Made in America

My wife and I ordered two coffee tables recently, which would not usually qualify for discussion in a Quadrant Five post. Still, I found the messaging and decision points in our search to be worthy of a conversation with you.

Being in the business of customer perceptions and marketing strategies, I think a lot about what’s influencing my buying decisions. When we went out looking for furniture, I tried to pay attention to how I was responding to each step of the process.

We’re empty nesters now, so we aren’t buying furniture for our family. We’re buying it for ourselves. There is a shift in thinking and emphasis that comes with our new station in life. Anything we buy is more an expression of our style than a statement of our practicality.

So, when we went looking for our new purchase, we knew it had to look different from the thousands of tables we could buy in any furniture store in Yourtown, USA. We’re looking to upgrade our style cred and, God help us, we need to enlist a couple of coffee tables to get us there.

Our search defined the specific stores we would visit and the ones we would skip. If we don’t want something that looks like we bought it at IKEA, it makes no sense to stop at IKEA—or many other stores.

In the stores we visited, the saleswomen were happy to sell us any coffee table we wanted. They were making a catalog sale, the kind we discuss in our Focus Workshop, so they were content to show us everything and see where we landed. To most salespeople all commission dollars look the same.

As buyers, though, the specific choice mattered a great deal, because we were trying to buy something that says we are hip and stylish. As we note regularly in our Quadrant Five workshops, what the customer buys never appears on the invoice. In our case, as well, the coffee tables were just a means to an end.

Beyond the look of the tables, we liked the fact that the products were made in the United States. Long ago, I gave up on buying only items made in America and refocused on products made by our allies and, ultimately, any country where people have the right to vote. Made in America was a plus for me, but it wasn’t a deal-breaker if the product came from Poland or Australia.

So this group of coffee tables appealed to empty nesters who are looking to make a statement about style and support American workers or, at least, democratic republics. If you’re the manufacturer of these coffee tables, how do you identify us and how do you train the salespeople in the furniture store to sell your products to us based on our needs and goals?

Ultimately, all of us are making coffee tables and all those coffee tables are a medium of exchange for whatever the customer is really buying. Until we figure out what the customer has in mind, though, all we’re doing is bending metal.