Decrease Customers’ Stress. Increase Life’s Specialness.

(Note: I’m not advocating Harlow’s experiments. To avoid stereotyping humans, let’s continue analogizing stressful circumstances by extrapolating Harry Harlow’s findings.)

Advantage offers are retail interventions creating functional hope & promoting cognitive labor. Stress should decline as offers guide consumers through Awareness, Attention, Interest, Desire & Action.

While studying niche members’ lifestyles, observe opportunities & problems to determine causes & effects. Inquire about people's perceptions & reactions. What was expected & unexpected? What made efforts fully or partially worthwhile? Can these be enhanced? What made efforts fully or partially futile? Can these be changed?

While considering new offers, impressions & interpretations mix objectivity & subjectivity. Perspectives affect interpretations. Analogy: Babies developed "normally" when raised by mothers. Did isolated babies exhibit maladaptive behaviors because of isolation, no parental discipline or both? Experiment protesters might blame isolation.

Does discounters' cheap stuff fail because no products are adequate for specific conditions? Do incompetent discounters imply their inventory is adequate for local conditions?

Do You Offer Advantages of Value Creation, Remediation &/or Regeneration?

Retailers should guide somewhat like biological mothers to differentiate from discounters/surrogates.

Surveys & advertising tests can clarify issues (including differentiation) depending on your & consumers’ inferences. Develop benefit promises, starting with open-ended questions. Example: 'If ABC could __, how would it fit among your priorities?'

Eventually, you might use leading questions to confirm your understanding, but answers might be skewed. Example: 'By using ABC, you can __, would you value that?'

If respondents lack time, energy &/or skills for creating that value, purchases would seem impractical.

Since stress affects people's perceptions, do you sensitively inquire about decisions & conditions? Example: 'To help, I’ll ask questions to guide you accurately. Please indicate if you're uncomfortable.'

Ask about potential regrets. Examples: imperfect actions; not reattempting with better information; overlooked opportunities &/or experiments? Did people mistakenly rely on surrogates instead of high-quality products with goal-specific guidance?

Customize kits by learning from test offers & consultations. Analogy: Harlow’s tests parallel humans having to confront negatives while struggling to maximize positives. Negatives & positives are concurrent. Avoiding negatives could put positives out-of-reach.

Harlow’s observations could indicate babies preferred biological mothers. Biological tests could’ve definitively revealed lower stress levels possibly indicating fulfilled preferences.

As you describe benefits, observe customers’ relief in voices & actions. Add reassurance to customers’ confidence: ‘You have many thoughts & might need clarification later. Please call if you experience any uncertainties.’

Verify Indicators. Find Potential Definitive Results.

Before tests & surveys, determine whether to seek insightful facts or confirm beliefs. How many questions would be required & tolerated? How & when would surveys benefit consumers?

When opportunities & remedies are analogized as recipes, understanding emerges about how ingredients & practices produce or diminish benefits. Spices intensify flavors possibly masking others. Textures & consistencies are positively or negatively changed by blending. Insufficient blending can interfere with thorough baking/cooking.

Though recipes seem sufficient to some, cooking shows/podcasts are popular. Though cooking may seem simple, mistakes can disrupt health & experiences.

Since niches consist of subniches, offer advantage customization analogized as fully-cooked individual servings, take-&-bake or separate ingredients. You can advertise prices starting at $__. Consumers should understand additional services increase costs.

Develop advantage offers to ease people’s concerns about blending insightful facts, intuition & skills.

Consult with customers about increasing influence or obtaining control. Careful consideration reveals reasons & compares perceptions, so people acknowledge how much control they have & retain. This might help with discerning which factors slip out-of-control.

People learn to monitor factors via experiences &/or instructions.

Raise their awareness, so people realize technological ramifications. People may try justifying minimal effort without realizing they should welcome advice despite pride issues. Encourage people to avoid errors & humbly, wisely accept advice & instructions.

Advantage offers include guidance for maximizing experiences. Harsh lessons may be effective, but accumulating stress interferes with memory accuracy, effectiveness & efficiency. People can effectively, efficiently remember inaccurate perceptions.

Well-timed advertising reach is vital. If facts are misperceived or forgotten, frequency aids memory accuracy. Frequent messages might reach people when they have energy & think realistically with low stress.

Generalization Is Easy. Help People Evaluate & Differentiate.

If reunited, would experimental babies differentiate their mothers from surrogates or generalize experiences? Mistrusting all “nurturers” could limit some vulnerability but limit protective resources.

People might differentiate pleasant experiences but generalize stressful experiences & maximize avoidance. Since consumers expect benefits, differentiation is possible even if all retailers seem like profiteers. Don’t ignore negative beliefs, explain value to contradict inaccuracies.

Explain offers by comparing & contrasting lives (case studies) with & without advantages including before, during & after implementations. If you compare & contrast good, better & best options, people will have wider perspectives. If people are unsure which to choose, offer consultations.

Advantage offers & consultations can separate factors & help people differentiate factors applying to their lives.

Do People's Reactions Indicate Accurate Perceptions & Realistic Goals?

If unsure about experiences, people might purchase cheap surrogates & intend to invest in high-quality after evaluating experiences. Surrogate products cause surrogate experiences & might skew evaluations.

Is it realistic to expect marginal surrogates to adequately support long-term life-quality? Would nominal results endure without monitoring/maintenance if customers shift focus to other efforts? Would customers likely need to interrupt other prioritized activities to redo projects correctly the second time?

If people are stuck between fulfilling priorities & insufficient budgets, which offer would help customers ascend toward goals instead of losing progress? It could be analogous to climbers’ basecamps & pitched tents while ascending mountains. If storms hit, climbers determine whether to camp at current levels or return to previous safer camps without capitulating.

Surrogates may seem better than nothing, but inadequate results deteriorate, so any value is lost. Low-cost products may seem like small losses, but everything expended obtaining products & creating results is gone.

Product benefits should be at least as valuable as total inputs, but cheap inputs jeopardize total value. Help customers understand how each input affects situational value quality & durability.

Explain how products & practices combine into valuable quality worthy of expansion & preservation. High-quality product dependability may outlast circumstantial turbulence as cheap stuff loses functionality. Few circumstances remain consistently positive without substantial efforts & products.

Instead of focusing on minimum requirements, help customers consider which circumstantial factors affects product & project durability. Should customers purchase higher quality than seems necessary to avoid disappointments?

It’s illogical to buy, handle & keep excessive quantities of cheap stuff. It’s logical to buy sufficient quality & quantities required to create, maximize & maintain advantages. But logic is often perceptual based on preferences & priorities.

Superior offers could seem reasonable but unappealing. With surveys, research & consultations, determine if you can satisfy expectations better than competitors. Offers become advantageous when people accept beneficial combinations even if you don’t directly fulfill each benefit. Collaborate with retail teammates.

What will people do to fulfill desires? Example: Weekend athletes know they should exercise several days weekly, but it’s time-consuming & monotonous. Social sports are exciting competitions. Can you add fun competitions to daily exercises or other preparations? Can you make recovery easier?

Urge people to invest what they can afford, so they sustain value in a condition worth preserving.

If product benefits are presented as good, better & best, do you have information showing how long product quality lasts before value fades? As value & satisfaction decline, people might work harder with cheap replacements instead of investing in higher quality. As people contend with declining value, opportunities fade or vanish. Frustration hits when people realize lost opportunities may never come again.

Are They Equally Guilty?

Classify reasons for success or failure. Multiple reasons analogize as quarterbacks enduring players piling on. One is bothersome. Two are burdensome. Three cause injuries. Four are excessive.

When troubles pile up, consider which vulnerabilities you can shield & determine if offers should: 1-deflect disruptions of customers’ personal abilities &/or resource availability; 2-delay troubles until resources are available; 3-prevent occurrences; 4-remedy problems & hopefully prevent recurrences.

Attribution probably wouldn't be equal because severe effects could be aggravated by "minor" causes. After eliminating the worst cause, people might expect effects to end & improvements to start, but effects could be aggravated by secondary troubles. Misperceptions could “indicate” defective products &/or misleading ads.

It’s like addressing urgent problems with those surrogates/cheap products. Quick decisions & low prices seem compatible because high prices/investments warrant consideration which delays actions.

Short-term results may seem OK because people plan upgrades, but other priorities arise & upgrading is repeatedly delayed.

Problem diagnostics & option choices should include evaluating needs/goals, situations, product specifications & potential techniques.

Consultation Example: ‘Since the effect is acb2, the PROBABLE cause is 2ACB. The best local remedy is 2AcB2. The current inventory is (products) which would be like patching 2ACB to temporarily reduce acb2. It’s important, but not urgent yet. By ordering now, (Kit-BCA) could be here (date). A POSSIBLE cause is XYZ, so I advise using these criteria to check whether symptoms/results indicate XYZ happened. (Kit-ZYX) is a remedy & it’s in-stock. Consider if you’re confident enough with your observations to use (Kit-ZYX).’

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

Copyright 2025 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.

Your business's profit potential depends on how much value your market niche perceives in what you offer. They won't perceive any value unless they have a reason to think about it. It's why you need effective marketing.

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