This is a need retailers have to satisfy if they want to be successful. “Customers wish to see ranges that offer “mental multifunctionality”. Scope is therefore one of the most important buzzwords.“
After this overview of consumers' general mental state Ute Höfer of AW Management Consulting in Emmendingen demonstrated how CustomerProfiling allows retailers to “take a walk” inside their shoppers' heads.
Comparable to the methods applied by agent Starling in the thriller “Silence of the Lambs“ this methodology factors in not only socio-demographic factors such as age, income and marital status but also assumptions, intuition and experience.
Explaining the approach, the management coach said: “Modern shoppers can no longer be allocated to certain target group segments.
They remain “vague” in this type of analysis. By profiling them we learn about consumers' unofficial reasons and this is precisely what interests us. Role-plays, emphathising interviews and forming hypotheses are all basic strategies of this method.