Elise OldingI like to go grocery shopping at 8pm on weeknights after work. The stores are less crowded. The drawback is that items that I want are frequently out of stock and I end up going back at another time. I’ve now relooked at my shopping habits. If I want certain items I have realized that I need to change my shopping habits.
From a process viewpoint, I could say that this is poor process design on the store’s part. Why don’t they have the shelves fully stocked? Another way to look at this is that it’s not optimal for the store to have too much inventory, extra staff stocking the shelves and selling out daily is a good thing. Does my experience of the process influence a behavior change and is that an intended consequence?
This is always the tension for process design – “just in time” vs. “just when I want it.” In an always on world, what works better? Do businesses influence the desired behaviors with how their processes are designed? What are your thoughts?
As an aside…I’ve been focused on delivering research and traveling – so this is a short blog. It’s longer than a tweet. So is this a “bleet” or a “twog?”
Follow me on Twitter @eliseolding
Category: Gartner Tags: Organizational Change
7 responses so far ↓
1 Theinrich September 15, 2010 at 2:55 pm
In our customer-focused, social media-dominated business climate, savvy enterprises change processes. The unintended behavior change in the example you provide could be to drive the shopper to a competitor.
Regarding your second question, I vote for “twog.”
2 David Brakoniecki September 15, 2010 at 3:19 pm
The processes of a business usually define how a customer experiences that business.
Of course, this can change consumer behaviour in positive or negative ways. How many markets have a premium player whose service or product quality is worth the extra money? Most sectors I imagine . . .
Two factors that might be worth considering if doing research on consumer behaviour and process design:
1. Customer Expectations – Before Starbucks, most people didn’t expect a freshly made latte when they ordered. They expected two hour old filter coffee and were surprised by anything else. Starbucks did many things right including standardizing the process for making coffee in their stores. Over a course of years, these changes ‘reset’ customer expectation. If every Starbucks served different tasting coffee today, it would probably be negatively received by most customers and maybe cheered by a few. Ray Kroc and McDonalds might be a better early example of this process standardization and its impact on consumer behaviour.
2. Competitive Landscape – The determination of what is an acceptable level of service (usually a process will be used to deliver the service) is again defined by what other providers are offering. There is a lot of praise going around for the customer and employee engagement programs at Best Buy and their success at maintaining profitability as Circuit City, a close comparable a few years ago, died during the recession. Interestingly, the recession might have made the marketplace more competitive (consumers demanded more) as well.
3 Verna Allee, CEO ValueNetworks.com September 15, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Yes, processes definitely drive human behaviors and not always in a good way. The challenge is allowing for “emergent processes” but in a systematic way where they can be monitored and improved and people know who is accountable and who has the ball.
We are also finding that human network behaviors predict process failures when you include specific human interactions as they key to making processes work. So, I guess the question real process question is whether the chicken (behaviors) or the egg (process configuration) comes first? In traditional work design the egg (design) came first. Now us chickens want the work to align more closely to our natural behaviors.
Bleet works for me. (Bleeting back at ya).
Verna
4 Ian Thomas September 16, 2010 at 8:07 am
Hi Elise,
Businesses have always used various tactics to influence their consumers behaviour – the most obvious example being power companies charging less in quieter periods to balance the utilisation of their assets. I guess the question of whether this is right or not comes down to economics – if you are a provider of services that are essentially infrastructural in nature then you have to try and maximise utiliisation and to do that you’ll offer incentives to people who help spread the demand. Looking at your supermarket example you could consider them to be an infrastructural provider as they are relying on economies of scale to make their money and they are paying for that shelf space whether there is something on it or not – from that perspective the question is whether they are better placed having empty shelves (and hence making no revenue) at quieter periods or whether they make sure that they have stock and offer discounts and incentives to shop at less popular times. Personally I think the latter (as they need to sweat the assets they have that represent sunk costs – so stores and shelf space) and therefore I would blame the shop
Ian
5 Ian Thomas September 16, 2010 at 8:09 am
Oh – by the way; as your post was kind of a complaining one I would vote for a ‘bleat’
6 Carole-Ann Matignon October 21, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Elise,
This is an interesting take on where people are influencing systems or vice versa. I would actually add an extra criteria to consider.
Your behavior change may be intended. There are operational savings as you highlighted but there are also marketing reasons to make you come back. Missing one or two items may not be sufficient to drive you to skip the convenience of off-hours shopping *and* might drive you to come again for a quick trip. Monitoring and analyzing shopping behavior allows retailers to optimize the shelf space utilization. In some cases, multiple trips will lead to increased spending over multiple visits. In some cases, it might lead to decreased revenue as the missing items may not be important enough to cause another trip to the store or worse if you find another store that fulfills your purchasing needs. Finding that balance that optimizes revenue while minimizing operational costs (personnel and shelf space) is a science that involves modeling the shopping behavior for realistic prediction and takes into account regional or cultural biases, seasonal product cycles, physical realities, etc. This is fascinating.
Food for thought…
Carole-Ann
CEO @ Sparkling Logic
@cmatignon
7 Efficiency, Design and Behavior November 23, 2010 at 10:22 pm
[...] while back I wrote a blog questioning if processes can change behavior. What about design? Think about the iPhone – a work [...]
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