A Kenyan Tradition

Growing up we had a festive season tradition,common to most Kenyans,known as Christmas clothes shopping. it sounds rather self explanatory but I will explain what it was. This was when sons and daughters alike used to go out specifically with their mothers to stalls and exhibitions to buy the trendiest clothes to wear in the country side during the Christmas celebrations and be their best attires for the rest of the year until the next Christmas season,however,the cherry on top of the cake was the fact that you always came back home not talking to your mother,why you may ask. This was mostly because she,the mother,had a specific amount of money allocated for the cause and most of the times it was not enough according to the stall owners to get the trendiest flashiest clothes on the scene at the time thus you ended up with clothes that were new but from the previous year and as we used to say it,it was bad for your street cred. Some of the time an argument was sparked by the idea of the older child having identical clothes to those of his or her siblings which also was not voluntarily agreed to. In the long run for it to be a fulfilling shopping trip you had to be angry enough to refuse to eat dinner at home which in some cases like mine was a guaranteed ticket to whooping land and I was the only one on-board. Well,they say that necessity is the mother of invention,all these made us device plans to always get what we wanted during these trips,so what we used to do was to always spot from a far a couple of within budget clothes that fit your taste then bombard them with negative comments and that always grabbed my mom's attention and then just like that she bought them because they were within budget and it was as if she wanted to punish us. This proved to be potent because we still were mad at her on the outside but deep down we knew we had gotten what we wanted and we were extremely happy.
All these as an adult has continually influenced my product purchase decisions due to the developed world perception, for me its always been based on three things;are the products I buy or the companies I work with align with my values? Is the price point affordable for me? and Does the product,service or company deliver on its promises? For instance I started wearing and buying non-branded t-shirts and shirts because to my mom artistic or goth illustrations on clothes were paying homage to an unnatural power or group and I grew up knowing this and subconsciously I adopted the plain clothes approach. Based on the strict budget lessons I learnt from her,I now list down all the clothes I might need with all their quality features,for instance linen shirts,shop around as I compare prices and then if the quality is not differentiated across the board I settle for the cheapest,I might be saving 200-1000 Kenyan shillings but it is still something. I also started investigating food products before I actually purchase them to see really if they help you with the things they state on the adverts,it might be a tedious maybe even a redundant process but it has helped me keep healthy.
As a business owner it is your obligation to always find out the types of purchasing perceptions of your acquired and potential customers in order to inform your customer service & retention strategy as well as your marketing campaigns and this if correctly implemented might just reduce your cost of customer acquisition since your focus will be guided.

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