Everybody wants to feel special
Luxury is an experience everyone wants and believes they deserve.
If you think about it, this idea is not all that revolutionary: today’s luxury consumer market is all about the experience!
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These are the elusive customers most sought after by drycleaners. Most did not
accumulate their wealth overnight. They have spent years steadily improving
their standard of living. They live in well-furnished houses with closets full
of clothes. They drive fairly new cars that can take them wherever they want to
go
— even to your competitors.
Material purchases for many of these luxury consumers are likely to be
replacement articles or things they want or take a passing fancy to, but, for
the most part, these things are not likely to be something they have had to
scrimp and save for.
Affluent consumers’ high incomes give them considerable purchasing power that they use with some
discretion. Because for these highly affluent luxury consumers, material things
are fairly easy to acquire, don
’t demand a lot of sacrifice, and are not really filling any deep-seated need, it
makes sense that the luxury consumers derive their greatest feeling of luxury
satisfaction from experiences.
Once we understand that for the affluent the ready availability of material
things makes them value experiences more, then it also makes sense that people
who have less material wealth would find greater happiness in acquiring
material possessions than in experiences. But that isn
’t the case. Consumers at every income level and every age, across the board,
favor luxury experiences over material possessions.
As part of a nationwide survey conducted by Unity Marketing and House & Garden magazine, 900 consumers 18 years old and older were questioned about
their purchases in the past year of all three types of luxuries
— personal, home and experiential.
They were asked from which purchase they gained their greatest personal
satisfaction and happiness. Nothing was asked about how they spent their money,
nor did they define or quantify what their specific luxury purchase might be.
That wasn
’t the point.
The point was to let customers define for themselves what their definition of “luxury” was. For example, one person might define a luxury experience as eating dinner
at Red Lobster; home luxury as buying a votive candle; and personal luxury as
shopping for a pair of shoes from PayLess (I hope my wife reads this). But no
matter what their luxury might be, over 42 percent reported getting their
greatest luxury satisfaction from the experience.
No matter who they are or where they live, no matter how much or how little
money they make, no matter how much or how little money they spend buying
something, all consumers want the same basic things. They want to feel special.
They want to buy the very best quality, whatever that is, that they can afford.
At the same time, they want to make sure they paid a good price and didn’t get gouged or pay too much. They want whatever they buy to work right, to look
good, to last a long time, and to perform as expected and as promised.
They want to be treated well and with respect by store personnel. They want the
reassurance of knowing that the company they are buying from has a good
reputation, is known for quality, and can be depended on to stand behind their
purchase. Regardless of whether they are spending $1, $10, $100, or $1,000,
they all want the same special feeling about their purchases.
This is the underlying motivational factor behind nearly every consumer purchase
today: Everybody, everywhere wants to feel special. Maybe they don
’t get those special reinforcing feelings from their family, their friends, their
coworkers, or their bosses; or they get them, but they still want more. So they
turn to the businesses they trade with and reach out to get that deep-seated
need for confirmation and special feeling of
“cared for” met in the mall, at the restaurant, or in your store.
No matter how much money is in their wallet, that cash represents some measure
of power to them. So, it becomes fairly straightforward to get personal
reinforcement by buying something. You become their hero when you fulfill their
“specialness” fantasy.
The point then is to make your customers feel special in every way, every day.
The special feelings play out, especially in personal interactions, so the way
the customer is treated is crucial.
Internalizing this into your business will give you the greatest benefit. The
way customers are treated the moment they cross the threshold is paramount.
Counter associates should be instructed to watch for customers before they enter
the store, not to wait and respond to the buzzer. A greeting, using the
customer
’s name, should be given when they cross the threshold, not after they are
standing at the counter.
The lesson is to focus on enhancing the specialness feeling of all your
customers, from the classes to the masses.
