Following Consumers, Retailers Should Adopt ‘Divinely Discontent’ Mindset
Don’t Rest on Your Laurels
This goes for companies, too, including retailers. They need to follow the consumers’ lead and be divinely discontent with the status quo. They need to be engaged in conversations with their employees and customers to understand where they need to make improvements.
Companies that have set up their organizations with access to a constant stream of customer sentiment and feedback are well positioned to sense discontent quickly and develop solutions to address possible barriers. As consumers share their information and insight with companies, these companies are simultaneously discontented with their offerings and are always looking for ways to improve.
Amazon is a great example of a company that’s never content. It’s constantly breaking entire industries so it can rebuild them in smarter ways. Just look what it’s done most recently to the grocery business, namely with the Whole Foods Market acquisition and the overall “tech-ifying” of the grocery shopping process. Because it’s so aggressive, other retailers have had to improve their offerings to remain in competition.
Huawei, a global telecommunications equipment company, believes that the consumer is the catalyst for constant innovation. Huawei has been a leader in driving consumer-centric solutions and key global partnerships to bring world-first innovations to the smartphone industry, to the tune of $45 billion over the past 10 years. It listens to its consumers and then goes to work to exceed its consumers’ expectations of its products. One example is the camera in its smartphones. From its consumer research, it learned how important a quality camera was in a consumer’s decision to buy a smartphone, so it went out and teamed up with Leica, one of the most recognized names in the quality photography space, and incorporated that technology into the cameras available on its smartphones.
This may not be comfortable for organizations, but as information has been democratized, expectations are ever expanding, and services need to follow suit.