Successes Are Effects of Planned Causes. Superstition Only Feels Like Success.

Advantage offers explain consumers’ problems & opportunities to show how options fit. Retailers’ empathetic understanding establishes/reestablishes rapport, so consumers confidently enter stores.

Orientations create familiarity, so people comfortably buy project kits. Cheap products don't adequately help people adjust to uncomfortable changes from circumstantial causes or inadequate projects. To overcome negatives, people might reprioritize & forgo other benefits. Example: Storage space accommodates one object. Bigger sheds or storage rentals cost money customers could've invested in better equipment.

Consumers feel successful when saving money until cheap stuff fails to establish advantages. Top-quality, prioritized projects create stress-relieving advantages.

Orientation relates to positioning. To position your store in niche members’ lives, offer necessities for reaching & maximizing life positions. To reach, maintain & maximize advantageous positions, customers must integrate with specialty retailers. You & customers cooperate to preserve their advantages by maintaining your store’s position in their lives.

Nobody has perfect perspectives, so use consultations to orient customers with knowledge of their current & desired circumstances. With agreement about their locations & destinations, help customers maximize planning & product selections.

Customer integration retailers help customers identify positive & negative expectations. People might discard warnings if troubles don't emerge as expected.

Orientations/consultations explore expectations, establish criteria & preparations for emerging negatives &/or unfulfilled/late positives. People need evidence to discern if positives & remedies fade slowly or problems emerge gradually.

Help Customers Prioritize Needs & Abilities.

People accept Stephen Covey’s guidance about Qudarant-1 & Qudarant-2 priorities. Many things seem urgent & important. If everything seems equally prioritized, nothing is prioritized.

Which problems might cause more stress, damage, &/or interference with opportunities? Because of overwhelming stress, people might not notice/ignore symptoms or causes.

Organized, aware people highly prioritize problems & learn symptoms. Without enough money, people can feel preliminary relief by planning repairs. Preparation & incremental steps bring some comfort if people can't afford full projects.

Though reprioritization could feel disruptive, explain why customers should reconsider budgets & plans to solve problems sooner.

Example: Repairing Problem-A might be a better priority if Problem-B can worsen, but customers don’t have adequate skills or budgets. Orientations/consultations can reveal whether customers should: 1) invest time to learn skills for using unfamiliar products to remedy Problem-B; or 2) remedy Problem-A sooner with familiar skills & products.

Review urgency & importance criteria if potentially higher priorities or low budgets cause postponements. People delay until they’re certain about the best prioritizations.

Should prioritization be based on potential plan disruptions; comfort; readiness; &/or other issues?

People reject radical changes, but tolerate permanent issues to avoid bigger hassles & expenses. Understand niche members' tolerances to guide choices.

Stressed people might prioritize resisting changes that are unexpected, different than predicted &/or perceived as problems. When people stop opportunities or remedial projects to focus on perceived problems, stresses multiply as prioritization is derailed.

Specialist Retailers’ Consultations Can Guide Reprioritization by Applying Insightful Information.

People might suspect circumstantial changes, but lack definitions for identifying differences.

Analogy: Advantage offers can include clues about trouble like definition updates for security programs. Malware scans could be destructive if programs quarantine all software changes.

Without criteria/definitions, frustrated people unsuccessfully scan for changes that become troubles later.

In similar circumstances, people might disregard/habituate to recognized objects. Caution increases because of perceived threats & perceptions are based on criteria.

People prioritize loss avoidance & remember potential harms & benefits, especially if relevant to priorities. In courtroom shows, you might’ve heard actors/lawyers claiming cross-examination questions are irrelevant to the case. Judges determine relevance somewhat like Reticular Activating Systems engage with, pursue or reject stimuli & subjects.

Irrelevant issues aren’t evidentiary. Make advantages evident, so customers sustain your offers & overrule competitors.

Without guidance, facts, impressions & feelings simultaneously zip through consumers’ minds like this equation: Tools+materials+insights+knowledge+skills=advantages.

It means: Offer context-based insightful knowledge, so customers skillfully use tools & materials to create & preserve advantages. Creating, retaining, regaining &/or combining experiences brings & preserves advantages.

As people & circumstances change, you should guide customers' evaluations for updating experience combinations. These beneficial combinations are goals & specialized insightful knowledge maximizes benefits.

Consumers don't specialize like you, so compellingly describe advantage offers, so niche members realize they need you.

Fatigued Minds Are Overdrawn on Attention.

Paying attention is costly & can engage with or transition among subjects. Attention is limited by low-energy & mental capacity. Swiping left or right is analogous to what minds did for centuries. If option-1 seems tolerable, people want better options without missing-out on known & unknown opportunities.

“Engaged” is like conscious/subconscious minds sustaining attention. Engagement can mean mentally subscribed to retain access to information or other promised/perceived value.

Narratives involve minds by providing & holding details leading to conclusions. When beginnings engage minds, people want conclusions/resolutions. Incomplete stories leave open loops & value seems to be missing. Advantage offers can include opportunities competitors ignore. Desired, unfulfilled opportunities are gaps people want to fill.

Fear-Of-Missing-Out hurts because opportunities are lost. FOMO hurts when missing out seems like personal or social failure.

Offer Example: ‘While you’re earning & paying money, plus trying to cope with information overload, opportunities are passing & problems are progressing. WAIT! Problems are progressing?! Without adequate preventions & solutions, conditions regress & problems progress. You need (Store) consultations to gain insights for using knowledge & skills, so you'll avoid cheap product results. Let’s check causes & effects, so your chosen top-quality products will fit conditions & your necessary skills. Discounters specialize in pushing manufacturers for lower wholesale prices. (Store) specializes in customizing kits, so you’ll learn skills to create & maintain (advantages).’

Cheap products have missing value when discounters push manufacturers for lower wholesale prices (more on that later).

Zig Ziglar & others advised us to use stories to teach memorable lessons. Characters can be like mental handles which made Smokey Bear effective for fire warnings. Make characters as detailed as necessary for meaningful messages. People can engage with characters by adding personal details to perceptions.

Fictional & real bears & fish are often featured in media. When you’re reminded about predatory competitors or natural struggles, remember you need to create success. Don’t wait for customers or success.

Results Are Perceptual & Interpreted. Compare Benefits & Expectations.

While rushing through product selections & tasks, consumers want to believe their efforts are successful.

(Let’s continue our survival analogy where we left in July.)

Piranhas could be tripped up while simultaneously adjusting to environmental & work conditions (if fish could trip). They might be ill-prepared to battle bears, but seemingly escort salmon successfully. Piranhas claimed they scared bears away because fewer bears attacked salmon. Bears suffered digestive injuries without knowing why until authorities warned about sharp-pointed fish bones inflicting internal injuries. Bears stopped eating salmon until dining habits were improved.

In WHAT GOT YOU HERE WON’T GET YOU THERE, Marshall Goldsmith & Mark Reiter wrote “superstitious behavior comes from the mistaken belief that a specific activity that is followed by positive reinforcement is actually the cause of that positive reinforcement. The activity may be functional or not—that is, it may affect someone or something else, or it may be self-contained and pointless—but if something good happens after we do it, then we make a connection and seek to repeat the activity.”

Though superstitions don’t prove causation, superstitious people are sure. Success Delusion is people claiming they caused results without any real influence. How much do discounters profit from consumers assuming they used products effectively because results are as expected? It’s easy to assume perceived effectiveness is long-term, especially when conditions decline gradually.

Few bears appeared while piranhas were there, so they claimed causation.

To avoid paying &/or increase their comfort & confidence, salmon could claim their bones dissuaded bears. Piranhas could demand payment because salmon bones existed for centuries while bears ate salmon.

Bears could satisfy hunger with other food, but starve while hibernating without salmon protein & fatty-acids. While leaving hibernacula early or late, bears could stumble to rivers to drink. If they find somewhat frozen salmon or fry swimming downstream, hunger & memories could make salmon palatable. While eating, bears could think fish-bone problems aren’t as bad as starvation.

Or What?

Retailers don’t want consumers considering alternatives. Since consumers consider alternatives anyway, you should explore their thought processes.

If cynics claim your offers are unnecessary & too expensive, you could challenge them to compare competitors &/or no hope of opportunities & remedies. Explain functional hope from advantage offers of guided product & method selections Say guidance is included in prices.

How much functional hope can consumers maintain as discounters demand lower prices & manufacturers put the same brand names on lower quality products? How low can quality go? It’s worse than shrinkflation (smaller quantities without decreasing material qualities).

What have consumers experienced, observed &/or heard to cause them to stop, start or alter habits? Did they amend behaviors because of changed beliefs or caution? What indicates whether they should continue or adjust?

We’ll continue exploring consumer rationality & irrationality.

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

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