When I was in Taiwan, I used to purchase laptop in Nova, a huge mall which was consisted of many stores offering various computer brands. In the mall, there were always some professional shoppers knowing everything about computers. Some others like me had basic understanding about computers but we needed to do some research before going there. However, there was still a group - I think it took about 40% of people - they did not know anything and they just went there to buy a laptop for themselves or others. What impressed me was their conversation with the staff in the mall. "Hi, I want to buy a laptop for my daughter." "OK, what are your requirements of the specifications?" "Specifications?" "Yes, I mean what kind of CPU, HDD, MB you are looking for and do you want an independent VGA?" "CPU? HDD?" "CPU means how fast the laptop processes information, we offer following choices..." "Sorry, I have no idea about computers. Can you just recommend me a good laptop?" "All laptops I sell are good, actually. Or why don't you tell me what she usually does on her laptop then I can advise?" "This will be her first laptop. Well, I heard of Acer before, how about Acer?"
In
Harvard Business Review (May 2012): “To Keep Your Customers, Keep It Simple,” Patrick Spenner and Karen Freeman discusses how to make your customers "sticky" with your brand. The most thing to customers is assistance to help decision making not information for relationship building, which marketers are working on. Partly I agree with the view point, especially that some customers like or become fans of brands' social media just because they want discounts. Many marketers assess their brand value by likings of Facebook page and this may be misleading. However, on the other hand, I really don't think that building relationship is not required. The problem is not about "building relationship". The problem is about tactics - marketers should not try to connect with customers by a lot of "hard information".
In New York Times: "Riding the Hashtag in Social Media," David Segal provides effective examples on how Gary Vaynerchuk interacts with his followers on Twitter. Very often, he just starts from a casual question, "Is there anything I can do for you?" Taking care of all the "jabs", anything of value in Vaynerchuk’s definition, he does not only tell but also creates stories with his fans together and finally, drives sales. This makes me think of one of my best friends is a car sales representative. He earned the annual honor of "best sales" 7 times in the past 10 years in his company. I asked him how he could do that, he just said, "Well, that's because I never try to sell cars to my clients." "What do you mean?" "You know, people may just purchase 2-3 times of cars in their whole lives so that does not help to keep promoting your products all the time. You only can help in the right time, or they will keep you away." "How do you know the right time?" "I don't, actually. I just make friends with them. We go to see ball games or have good food together and I never talks about car things unless they want to consult. Sometimes they have some problems with their old cars, if I can I would provide free service. But I do not persuade them to buy new cars. Then one day when the right time comes, I will get a phone call to ask me to bring a catalog and a sales contract there. That's it."
Let's go with academic stuff. (I don't like to talk about much academic stuff in my blog, but this is really something I feel useful.) Here is a classic approach: Elaboration Likelihood Model, which was developed by Richard E. Petty and John Cacioppo in the early 1980s. It explains how a message be processed and how to built persuasiveness. Sometimes people process a message in "central route", which means they prefer to think about the message deeply and logically. On the contrary, when people process a message in "peripheral route", they just use some simple clues to evaluate the message and think more emotionally. "Ability" and "motivation" are two key factors leading people's different thinking. Some parents have limited knowledge about computers, so we can say their "ability" is low in understanding information stuff. We should not talk to them with professional terms. Try to use simple language to build effective communications since they are processing the message in "peripheral route". Customers do not want to buy cars all the time, so they do not always have "motivation" to receive the information. But if we keep interacting with them, they will think of us if one day they have strong motivation to look for a car and need some advice.
Finally, if you are interested in how some companies build their brand image by story telling through "peripheral route", you can watch the following 2 videos. (Don't worry, they both have English sound track or subtitles.)
This is about how a brand builds a connection between its products and the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTRyYdUHtK0
Some volunteers made this film based on a true story in one of the telecommunication companies in Taiwan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShbrGBOq4ow&sns=em
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