The Power of Personalization

Have you ever wondered why in this day and age of giant shopping malls, branded retail chains, self help shopping and barcode based point of sale systems, there are still some Mom and Pop stores that manage to survive and even do well despite having none of the above mentioned advantages? Perhaps, you yourself frequent one or more such stores regularly – it could be your neighborhood baker, convenience store, grocery store or even your local co-operative bank – without realizing why it is you do so. Here are some clues - Does the owner of the store greet you with a smile? Does she know you by name and address you by your name? Does he go out of his way to suggest good deals? Does he even engage in a bit of a casual conversation with you at times? In short, does he try to personalize your visit to the store? Do you leave the store with the feeling that you have been served well, served personally and have been given preference over other customers. That last point is the essence of generating repeat business. As human beings, we all have the innate need to be recognized and for our desires to be pampered. Personalization is just a high sounding term that satisfies this need.

Mom and Pop stores have known for years that big name commercial chains cannot compete with them on the personalization front – it is just impossible to know every customer by name when you have thousands of them. And hence they have leveraged this knowledge to their advantage and managed to survive and even thrive during the retail boom of recent years. Yet what I am about to discuss today is not the friendly personalization in neighborhood stores that you and I have come to experience often. I am going to discuss the commercialization of personalization itself. Yes, you read it right – the commercialization of personalization itself. But wait a minute - Isn’t personalization an intangible thing? – is the thought that crosses your mind immediately. How can you even describe an intangible, leave alone make any attempt to commercialize it? This sounds insane.

Does it? I could have perhaps agreed with your thinking had I not had two very compelling experiences of the commercialization of personalization. The first one was when a good friend of mine had a need to hand out corporate gifts in his company’s name to a select list of his prospects in order to promote his business. I short-listed a corporate gift provider for him and together along with him visited the provider’s office. There we were presented with a variety of gift articles ranging from pens, cups, mugs, key-chains, card holders, stress busters, T-shirts, etc. all of which could be personalized with the corporate logo and the tag line. The shape of the gift did not matter. Neither did its size nor the material from which it was made of. The corporate logo could either be printed or it could be embossed or outlined or even engraved on the gift. Having being sufficiently impressed by this personalized display, all that was left for us to do was to select the gifts that fitted our budget and place our order, which we did right then and there. The gifts were delivered to my client after three days, which he is handing out to his clients and prospects and impressing them every day. Business is also picking up of late, he informs me.

My next experience was more personal. I recently came across a retail chain which sells T-shirts, mugs, clocks, picture frames and other articles that can be personalized with your picture and slogan of your choice. They have a variety of such articles on display in their store, which you can browse through and select. In the middle of the store is a table full of sleek computers where you can choose the background design of your choice. Having done that, you get your photo clicked (handy nowadays due to mobile cameras), add a slogan and hand it over to the designer behind the computer to put it all together. Within 15 minutes or so the designer mixes your picture, the selected background pattern and the slogan text to create a design that will fit on the article that you have selected. After you are satisfied with the design, it is finalized and the design is printed on the article in the store itself. After 30 minutes or so you can walk out of the store with your personalized article.

Do you see now how personalization is being commercialized? Yet you ask, what is so great about it? It looks so straightforward and simple. Let me tell you, it wouldn’t be great if it wasn’t simple. And in hindsight things always look straight forward. But if you apply your mind you will realize that commercialization of personalization requires a mixture of human, structural and relational capital. The human capital is by way of skilled designers who can apply their creative and designing skills to quickly create computer based designs. The structural capital is by way of having computers, a catalog of readymade designs and special transparency printers and embossing machines that can transfer the design to the article at hand. And finally relational capital is by way of having links with suppliers who supply the bland gift articles of the desired quality and of course customers such as yourself who will go out and spread the word once you have experienced delight with this service.

What about price? My experience was that personalized articles are being sold at a price which is at least two to three times the price of the bland article. Can you imagine what that does to the seller’s profit margins? Your guess is as good as mine. The power of personalization is in not only leaving the Customer with a sense of delight but also in doing it in a highly profitable manner.