Making it personal

MAKING IT PERSONAL

      All businesses share the same goal which is to make profit, but what’s make them different are their aims, structures, strategies, and specially their customers because without them businesses would not exist, that’s great attention is given to marketing strategies oriented to the human factor (customers) and to loyalty business models.

The question raised here is how to keep customers and how to build true customer loyalty?

      Elizabeth Spaulding and Christopher Perry say that “By providing customization, brands raise loyalty at a time when it’s more important than ever.”

      The quality of the product provide a satisfaction for customers, which lead to loyalty toward the organization and consequently to a profitability. That is to say if we succeed to make our product personal, we will be able to make customers favor our brand over all others, and then we can talk about loyalty and profitability.

      Nowadays, product customization is an important tool to boost sales by letting customers create their own personalized product via websites. Studies show that customers who customize a product online are more engaged and more loyal to the brand.

      Due to the rapidity of Internet in creating high price transparency, offering to its users the opportunity to compare products, the growing consumer force and the proliferation of social media and online publishing, customization is the solution for enterprises to benefit from real-time shopper preferences shared by costumer and to differentiate their products from those of their competitors.

      Technology has advanced to integrate online design options, but companies need to develop new techniques especially in the materials supply chain.

5 rules a company should follow to be successful:

Know what you want: the strategic value derived from the customization efforts should be clear.

Know how much customization you really need to offer: Some companies offer only a few customization options (fit, design), others make customers buy existing products that are then collected from a warehouse and sent to them.

Make it simple: Customers need a simple and easy design template; in footwear for example we should limit options to 7-10 design choices that are both demanded by customers and easy to implement.

Let people share: it helps companies to develop the sense of customers’ engagement and at the same time have new potential customers visiting their sites.

Enhance the customer experience: we need make the process of designing products enjoyable.

So successful companies are those that that put clear objectives, define how much customization is needed, having their customers as their partners and enhance their experiences.

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