Market researchers Ipsos Mori have an intriguing slogan ...
An apt idea for a research company, but is it true? Can we predict what value means to people, for example?
I've been researching pound shops, as it happens. Everyone loves a bargain - but what is the psychology of the pound shop shopper?
Pound shops have been doing rather well recently - predictably enough. Poundland has just bought 99p Stores. (I wonder how much they paid?)
Everyone knows that in pound shops - like most shops - you leave with more than you came in for. 'Everything costs a pound' plays to our desire to win at the shopping game. Find genuine value, you win. Pay more than you had to, or buy something you later regret, the house wins.
But when you see what is being sold, like the item below ... is it a pet tombstone, a way of immortalising Thumper ... ?
... turns out it was for 'dearest husband', 'nan' - a plastic mantelpiece mini memorial, to remind you of a deceased loved one. Guaranteed not to break, fade, wear out or get stolen. For a pound. What great value! Who'd have predicted that?
Then there were the gnomes ... all sorts of gnomes, gnomes whose bums lit your path, drunken mushroom gnomes ...
... gnomes-with-windmill set (two designs to collect) ...
.. not forgetting the Wine Monkey, a sock for putting over a bottle of wine, 'made from all-American red-heeled socks'.
Does this imply that those who run pound shops CAN predict their shoppers? They understand the culture and cater for it ...?
Or are they gambling as much as the shopper? Win some, lose some. Maybe we only remember the predictions we get right.
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