Take a Cue from Paco Underhill – "Shop without fear"

I’ve had the immense privilege and pleasure of spending a good part of my year with the one and only Paco Underhill, as we met with hundreds of merchants and brands nationwide to share perspectives on the challenges and opportunities with cross-channel retailing.

Paco Underhill and David Selinger, CEO of RichRelevance at the National Retail Federation Big Show, January 2010

The overarching theme through all these presentations was tying together all the disparate parts of our business through stronger customer analytics.Well now my friend has turned this theme on its ear in a new article suggesting that consumers should not be overly concerned with retailers who are using analytics and technology to deliver more direct merchandising and marketing efforts both online and offline in the shopping process:
Read Paco’s latest article.

As Paco so eloquently writes in this article, “We are infinitely better at collecting information than we are at processing it, much less processing it in a timely fashion, where the action that might result from that information has a chance of being effective.”

Regardless of all our technical prowess and customer know-how, the message is clear: the customer is ultimately the one responsible for making the purchase decision. “Don’t blame the merchant for their efforts to present their goods in what they believe is the best way possible. Our recession, we hope, has taught all of us the importance of our own personal financial responsibilities.” – Paco Underhill