Articles About Customers' Behavior During Sales Periods

Sales season, or promotional campaigns are a very important part of your marketing strategy. In terms of customer relationship management, actually, we use a lot of techniques in order to have targeted ads with targeted discounts in order to optimize promotional budgets. But when it comes to sales, you are in a totally different area, as you have massive discounts for any people who gets in your store. Nevertheless, as most of retails own a substential part of its sales made during those kind of periods, these events should be taken into account in your customer relationship management strategy.

French Magazine Challenges has interviewed French expert in economical behaviors Mickaël Mangot about how customer's behavior may change during sales periods.

Customers behavior during these sales are based on two platforms:

• Rarity: The stock avaible + the high level of discount + the short period of time, drive the urge to get the products. We desire things more when they are rare.
• Social competition: During the sales period, brand products are affordable to most people which creates the will to go up the social scale. We want to get as much products to own more things than our peers.

There are two main tactics used by retailers to succeed during these sales.

• Showing off the original labelled price: The customer tends to pay more attention to the discount level than the actual price after the discount. By maximizing and showing the discount, retailers raise its chances of selling.
• Advertizing big discounts in order to attract customers into its stores, and then having lower discounts inside store. The big discounted products are available with low stocks. If the customer don't find what it needs, it will have a high probability to buy another product with a lower discount.

There are two important kinds of utility for a customer during sales hunt:

• The utility of the experience: What utility you get from the things you buy.
• The transaction: Most of the time, this experience is the one with the most emphasize during sales. 
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Sales are a very important part of a relationship between a retailer and a customer, and you should pay attention to the experience you provide to your customers during this period.