When we talk with customers in the shop and communicate to with them through our messaging and marketing, we are creating the customer of tomorrow. We create the demand we seek to satisfy in the daily small interactions multiplied a million times over. The compound effect is what we call consumer demand.
Trouble is that we act as though consumer taste and demand just drops out of the sky fully formed like a baby elephant. This is a problem for a couple reasons. In short we don’t embrace our role in influencing the market and that causes trouble.
As I mentioned, we create the customer collectively. When we don’t engage customers with the idea that we are investing as much into the future of the industry as we in our present then we fail to create a sustainable value proposition for the customer. This happens because when we are myopic in our thinking we are myopic in our actions and what we create will inevitably be shallow and also inaccessible.
There is a wide and diverse world of specialty coffees out there and an equally large and diverse set of customers to match to those coffees. How we talk about, champion, and develop markets for them will determine the depth and stability of tomorrow’s industry.
-Chris
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