By John Hennessy, Vice President, Concept Shopping, Inc.
www.conceptshopping.com
Home improvement chain Lowe's, in cooperation with GE Consumer Finance, has launched a new Project Card program that should help it increase loyalty among its industrious customers.
Using the card, a shopper can open up a "project window." This window allows shoppers to make purchases in support of a home improvement project without having to make payments or have any interest accrue.
At the end of the six-month period, interest and payments begin.
The Project Card can be used for major home improvement, such as bathrooms, decks, energy efficient upgrades and kitchen makeovers. And once one project ends, another project window can be opened for a subsequent project.
Moderator's Comment: What are other life stage, lifestyle and life event opportunity areas for retailers to help their customers and improve their business results?
Lowe's surely discovered that its customers completed most projects with components from multiple sources. Like most other retailers, its customers have lots of options. The Project Card is a clever way for Lowe's to help its customers finance a major project while simultaneously solving its problem of increasing the share of major project purchases from the chain.
There are lots of similar situations where understanding and responding to a customer's life stage, life event or lifestyle need can result in both a benefit to shoppers and greater share of that need being met by your store or products.
Albertsons' Ducklings program is one example of creatively meeting a shopper's life event need - information for new parents, with a solution - a magazine with information and product offers targeted to new parents. Rather than scatter purchases to support this new need, the Albertsons Ducklings program encourages shoppers to satisfy that need at Albertsons.
The expansion of wellness or healthy lifestyle choices offers another opportunity to help shoppers help themselves and your business in the process.
Education is a big part of expanding a shopper's consumption of healthy products. Some are unaware of natural remedies. Others enjoy natural remedies but have yet to increase their consumption of healthier food products.
Developing a program that combines information about the benefits of healthy choices with incentives to make those choices from a particular store or product line is an underserved shopper need. - John Hennessy - Moderator