低価格を武器に売上を伸ばす衣料品などの専門店が、相次ぎ大手百貨店に出店する。高級品の販売で独自のポジションを構築した百貨店も、低価格品を求める消費者の動向に対処できず、業績不振店舗の活性化が急務になっている。店舗の立地条件や規模など各店舗の特性に応じた対策が必要になっている。インターネットの普及により、消費者が入手する情報量は膨大になり、企業は短時間で消費の変化に対処しなくてはならない。しかし、これはどのような大企業にも至難の業である。そのため、顧客を獲得するという猟師の発想ではなく、呼び込んだ顧客の満足度を持続させる商品やサービスを、バランスよく育成する視点が必要である、つまり、雑草は取り除き、よく育つ植物を見極めてアレンジする、庭師の発想が不可欠である。移り気な消費者は、インターネットで何か新しい物を求めている。固定観念を捨てて、顧客を一度訪問した庭に釘付けにする能力が不可欠になっている。(Written by Shigeo Sunahara of CBC, Inc.)

No. 53: From a hunter to a landscape gardener (April 19, 2010)
Specialty stores like clothing stores that are enjoying soaring sales with inexpensive products are going to branch out in leading department stores in succession in Japan. Department stores that established their own position with high class products has been unsuccessful in coping with recent consumer trend that seeks for inexpensive products, and they are busily occupied in stimulating sales of branches suffering from poor results. They need to work out measures that respond well to the characteristics, such as location conditions and business size, of each branch. Information available for consumers is growing drastically with the spread of the Internet, and companies are required to cope with changes of consumer trend over a short time. It is, however, hardly possible even for a big company to satisfy timely the requirements of consumers who are growing more and more capricious and volatile. Now they need the viewpoints not from a hunter but from a landscape gardener. Hunters get customers, and landscape gardeners keep customers enjoying with well-balanced assortments of products and services. Landscape gardeners weed, and spot promising plants and arrange them beautifully. Consumers are whimsical and always looking for something new on the Internet. It has become vital to abandon the established framework and keep consumers excited and enchanted once they come in the company’s business domain.