Oshwal Marketing Strategies

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Oshwal Marketing Strategies

Oshwal Enterprises employ a number of marketing strategies to ensure that they maintain high sales throughout the year. Some of these strategies used in each of their retail outlets across the United States coincide with the ones suggested by Paco Underhill in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Science of Shopping and Charles Duhigg in Chapter7 of The Power of Habit.  

Avoiding the Decompression zone is the first marketing strategy employed by Oshwal enterprises. The decompression zone, as described by Paco, refers to the region inside the door and time and again, he advises people to avoid placing valuable stuff within this zone (Gladwell). Moreover, he holds the position that a customer’s interaction with products or promotional exhibit within this zone will be amplified by over thirty percent as soon as they are moved out of this zone (Gladwell). Oshwal Enterprises embrace this prudent marketing strategy by avoiding the placement of valuables and other items such as shopping baskets, massive promotional displays and tie racks in this zone.

Petting is the second marketing strategy that is frequently employed by various businesses. Petting, according to Paco is the touching of clothes in the process of deciding whether or not to buy them (Gladwell). For instance, in Oshwal Enterprises, you will discover that in the clothing section, people touch and consequently purchase various types of clothes that are laid out on huge wooden platforms. The platforms invite people to assess various items of clothing through their sense of touch.

Another marketing principle that gives Oshwal enterprises an edge over its competitors is establishing and influencing the preferences of Market Mavens. A market maven is an individual who is well informed about different goods, prices or shopping places (Gladwell). In addition, they like starting conversations with customers, responding to various requests and have a passion for helping people in the market (Gladwell). Further, they are the individuals that take people shopping or go for shopping on their behalf and they turn out to be a lot more common than one would expect (Gladwell). Market Mavens have been greatly beneficial in marketing various products for Oshwal Enterprises, and ever since they were accorded special attention, the sales of Oshwal Enterprises have gone up.

On the other hand, bridging the shopping gender-gap, as a marketing strategy, has seen the sales of Oshwal Enterprises shoot upwards. The gender shopping gap, as demystified by Paco in his shopping investigation, is the practical variation in the amount of time spent by both genders during shopping sprees (Gladwell).  In the study, Paco established that male shoppers spend about 9 minutes and 39 seconds on average whereas female shoppers spent 12 minutes and 57 seconds (Gladwell).  The inference is that women spend more time during shopping than men and this explains why in the average regional shopping mall, women contribute 70 percent of the total amount of purchases (Gladwell).  According to Paco in The Science of Shopping, “Men are more distractible. Their tolerance level for confusion or time spent in a store is much shorter than women’s.”  (Gladwell) To address this gender shopping gap, Oshwal Enterprises have established separate stores for men, which exclusively sell men stuff. The stores have a more masculine look, darker colors and play moderately loud music which keeps men longer at the stores. Moreover, they embrace the complete point of view strategy which entails offering all the possible options so that consumers have a variety to choose from (Gladwell).

Various businesses including Oshwal Enterprises make use of the habit loop as a means to create marketing strategies. Habit loop refers to the manner in which willpower turns out to be a habit. Frequently, human beings choose a particular mannerism ahead of time and consequently follow that routine whenever a point of inflection appears (Duhigg). For instance, the employees of Starbucks are educated in a curriculum called “Moments That Matter”, whose focus is to deal with points of inflection including complaints from clients, the termination of a workmate’s contract, or in the event that a Deloitte consultant makes a mistake (Duhigg). In each case, there is a preprogrammed habit that gives guidance to employees on how to respond (Duhigg). In particular, the employees are guided on how to recognize such points of inflection and develop habits for addressing such situations and this has led to a better customer and employee satisfaction (Duhigg).