Making sure consumer is at centre of retail universe

The most successful organisations place the consumer at the centre. This is a statement that probably resonates; however, we seem to frequently hear complaints or find consumers are not pleased or expect higher standards.

We believe that at this point it is worth relooking and understanding what it entails for a company.

What does it mean to be consumer-centric? Essentially, that most of our decision-making is based on the question: how will this better serve our consumer?

We have to bear in mind the background of businesses in the UAE. Today it is amongst the Top 10 retail destinations of the world. We weren’t always there: some years ago this was mainly a market of franchises catering to local needs. It was developed… but still not a global hot spot.

This means consumers valued us in the local context — the GCC, subcontinent and possibly the wider Mena. Today, our consumers value us in the global context, making comparisons with London, Hong Kong, the US and other top shopping destinations. Additional responsibility comes with it.

It is clear how some big and government organisations stepped up in this respect — Emirates, Dewa, RTA and others have succeeded into evolving towards putting the consumer at the centre. How much effort the government in general has put in delivering better, more comprehensive responsiveness and going well beyond basic regulations.

Retail companies need to step up to be delivering similar standards.

When an organisation wants to become consumer-centric, it takes time to realise this wish. There are a number of steps that need to happen (fast) to be able to get up to global standards.

Most retail companies start being internally centred, caring about their internal processes, how to handle unsatisfied consumers, how to handle returns and how to handle in general their own internal matters.

Right after that they move to being financially centred: what is the impact in their P&L of handling all those issues and how their systems will reflect and deal with these processes.

Only when this is sorted out do companies start thinking about the shopper and then the consumer. It is important to understand this process. At retail, unlike other environments, the consumer and the shopper might not be the same person.

Someone can be buying for the use of another individual. If we look only at the shopper we might lose the link to who is actually using our product, which is ultimately the person we direct all our marketing efforts and ultimately the product is made for.

Unfortunately, only now, the Middle East has the volume for the big consumer panels to start investing in gathering consumer data. This is prevalent (regardless of whether it is used or not) in fields such as telecom and more structural means. Most of the data gathering today is done by the company that will ultimately use the data, lacking to some extent independence in the criteria and transparency (as it is proprietary privately-owned data).

Lacking independent industry data, smaller companies have to invest a disproportionate amount of resources to find out what consumers want.

Now we are in a global market, and it is when consumer centrism becomes really important. The services we do provide to a consumer (ease in returning an undesired product, exchanging, or even how to use the product they acquired) become of capital import. Now consumers are savvier than ever: expats and tourists compare prices with their own countries (and currency exchange plays hard nowadays), while a local consumer compares with London or the US.

The main differentiator is how well we handle this relation and how good we are at creating value that is not necessarily bound to pricing only. This is the same process that US or European companies went through when ecommerce came into play, especially with companies that are very price aggressive such as Amazon.

Being consumer-centric and working all our processes around how we best service consumers is the number one tool against a discounter. This means in other words investing into knowledgeable staff who will do the best for the consumer, having smooth processes where the measure of success is consumer satisfaction instead of only profits, and having unbiased feedback channels that will give us an accurate picture of what consumers think about us.

The Middle East is just entering this new scenario; a lot of tools are not there yet, but some services companies and some retailers are shifting focus towards value-added sales. It will be an interesting moment where some companies will just lose the consumer trapped into their internal dynamics, while others will win the game by focusing most on what is the extra value they can bring to the marketplace.

The government and large companies are giving a clear hint on where to move to and how to do it. It’s just a matter of leaving the past behind and focusing more on who actually shops and uses the product we sell, and listening to them, regardless of if we like it or not.

Playing in the top global league requires global leadership and understanding. UAE is now in the top league, some will not be up for the game, but the ones that can, will be ready to lead not only in this marketplace but the global one.

The writer is the President for the Sports Division at Gulf Marketing Group.