What drives a customer?

Why do people do what they do? What motivates people to buy coffee, lunch, or groceries from the places they do? 

Once you figure that out, the goal is to change their mind and convince them to do their buying at your place.

Some people are driven by price, while others are driven by convenience. Customer service, familiarity, and speed of service are other motivating factors for choosing where to patronize. One factor that motivates all people is avoiding risk. 

The key to attracting new customers is to figure out which one of the aforementioned is a motivating factor for your demographic. 

Chick-fil-A does not have a value menu, nor will they. Their value is in the quality of food and service they provide. This means your target customer isn't afraid of paying full price for a quality product. They are not driven primarily by cost. 


Let's Play a Game

This is Susie. Susie is a morgage broker who works Monday through Friday. Every day on her way to work she stops for a hot cofee and breakfast sandwich from her favorite place. It's right on the way, it's fast, and it's predictable. Is it excelent food? Not really, but it's good enough and she's happy with that. Chick-fil-A is on her way to work, but she's never been there for breakfast. What would it take to make Susie a breakfast customer?

Anwser

First, let's talk about commonly used methods that Susie doesn't care about. She doesn't care about coupons. If you sent one to her home she probably threw it away. She doesn't care about free breakfast giveaways, and even if she did, she doesn't follow you on social media so how would she know about it? So how do you introduce Susie to Chick-fil-A? How do you convince her to try something new?

There are a few options to try; in order to understand them you have to first understand the risk that comes with this new idea. First, Susie has no idea if the coffee and breakfast are even good or not. If she comes through and gets food she doesn't like then she has to go to work hungry which sounds pretty terrible. Second, she has no idea how long it will take to get her breakfast. Chick-fil-A always has a long line when she goes through and if breakfast takes any longer than 5 minutes to get she'll be late for work which means she won't have time to eat and it sounds like a bad way to start her day. So she's chancing that they will have something she likes, the food will be good, the coffee will be good, and the service will be fast enough to not make her late to work. That's a big risk. This is why she sticks with what she knows.