Understanding your customers' shopping styles is the most important (yet overlooked) thing you need to know in order to succeed in selling your product or service to them. That's what authors John Rosen and AnnaMaria Turano tell marketers in their new book, Stopwatch Marketing.


They use the metaphor of the stopwatch to show that the slower it ticks, "the more time and energy a consumer is willing to spend shopping for a particular purchase, and the more opportunity a marketer has to influence and ultimately capture a purchase decision."
Admittedly, I haven't finished the book yet, but the premise makes a lot of sense. We, as consumers, on any given day or stage in life, will behave differently for different purchases - on different days and with different states of mind. The authors give examples to which I can certainly relate. If I need something immediately, I make a purchase decision quickly, so what is available to me at that moment in time, based on my criteria, is what I'll buy.
I've been contemplating a new laptop and have done extensive research, checking the ads and flyers, online sites and other sources of information. I'm not about to buy one immediately since I reformatted my existing one to a usable state. Had I not had access to my laptop at all, I would have bought another immediately.These two shopping styles are termed "impatient" for consumers who just want to get the purchase over with, and "painstaking" for those who need to learn more and think it's worth the trouble. The other two styles, according to Rosen and Turano, are "reluctant" for those who don't want to spend a lot of time thinking about their purchase, and "recreational" for those who find their buying experience fun.
I'm going to continue reading to see how I can adapt this to the B2B purchasing model. In the meantime, please share your experiences using this type of approach or something similar.