Crafting the Customer Experience For People Not Like You: How to Delight and Engage the Customers Your Competitors Don't Understand

MACY’S AND MORMONS

Here’s another example of a brand that went beyond catering to a particular group’s needs and met their desires. Macy’s has department stores nationwide; like many department stores, they have an expansive housewares department. They have a vast selection of cookware, at every price point. But the Macy’s in Salt Lake City also has a selection of larger-sized cookware, specially created for preparing larger quantities of food. Why? Because the largest population of Mormons in the United States resides in Salt Lake City, and a key tenet of Mormonism is larger family size. The average Mormon family living in the United States has four children, compared with two children on average for non-Mormon families. A larger family means more food has to be cooked. The average-sized pot or pan may meet Mormons’ cooking needs; however, it won’t meet their desire to have a pan size that’s suitable for cooking a larger meal.

Macy’s doesn’t have to stock this cookware. I am sure that most large families in Salt Lake City could get by with regular-size cookware. But Macy’s has demonstrated that they understand Mormon family life: that these families are larger, make many home-cooked meals, and eat together. These customer insights mean that the local Mormon customer in Salt Lake City has a store that clearly recognizes their desires and values them as a viable customer group. Macy’s is providing a useful, practical, realistic selection of products to the Mormon shopper and is ...