
Chapter 11 n IQ Applied to Supply Chain Management 487
What happens when the Customers get to the checkout stand?
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Do they purchase all items?
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Do they put some items back?
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Do they find pricing errors?
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Do they have a friendly and courteous checkout experience?
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These are all critical pieces of Information that help sellers understand their
Customers — if the sellers would take time to observe, capture, and analyze
Information about Customers’ behavior with various Products.
Process Activities
Retail store shoppers will shop for and evaluate Products from within the choice
of the store and from other purchase sources, determining which — if any — is
the right Product for them based on their Experience and the Information made
available to them at the time of evaluation or purchase.
Some activities retail store staff can perform include:
1. Observe Customer behavior, without appearing to be intrusive.
2. Document questions Customers ask about various Products and com-
municate them to Product development or purchasing staff and to the
Product Suppliers.
3. Discover what Customers were looking for in their evaluation of items,
specifically what they sought but did not find.
4. Hold focus groups of typical Customers to discover the Information or
Characteristics they look for in certain kinds of Products.
Note For consideration of IQ in e-Business, please see Chapter 13,
“I ...