Herd Mentality for the Holidays
The Winter Holiday season is fast approaching. During this shopping season, consumers are looking for the best prices for their loved ones. With this influx of consumers, businesses and retailers are keen to increase their profits to yearly highs, in order to minimize losses or maximize gains. Yet, the shopping environment has changed immensely. Specifically, the market has grown within the last fifteen years with the advancement of the web.
The internet’s vast improvement over the last fifteen years has allowed consumers to have more options to buy products. Before, consumers were cognizant of their purchases, as there were a limited number of options. Nowadays, with the plethora of social media and retail websites, consumers can analyze and dissect as many products as they want, causing them to become “savvy” consumers.
Due to the advancement of the internet, the superfluous purchases that would commonly flood the market has now been diminished significantly. Furthermore, how consumers view businesses are huge, as they can simply post on a social media website, bashing the business. In turn, this leads to loss of business. Essentially, the consumers have morphed into behaving in manner that is similar to a “Herd Mentality”.
With this, some businesses believe that they are being forced to have a “unique” commodity, something that will cause the herd to flock to their business. However, some businesses lose sight of the herd by focusing on the wrong consumers. Because of social media, businesses are so reticent about their reputation. As a result, they will do everything to cater to each individual. Instead of treating a large minority of consumers as outliers or exceptions, they begin to pander to them, forgetting that the majority of consumers is the true target market. This short-sightedness has caused the downfalls of many businesses, resulting in unwanted mergers and bankruptcy.
In order to maintain their standing amongst the consumers viewpoints, businesses need to accept that it is the novelty or the uniqueness of their product/service and the experience that goes with it that will attract customers. While this is important, businesses also need to appreciate that a culture change is not necessarily a bad thing, and can actually cause growth for the business.