Vendor Insight: Surviving In The Consumer's Kingdom

By Dan Van Alstine, Schneider National Dedicated Services

The cliché, "the consumer is king," exists for a reason. As retailers, you are the last link in the supply chain that provides consumers with the goods they purchase, but their wants and needs dictate the direction of your business — and many of the decisions you make.

Ensuring customer satisfaction isn't an easy task in good times, so of course it has gotten even more challenging in the last few years. The general degree of uncertainty associated with the current environment has made consumers especially fickle and wary. They are less likely to plan their purchases or spend as freely as they once did. Yet it hasn't beaten the impulse-buy gene out of the population, so when King Consumer decides they want something, they want it now — and so do millions of their friends.