste for feeling controlled or manipulated." "Their personal commitment encourages people to 'stay the course' and to not give up when the going gets tough. Of course, this same steadfastness can work against successful people when they should change course."

Anthropomorphized salmon might deny instinct drives them to spawn where they hatched. Small fry survived swimming downriver, but successful & failed salmon don't return to oceans to warn potential spawners before they fully commit. They might believe their "choices" & abilities are optimal, but accept advice about avoiding predators.

Position your store in people's minds & lives where commitments are made & journeys begin.

Advise customers about techniques for using products for reducing or avoiding obstacles & risks.

As much as practical, make successful projects more attractive than perceived bargains of discount products.

Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything.

Copyright 2023 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.

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